The bad news is that, overall, the Pittsburgh Steelers offense on the road has been little short of terrible this season.
On the plus side, however, they’ve already gotten half of their away games out of the way, and have come through that with a winning record, going 2-2 on the road.
That does nothing to resolve the looming issue, however, which is that they still have to put that offense back on the field in hostile stadiums four more times.
In the four road games in which they have already played, the offense has produced a total of six, 30, 10, and now 10 points.
That includes a garbage time touchdown yesterday afternoon against the Cleveland Browns in the midst of a humiliating 21-point defeat.
With half of the away games in the books, the Steelers offense is averaging just 14 points per game, having scored exactly 56 points.
Take out the glaring outlier of the Carolina Panthers game, in which the Steelers were able to run like they hadn’t in decades, and we get an average offensive output of less than nine points per game.
Spoiler: that’s not going to cut it. Not with this defense.
That defense may have held the Jacksonville Jaguars to just nine points the week prior, but they’ve also given up 26 and 31 points in their two losses, and 19 points against Carolina.
Especially in light of the injury concerns that the defense is being forced to play through, and, quite frankly, the lack of reinforcements on the horizon, it’s been understood all season that the offense will have to put up points for the Steelers to win games.
They’ve been able to do that at Heinz field, where they’re averaging 27 points per game thus far, through two home games.
Granted, these are small sample sizes, but an NFL season itself is a fairly small sample size, and we’re talking nearly double the figure.
In three out of the Steelers’ four away games thus far, the offense has only produced exactly two scoring drives, including at least one, if not two field goals for each occasion.
It’s a mystery how the Steelers have even managed to win half of their games on the road, but the bigger puzzle is how they’re going to win even one more on the road, given these displays.
