Another week, another dreadful offensive showing from the Pittsburgh Steelers, this time resulting in a 30-6 loss on the road to the Houston Texans.
In the first half, the Steelers had just 53 net yards of total offense as the first five drives of the game went like this: interception, punt, punt, punt, punt.
In the second half, the Steelers showed some life, clawing back to make it a 16-6 game before a bone-headed play call on fourth and 1 led to a turnover on downs, allowing the Texans to put the game away for good.
For veteran center Mason Cole, the “inefficient, bad ball” that the offense showed on Sunday for the third time in four games is killing the Steelers and is rather frustrating for the players and coaches.
“We’ve had these spurts where we look good and we’re not doing this soon enough in games. We’re not functioning efficiently. I think we’re waiting on splash plays and when we don’t get ’em, we’re not converting third downs and it’s just inefficient. bad ball,” Cole said to reporters following the loss, according to video via the Steelers’ Twitter page.
The Steelers tried to create some early splash, taking a big shot downfield intended for Calvin Austin III, but the ball from quarterback Kenny Pickett was late over the middle and underthrown, leading to a great play by former Steelers cornerback Steven Nelson, who intercepted the pass.
After that, the Steelers couldn’t get anything going, generating drives totaling: 2 yards, 2 yards, 21 yards and 25 yards. Not good enough.
To Pittsburgh’s credit, it came out in the second half determined to take some pressure off of a struggling offensive line in pass protection by running the football. Third-year running back Najee Harris responded in a big way, taking over in the third quarter. But then, negative plays got in the way, bogging down the offense.
And then the fourth-and-1 play call out of shotgun after Harris was chewing up yardage set the Steelers back even further.
“I think there’s times where we’re running the ball really well and then one bad or negative run will scare us away from it,” Cole said. “And we’re behind the chains and we’re trying to catch up, and you get in bad situations. So, we just have to be more consistent across the board. We’re just not good enough, consistently, and it’s killing us right now.”
That certainly sounds like a message to third-year offensive coordinator Matt Canada, who continues to struggle finding a rhythm as a play caller.
As the Steelers were pounding the rock in the third quarter against the Texans, the offense seemed to find some rhythm. Then, after the mind-numbing fourth-down call out of shotgun following a timeout, things just fell apart for the offense. Of course, that fall off can be tied to the injury Pickett sustained on the fourth-and-1 call, but it’s just another example of there being no real rhyme or reason to what the Steelers are doing offensively.
As Cole stated, they have spurts where they look like a normal offense and then they completely disappear. It’s frustrating and it’s very inefficient, bad football. They’ve got to get it corrected, and in a hurry, because 225 yards of offense in a 24-point loss isn’t anywhere near varsity level.
