Where Can Pittsburgh Find Consistency?
Syndication: Beaver County Times
Consistency has been the Pittsburgh Steelers’ biggest enemy this season, especially on offense. Every week, just when it looks like the team has taken a step forward, they takes two steps back. It must be frustrating for the players and coaches, because it’s definitely maddening to watch.
Just this past weekend against the Jacksonville Jaguars, on the Steelers’ first four drives, they went minus-five yards, four yards, eight yards, and two yards, respectively, before then somehow putting together a 93-yard drive that ended up only resulting in a field goal. After that, they had drives of 25, minus nine, and 16 yards, before finally driving 75 yards for a touchdown at the end of the third quarter. It’s topsy turvy, pull-your-hair-out, chaotic football.
And that’s just a microcosm of what the offense has demonstrated on a macro level on a game-by-game basis.
Last week against the Los Angeles Rams, the Steelers had 110 total yards through three quarters, then somehow mustered back-to-back touchdowns and 190 total yards in the fourth quarter alone.
It’s always a drive here or a series there, maybe even a couple drives strung together on the rare occasion. But through seven games in eight weeks, the Steelers have yet to put together a single strong half offensively, let alone a complete game.
So why are the Steelers unable to maintain any offensive rhythm over a prolonged stretch of even one game?
Poor Execution
Lack of execution has been a theme all season long for the Steelers, both in wins and losses. The coaches have said it almost every week, and the players have reiterated it just as often.
It has the added benefit of being true.
“I think we saw (Sunday) that lack of execution kept us off the field,” offensive lineman Mason Cole said during Monday’s press conference. “So obviously execution will be big for us (going forward). We have to be able to stay on the field.”
“We just didn’t execute enough. We didn’t block well enough, we didn’t run well enough, we didn’t catch well enough, we didn’t pass well enough — across the board, it was just bad ball by all of us. When you do that, you’re going to score 10 points and you’re going to lose football games, and that’s what we did.”
It was evident against the Jaguars. On a third down with about four minutes to go, Kenny Pickett took a shot downfield to a streaking George Pickens, who was open and had his man beat. But Pickett’s pass was underthrown and it gave the defender enough time to close the gap and get a hand on the ball to knock it down.
Then at the end of the 93-yard drive in the second quarter, facing third-and-goal from the five-yard line, Pickett threw a pass behind an open Diontae Johnson on the goal line, and the Steelers were forced to settle for a field goal.
“(Taking) responsibility doesn’t get it done, playmaking does,” Mike Tomlin said Monday. “We don’t have a responsibility issue, we gotta make plays.”
So what can the Steelers do about execution?
“I think it comes down to focus, attention to detail and playing one play at a time,” Cole said. “I think there’s time where me, us as a line, the offense, we get hung up on things we didn’t do well or things that happened in the past. We have to play one snap at a time and have immense focus every play. The next play is the most important play, and go from there. I think that helps execution when you’re focused on your job and your job only. That’s what we have to do, everyone just has to do their job.”
Play Calling
I would be remiss to not mention the elephant in the room, and that’s the playcalling of offensive coordinator Matt Canada.
Since he became the team’s OC in 2021, the Steelers’ offense has been boring, uninventive, predictable and downright soporific.
In fact, the play calling has been so predictable that players from three opposing teams (Washington Commanders, Cleveland Browns, and Jaguars) have said after games that they were calling out the Steelers’ plays on the field.
“I didn’t hear any linebackers calling out plays, and if there was, I don’t think much of it,” Cole said. “They can call out a play and be wrong, too. It just is what it is. Everyone likes to think they know it all, and it’s not necessarily the case all the time.”
The Steelers have now gone 55 consecutive games without breaking 400 total yards of offense, a grim streak that ties the San Francisco 49ers from 2006-2010. The NFL record is 75 games, held by the then-Oakland Raiders from 2005-2010.
The answer to this issue is so obvious that it’s become a meme, but yet, the Steelers remain reticent to rectify the issue, at least during the season.
Personnel
The Steelers have a defense that can compete at a high level — and they’d better, since it’s the highest-paid unit in the league.
Now they just need an offense that can match and complement it.
The defense has a multitude of players that are capable of singlehandedly affecting games, including T.J. Watt, Alex Highsmith, Minkah Fitzpatrick and when healthy, Cameron Heyward. Hopefully Joey Porter Jr. can also become one of those types of players.
Looking at the offensive depth chart, save for maybe George Pickens and Diontae Johnson, those kinds of game-breaking players simply aren’t there. Even Pickens and Johnson are plagued by the same inconsistency that the offense is dealing with as a whole. That inconsistency doesn’t exist with the defense. Game-in and game-out, the team knows what it’s getting from those guys.
The jury is still out on Pickett. Pat Freiermuth has lacked consistent production. Najee Harris hasn’t quite lived up to his status as a first-round pick. Clearly the Allen Robinson experiment was a failure, and even when healthy the offensive line has been maligned.
This is an offense that used to have the best offensive trio in the league in Ben Roethlisberger, Le’Veon Bell, and Antonio Brown, plus big-play receivers like Martavis Bryant, Mike Wallace, and JuJu Smith-Schuster.
Maybe the Steelers need to take a page out of University of Colorado head coach Deion Sanders’ playbook and just “go get better (players).”
“We’re always open for business,” Tomlin said.
Up Next