Remember when Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin said how the team wasn’t bashful with its intentions to establish a power running game at the end of last season and wanted to carry that over into the 2023 season. When asked about his offense’s identity on The Mike Tomlin Show this weekend by Bob Pompeani, he stated a need to establish the line of scrimmage and take pressure off his young quarterback with a running game that can stay on schedule and pick up positive yardage.
That didn’t happen in the slightest on Sunday as Pittsburgh completely abandoned the running game after failing to get anything going early against the San Francisco 49ers. This caused QB Kenny Pickett to have to drop back 46 times, pressing as his team was in a deficit, which led to off-target throws and passes into coverage that got picked off.
The cast of Get Up on ESPN reviewed the game early Monday morning, talking about how San Francisco outplayed Pittsburgh in nearly every category yesterday. Former Steelers S Ryan Clark was especially critical of his former team, claiming that the Steelers didn’t stay true to who they are offensively, or at least what they’ve been telling everyone that they want to be.
“And so, when you think about the Pittsburgh Steelers and what they are, they’ve lost their identity because they have none,” Clark said on Get Up, which aired on ESPN. “You go get Najee Harris, you have Jaylen Warren as a backup, and you don’t run the football. You don’t try to impose your will physically when you go out and draft a road grader in the first round and now you come out and do this cute lateral stuff.”
Harris and Warren totaled nine carries between the two of them, picking up a total of 37 yards on the day. Most of that came on one run by Harris where he got to the outside on, picking up 24 yards. The frustrating part is that when you look back at the individual drives, you see that Pittsburgh only ran the ball two times on its first four possessions of the contest, choosing not to run the ball on consecutive plays until it was down 20-0 late in the second quarter.
Pickett has said before that Pittsburgh wants to have a balanced offense where it can beat you on the ground and through the air. Well, yesterday showed a lack of that desired balance as Pittsburgh abandoned trying to run the ball without giving it a fair shot to get going. This doesn’t mean that Pickett can’t open drives throwing the ball, but rather that if the Steelers want to have an identity in the run game, they must pursue it. Much like Alex Kozora of Steelers Depot mentioned in a post, blame falls on everyone after this beatdown, but OC Matt Canada needs to have a better game plan going into a game to achieve that balance and presence in the running game that the Steelers claim they desire.
