One of the quirks of having a high-powered and explosive offense is that you tend to get off the field rather quickly. Few games may better exemplify that than the 38-3 Buffalo Bills victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers yesterday.
The Steelers ‘dominated’ time of possession by a wide margin, controlling the ball for 36 minutes and eight seconds in the regulation game. But they averaged one point per 12 minutes while doing it. The Bills, on the other hand, but up 38 points in their 23 minutes and 52 seconds of control, which is roughly 18 points per 12 minutes, if we’re going to use the same scale.
“Yeah, it was quick as hell. You look at the time of possession, we had the time of possession, but it didn’t mean anything because we couldn’t get off the field”, Cameron Heyward bristled after the game via the team’s website. “I mean, we got off the field but it was in a big play. We talked about those weighty downs and critical downs, and we didn’t win any of them”.
The Bills only faced nine third-down situations over the course of the entire game, and they managed to convert five of them. Notably, they did go just 1-for-4 in the red zone, including two takeaways, one a nifty interception in the end zone by Levi Wallace. The other was a forced fumble on a run at the goal line by Heyward himself.
“Yeah, we got off a couple times, but man, the floodgates were open when they did make those big plays”, he lamented. “Not enough times where we either tackled and lined it up again. It was either they scored or next play move on and score again”.
The Bills had three explosive-play touchdowns alone, on receptions of 98 and 62 yards and a 24-yard run, and that was only about a third of their explosive plays. Actually, there was a fourth explosive-play touchdown as well, a 24-yard pass—it’s easy to lose track of these when there’s so many, right Cam?
“We’ve got to get off the field”, he stated as flatly as his proclamations of what must be done to get better are being received these days. “To start the game we were 3rd and long and we didn’t capitalize on that. Instead we gave up a 98-yard pass, and that is a kick in the face to say the least”.
Steelers fans are feeling slapped around by the product that their team has been putting on the field for the past month. They are riding a four-game losing streak to the bottom of the NFL, a place that they haven’t found themselves for quite a long time. The last time the Steelers won fewer than six games in a season was back in 1988. Even in a 17-game schedule, it’s becoming harder to convince me that they’ll manage it.
And just in case we end up needing it, the last time they won fewer than five games was in 1969—the year that Chuck Noll arrived in Pittsburgh and drafted Joe Greene.
