While it’s easy—and frequently accurate—for Pittsburgh Steelers fans to pin some portion of the blame for the team’s underperforming offense on offensive coordinator Matt Canada, the stark reality is that there is a major execution problem as well.
Sunday’s game against the Jacksonville Jaguars really brought that to the fore, as there were several plays to be made—potentially very successful plays—that the offense simply did not execute. One crucial blunder came on 3rd and 5 from the Jaguars’ 6-yard line in the second quarter.
The Steelers ran out of a 2×3 look with WR Diontae Johnson bunched behind TE Connor Heyward. The latter was successful in drawing a pick that left Johnson wide open to the inside, but by the time QB Kenny Pickett released the ball after turning his eyes to the receiver, he delivered the ball behind the play, Johnson having continued his route.
“The safety’s shading over to Diontae’s side, [and] I want to move him with my eyes to the right”, Pickett explained to reporters yesterday about that play, via the team’s website. “I thought Diontae was gonna sit. He saw it as he should have run through it. It’s a miscommunication, but it can’t happen”.
Frustrating as it might be, that is a simple enough explanation for what we see. The wet conditions not only of the football but of the playing surface only exacerbated the issues. Any chance Johnson had of making the play on the pass thrown behind him literally slipped away when he lost his footing trying to lean back into the ball.
Should Johnson have stopped his route and sat in the soft spot of the zone once he was open? Should Pickett have looked back in Johnson’s direction sooner, or anticipated that he would continue working to his left?
The answer is simple: they should have been on the same page about how to play that circumstance. Either solution is the correct one as long as both of them are doing it at the same time. Whether he stops his route or keeps going, that was still going to be a touchdown if the quarterback got the ball to his receiver.
That is a mutual, collaborative effort, with the quarterback getting the sense of what his receivers like to do and the receivers understanding what their quarterback wants. This needs to be known. Things will happen from time to time, but as Pickett himself said, that miss can’t happen.
A touchdown there would have given the Steelers the lead at the time. Failing to get into the end zone was deflating for the entire team, especially given the fact that it was there for the taking. That has to be corrected before they step on the field again.
