With just 96 rushing yards through two games, the Pittsburgh Steelers are toying with historical organizational futility. As we pointed out recently, if they are held to under 60 yards on the ground on Sunday night against the Las Vegas Raiders, they would have their lowest rushing total through three games since at least the NFL merger.
While TE Pat Freiermuth is undoubtedly completely unaware of that obscure factoid, he is nevertheless confident that better days are ahead. They did run the ball better this past week than they did in the opener, even if that isn’t saying much. He believes it’s just a matter of executing, which will improve as new pieces get more comfortable.
“We have great concepts, and guys are more than willing and capable of doing it”, he said about the run game, according to Joe Rutter of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “It’s little details, things we have to figure out. We’ll get there. It’s a work in progress. We’ve got a couple new guys, so we’ll figure it out soon, and we’re going to see the run game explode”.
The “new guys” he’s likely referring to are primarily LG Isaac Seumalo and TE Darnell Washington, the former a veteran free agent addition this offseason and the latter a rookie drafted in the third round. There is also veteran WR Allen Robinson II, who can have a prominent role in the run-blocking department.
To be fair, when you do go through the tape of their running plays—barring the baffling quarterback keeper, anyway—you generally see that the plays are there if the execution matches. First-and-10 runs in particular have been an issue. Najee Harris, for example, was one-for-five in terms of successful carries there before his two late longer runs on Monday night, one of which only came about because of a cutback, reversing field because the blocking wasn’t there.
But the blocking could be there, and these plays can work. They are much the same plays that they were running last year. The same ones that weren’t working around this time a year ago but which did work in the second half of the season.
But the Steelers can’t afford to wait for half of the season before their running game approaches competence, let alone the explosiveness to which Freiermuth alluded. They are going to need the running game to be effective this Sunday against the Las Vegas Raiders.
Preparing to go on the road for the first time this season and doing so on a short week after playing on Monday night will not make the task any easier. But every week brings more comfort, more familiarity with the group as a whole. And if we’ve being honest, they also played two of the best run defenses in the league these past two games. The Raiders? Not so much. They just allowed 183 yards to the Buffalo Bills, most of that by RB James Cook.
