Time to be concerned, not panicked about Steelers
PHILADELPHIA – Don’t worry Steelers fans, you still have those six Super Bowl titles to fall back on.
The Eagles proved again they just can’t lose to the Steelers in Philadelphia, ripping through their in-state rival, 34-3, Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field.
Pittsburgh has not won a football game in Philadelphia since 1965 and, thanks to NFL scheduling, won’t get another chance to do so in this decade. By the time they come back to Philadelphia in 2024, it will have been nearly 60 years since their last victory.
And the Steelers likely will have to deal with a veteran Carson Wentz by that time.
That’s the bad news. The good news is this clunker only counts as one loss.
There’s no reason for the Steelers to start from scratch. The issues they had in this game are fixable.
Wentz was good against the Steelers. But much of what he did was get the ball to the right players and allow them to punish the Pittsburgh defense.
To say the Steelers aren’t tackling well in the secondary would be, well, a big understatement.
“We thought is was more about our lack of execution than what they were doing,” said Steelers safety Mike Mitchell. “We’re not tackling. That’s really all it is. When they’re throwing the ball short because we’re taking away the deep throws, we have to tackle the short stuff that we’re giving them. That’s why they’re throwing it there. We gave up a lot yards to a back last week. It would be stupid to not assume they weren’t going to do the same thing. Hats off to them, but it was really about our lack of execution.”
The issues on defense that were covered up by a pair of wins in the first two games were glaring in this one.
The defense put very little pressure on the quarterback and the Steelers, for the third time this season, allowed a 300-yard passer and 100-yard receiver.
That had been masked by opponents going 1-for-7 scoring touchdowns in the red zone. But that was largely unsustainable. At some point, opponents were going to break through and score.
The troubling thing about this game was that Pittsburgh’s offense did next to nothing.
Pittsburgh’s defense, is, quite simply, not very good. But the offense is supposed to cover that up by not just scoring, but scoring a lot.
That didn’t happen Sunday. In fact, Wentz and the Eagles flipped the script on the Steelers.
It was Philadelphia that controlled this game with its offense. It was Wentz who kept his team on the field and Pittsburgh’s offense on the sideline.
“We didn’t want him to be effective or efficient but he did his job better than we did ours,” said Steelers linebacker James Harrison.
“We got our (butts) kicked in everything. A loss is a loss, but when you get yourself kicked around in every phase of the game, it’s a little different.”
That was a common refrain in the Steelers’ locker room after this one. They didn’t play well in any phase. It was reminiscent of a 2008 loss here, when the Steelers allowed nine sacks and lost 15-6 in Week 3.
Fans were ready to revolt. They felt everyone needed to be fired or cut. The Steelers weren’t happy with their performance.
But they rattled off wins in 10 of their final 13 games to finish 12-4 and, oh by the way, win the Super Bowl.
That’s not to say this team is going to repeat that performance, but it’s a much better team than it showed in Philadelphia.
“We’re not going to be undefeated,” said quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. “Of course, we want to win as many as we can. … They got after us and made us one dimensional on offense. They got after us pretty good.”
This team has been getting things done with mirrors early on, playing without some key pieces. Next week, the Steelers get one of those pieces back when running back Le’Veon Bell returns from his three-game suspension.
Bell will not only affect what Pittsburgh does running the ball, the belief here is that, at season’s end, he’ll be the team’s second-leading receiver behind Antonio Brown.
That’s a pretty big offensive weapon to get back in the lineup, and it’s one that can help this team avoid more games like this one.
The Steelers are a team with flaws. But in this salary-cap age of football, every team has at least one glaring issue.
Pittsburgh’s is its defense. And when the offense doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain, you get what happened in Philadelphia.
Dale Lolley can be reached at dlolley@observer-reporter.com