The Pittsburgh Steelers had another nice preseason showing on Saturday night and this time it was against the Buffalo Bills at Acrisure Stadium. The team, however, is now on a short week as its next preseason contest is Thursday night on the road against the Atlanta Falcons. Even so, head coach Mike Tomlin let it be known after the Saturday night game that the current plan is for the starters to play on Thursday night against the Falcons.
“We’ll be wheels up here in a short number of days and again, we expect to play everyone that’s available to us and particularly the starters,” Tomlin said via the team’s YouTube channel.
To date, Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett and the team’s starting offensive linemen have played just 17 total offensive snaps through two preseason games played. Those 17 offensive snaps have produced an impressive 21 points with all three touchdowns being explosive plays. Seventeen total plays, however, isn’t a lot and it sounds like Tomlin wants to add more to that number Thursday night in Atlanta. By the way, starting RB Najee Harris has logged just nine total snaps so far during the preseason.
As for some defensive starters, Saturday night was the 2023 preseason debut for quite a few of them. That list includes DT Cameron Heyward, OLB T.J. Watt, CB Patrick Peterson, S Minkah Fitzpatrick, S Keanu Neal, and S Damontae Kazee. None of those six played more than 13 defensive snaps Saturday night. In fact, Watt only played eight in total in his preseason debut and Heyward logged just 10 plays.
We’ll have to wait and see if Tomlin outlines a general snap plan for the team’s offensive and defensive starters a few days from now when he meets the media again. If he does, it will indeed be very general so that he doesn’t paint himself into a corner.
As for the Steelers’ rookie draft picks, I suspect they all will get about the same amount of burn as they all have in the Steelers first two preseason games. That said, Tomlin did note before and after the Saturday night game that the team really would like to get rookie CB Joey Porter Jr. as many snaps as possible the rest of the way due to him missing the preseason opener with a minor injury. Porter made his preseason debut Saturday night and played 24 defensive snaps. Perhaps he will see at least that many snaps Thursday night against the Falcons.
The good thing about the Steelers playing on Thursday night is that that they are just one of four NFL teams that will have their preseason schedule wrapped up before the other 28 teams. That will allow the team to get a bit of a head start on its final roster decisions and Week One game planning.
