The Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense put up 421 yards of offense in their Week 12 win over the Cincinnati Bengals, and that 400-plus-yard mark is one they hadn’t hit since Week Two of the 2020 season, when Randy Fichtner was the offensive coordinator for Ben Roethlisberger. With Pittsburgh making a change at offensive coordinator, letting go of Matt Canada and replacing him with Eddie Faulkner with Mike Sullivan as the play caller, the Steelers’ offense just had a different feel to it against the Bengals. Faulkner spoke to the media today and said he’s “really, really excited” about the trajectory of Pittsburgh’s offense while praising Sullivan for the game he called in Cincinnati.
“It was fantastic. It couldn’t have been any better,” Faulkner said about the process in his first game as offensive coordinator via transcript provided by the team. “If I was over there telling Sully, ‘Hey, let’s do this,’ he was right on board with it. It wasn’t any kind of pushback with anything. It was awesome. And Sully called a great game man, let’s talk about that. Sully was awesome in that game and I’m just really excited about the trajectory with what’s going on right now.”
It’s only been one game, but it’s hard not to be excited about how the Steelers’ offense looked. QB Kenny Pickett threw for 278 yards, the most he has all season, and they ran for 150-plus yards for their fourth straight game. The offense did only score 16 points, a number that has to improve, and that’s also something Faulkner acknowledged.
While there weren’t any crazy differences in what the offense did, outside of an increase in 13 personnel, it looked a lot better. Execution was better, there were more shots down the field. Pittsburgh didn’t have a single three-and-out against the Bengals. It was an impressive offensive performance, and it’s one to build on in the coming weeks.
The more familiar the players are with how Sullivan and Faulkner are going to operate — and Faulkner’s preached being detail-oriented so they understand the how and why of what the Steelers are doing — the better the offense is going to be. While it’s hard to ask for 400-plus yards every single game going forward, there’s a lot that the Steelers can work with and build on from what they showed against Cincinnati. There’s a lot of hope inside and outside the organization that things are going to get better from here and that the offense can finally start to click.
With how Pittsburgh’s defense has been playing, if the offense does now start to click, the Steelers are going to be a really good team. This is an organization that hasn’t won a playoff game since 2016, and now is the time for that to change. The Steelers are only going to win if the offense can put up more points and continue to play the way they did in Week 12, and it’s clear Faulkner thinks that can be the case going forward. We’ll see if they can follow through and make it happen.
