Tim Benz: Bad starts have become a big problem for Steelers on both sides of the ball
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One of the biggest issues facing the Pittsburgh Steelers — emphasis on “one” of — is their recent propensity to get off to awful starts and get down big in games.
• In each of their last three contests, the Steelers have allowed their opponent to score first. It’s more like each of their last four games, though, as the Los Angeles Chargers scored a touchdown on their first possession. That countered a Steelers field goal to start the game on Nov. 21.
• The Steelers have allowed an opponent to score on their first drive of the game four times this season.
• The combined score at halftime of their last four games has been 78-16 in favor of the competition.
In recent weeks, the Steelers simply have had to play catch-up way too often, from far too deep of a deficit. The hole was 29-0 last week in Minnesota. It was 31-3 at halftime in Cincinnati. They were down 27-10 in the fourth quarter against the Los Angeles Chargers.
All three of those games wound up as losses. No wonder. That’s a lot of ground to make up for an offense that has proven to be far from high-powered for most of the year. In fact, you can argue that quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and the other 10 players on offense have overachieved to even make the games in Minnesota and Los Angeles competitive late.
What they’ve done early, though, is a different matter. Because it’s not just the defense hemorrhaging points in the first 30-to-45 minutes of games that has been a problem over the last month. Blame the offense, too, as it has failed to keep up until it was too late.
That wasn’t so much the case in Los Angeles. But in the three games since then, it sure has been.
• In that first half against the Vikings, the Steelers offense netted just 66 yards as opposed to an even 300 from Minnesota (176 on the ground). Roethlisberger was sacked four times.
• Against the Baltimore Ravens, the Steelers didn’t convert a third down before halftime. They had just four first downs while the Ravens had 13. They were outgained 191-93.
• Over the first 30 minutes in Cincinnati, the Steelers were outgained 261-95 by the Bengals. They allowed 18 first downs while getting only five.
On Tuesday, head coach Mike Tomlin was asked about scripting out plays to start games and why things may be working out better for opponents in that regard more than has been the case for his Steelers.
“Sometimes we’re just simply gathering information or setting other things up. That’s a component of the scripting as well,” Tomlin said. “Games aren’t determined in the first 10 to 12 snaps. They never are. I’m personally not losing a lot of sleep over initial drives. As a matter of fact, I thought we moved the ball pretty fluidly on the first drive until we got a penalty and then missed the field goal (in Minnesota). I’m not overly concerned about that perspective. There’s a lot that we’re trying to get done with that scripting, whether it’s informational, particularly against an opponent like Minnesota that we’re unfamiliar with and we’re working on a short week.”
Tomlin is being too dismissive there if you ask me. But if his greater point is that the defense early on is the larger issue, I can’t argue that.
It’s been dreadful.
Consider Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert going 16 of 19 for 170 yards, a touchdown, a 121 passer rating and 44 rushing yards in the first half in L.A. Against Cincinnati, Joe Mixon had 117 yards rushing and Tee Higgins had 95 yards receiving over the first two quarters.
When the Steelers hosted Baltimore, the Ravens held the ball for 23 minutes and 30 seconds of the first 30 minutes, including a 16-play, 99-yard scoring drive that lasted 10 minutes and 27 seconds. When they visited Minneapolis, Dalvin Cook of the Vikings had 153 of his 205 yards before the break, and he was averaging a ghastly 10.9 yards per rush.
Perhaps most alarming is that in each of those instances, it’s not like the opposing team did anything in particular that was surprising to the Steelers. In his Tuesday press conference last week, Tomlin told media members his team needed to be ready for the pitch game within Minnesota’s rush attack. That’s something the Vikings used, and used effectively.
He extolled the virtues of Mixon and the Bengals run game to complement their passing approach. The Bengals shoved it right down the throat of the Steelers with him anyway. We were all warned by the coach that the Chargers were going to use receiver Keenan Allen over the middle of the field and were going to try to hit fellow receiver Mike Williams deep.
Guess what happened.
So is Tomlin telling his players something different than he is telling us? Are they not listening to the coaching and the scouting reports they get all week?
Or, perhaps more concerning, is the defense listening and just physically incapable of doing anything right?
“We own it when it’s good. We own it more when it’s bad,” Tomlin said. “It’s (the coaching staff’s) job to find the right formula based on the mix of guys that we have available to us … We feel responsible for the quality of play of our players. We feel responsible for putting them in position to be successful. We feel responsible for the outcomes of games. That has been my perspective. That will be my perspective.”
In their most recent game in Minnesota, Tomlin said however you want to distribute the balance of scheme versus player-performance, the Vikings just did it better.
“Sometimes it’s just execution-oriented,” Tomlin said. “They won the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. I don’t think any of us were shocked or surprised by what it is that they did, but they did it better than we did. You’ve got to give them credit for that.”
I do. And I also put the blame at the feet of the Steelers for not being good enough, often enough, in seven out of 13 games this season.
As a result, even if they do beat the Tennessee Titans this Sunday, they may have to win at least twice more against the Kansas City Chiefs, Cleveland Browns and Ravens to make the playoffs.
Even then, that still may not be good enough to qualify. And that’s not good enough in Pittsburgh, either. Neither is failing to win a playoff game for what would be the fifth year in a row.
That’s something else Tomlin and his staff may have to own.