It might have been heavily skewed toward the end of the game, but there’s no doubt that the Pittsburgh Steelers’ performance against the Los Angeles Rams yesterday represented a marked improvement from their normal fare.
For one thing, it saw them score a season-high 24 offensive points without the benefit of defensive touchdowns. Granted, they were sparked by OLB T.J. Watt’s interception in the third quarter, setting them up with first and goal and leading to their first of three touchdowns on the day.
But from that point on, they looked like another unit, scoring two more touchdowns and ending the game in the four-minute offense over their final four possessions. It’s what they should have looked like all along, and now that they’ve finally managed it, they have to maintain it.
“The plan is to keep this energy we got now. Everybody’s smiling, it’s a big road win”, RB Najee Harris said after the win, via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Keeping this over to Jacksonville, this comradery we got right now, we need to keep this energy, this buzz, this mentality over to the next week and execute like we did now”.
Outside of the Las Vegas Raiders game, in which the offense put up 23 points, the Steelers had not been able to score. They had seven points in the opener and six in the loss to the Houston Texans. The 17 against the Baltimore Ravens felt like a marathon. Though the team scored 26 points against the Cleveland Browns, the offense only contributed 12, the defense scoring twice.
To finally be able to string together multiple scoring drives, it was reminiscent of how they looked during the preseason. It was a long time coming. “You could say like a relief”, Harris admitted. “Hopefully now it goes down like water. Like I said, we just got to keep this mentality we have right now and just keep going into the next game and the next game after that”.
Now, the game was far from smooth from start to finish. The Steelers only finished the game with 300 net yards of offense, and nearly two-thirds of that came in the fourth quarter. You can’t just play 15 minutes of good ball and expect to win most of the time.
This is far from a finished product, but it’s always better to end things better than you start. The Steelers certainly did that, but now the question is, can they pick up where they left off? This is the closest thing they have had to momentum since the regular season began. It would be a shame to see it go to waste. We’re breathing a sigh of relief right now. We don’t want to go back to just sighing.
