Situational football. Third down. Red zone. End of half/game. Know which team has the edge there and you can bet with high confidence who will win the game. Overall, the San Francisco 49ers were that team today and it’s why they blew the doors off the Pittsburgh Steelers Sunday, a 30-7 trouncing.
Speaking with reporters following the loss, head coach Mike Tomlin cited possession and “weighty” downs as one element for the bitter defeat.
“We didn’t win enough possession downs to be competitive,” he said as aired by the team’s YouTube channel. “Man, you can’t start games, 0-and-5 on third down and think that you’re gonna have the type of day that you desire. You gotta win the weighty downs.”
Pittsburgh, in fact, did not win those weighty downs. The Steelers ended the game 5-of-15 on third down but even that paints a rosier picture than it should. They were an atrocious one-of-seven in the first half and couldn’t pick up a first down, let alone sustain a drive. They didn’t move the sticks for nearly 25 minutes until a Najee Harris 24-yard run finally ended the drought.
The 49ers fared far better in situational ball. They converted 46 percent of their third downs, went two-for-three in the red zone, and won the turnover battle (plus one), giving the ball away only once compared to the Steelers’ two. It’s a way the 49ers won throughout last year. Running the ball. Attacking zone coverage. Playing sound and tough defense, forcing teams to become one-dimensional. That’s how you run up a lopsided score.
Pittsburgh was beat up at the line of scrimmage. They couldn’t run and were run on, allowing 188 yards on the day. Running back Christian McCaffrey put the game away early in the second half with a 65-yard touchdown, the longest run Pittsburgh’s allowed since 2020. Losing Cam Heyward early to a groin injury did them no favors.
The Steelers had no ground game, outrushed by a considerable margin, which Tomlin attributed to a lack of opportunity.
“You can talk about run game,” he said, “but the run game issues were not enough snaps because we were three and out.”
Of course, a stronger run game would keep the offense on schedule and put the Steelers in more manageable situations. Still, even reasonable chances to convert like third and 5, which the team faced on their first pair of drives, ended in a sack and interception. Pittsburgh lost in all areas of today, not just the weighty downs.
Now, they have a weighty Week Two staring them in the face. They’ll face a Cleveland Browns team that dominated the Cincinnati Bengals in just the way the 49ers did to the Steelers, winning 24-3. An 0-2 start would be daunting in a tough AFC North, especially knowing it’d make the Browns 2-0 on the year. If the Baltimore Ravens do the same — they beat the Houston Texans today — Pittsburgh will have another difficult climb.
