Coming out of their by week the Pittsburgh Steelers must get a handle on the penalties. Through the first three weeks of the young season the team has been flagged 30 times in total with 28 of them being accepted. Only the Dallas Cowboys have been penalized more.
The offense is responsible for 18 of those 28 penalties thus far with left guard Willie Colon leading the way with 4. In addition, 7 of those 18 penalties have killed offensive drives for the Steelers.
While the defense has been a little more disciplined, cornerbacks Keenan Lewis and Ike Taylor have been flagged three times each over the course of the first three games with 5 of the flags being for defensive pass interference.
14 of the 18 offensive penalties so far have been for either offensive holding or false starts and the 2 delay of game penalties effectively killed both drives associated with them.
Highly penalized teams show lack of discipline and I fully expect head coach Mike Tomlin will be preaching this throughout the week as the Steelers can\’t expect to win many games when they average over 9 penalties a game.
Below is a breakdown of the penalties through the first three games.
| Player | Count | Declined | Yards | Nullified Yards | First Downs | Stalled Drive |
| Willie Colon | 4 | 0 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Keenan Lewis | 3 | 0 | 46 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Ivan Taylor | 3 | 0 | 36 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | 3 | 0 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Marcus Gilbert | 2 | 0 | 15 | 14 | 0 | 1 |
| Mike Wallace | 2 | 1 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Lawrence Timmons | 1 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Will Allen | 1 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Heath Miller | 1 | 0 | 8 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| Jason Worilds | 1 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mike Adams | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Kelvin Beachum | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Antonio Brown | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Ramon Foster | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Maurkice Pouncey | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Max Starks | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Evander Hood | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Cortez Allen | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Will Johnson | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Penalty | Count | Declined | Yards | Nullified Yards | First Downs | Stalled Drive |
| Offensive Holding | 7 | 0 | 68 | 82 | 0 | 3 |
| False Start | 7 | 0 | 35 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Defensive Pass Interference | 5 | 0 | 77 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Illegal Formation | 3 | 1 | 10 | 7 | 0 | 0 |
| Delay of Game | 2 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Defensive Holding | 2 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Unnecessary Roughness | 1 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Intentional Grounding | 1 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Face Mask (15 Yards) | 1 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Neutral Zone Infraction | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Illegal Block Above the Waist | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
