The Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Tennessee Titans, 20-16, on Thursday Night Football to advance to 5-3. The offense got its first opening-drive touchdown of the season, which provided some margin for error that ended up coming in handy. There were certainly plenty of errors and tonight those mostly took the form of penalties.
Mike Tomlin spoke to the media after the game and weighed in on the mistakes.
“Part of being a tough team to beat, first and foremost, is not kicking your own butt… and we have kind of been doing that some,” Tomlin said via the Steelers’ website. “We gotta own that, and so we will. We’ll review it, we’ll learn from it, we’ll look at it, we will bring some officials into our practice setting in an effort to be cleaner because that was catastrophic really in a lot of instances to our efforts tonight.”
The penalties started raining down on the first defensive drive of the game for the Steelers. They spotted 40 yards on four accepted penalties, each giving an an automatic first down to extend the drive. First, it was OLB T.J. Watt with a roughing the passer on Will Levis, bringing his full body weight down on the quarterback on second down. Next was a Patrick Peterson illegal contact on second down, another automatic first down.
Joey Porter Jr. was called for a facemask on first down later in the drive and then he was called for two penalties on the same third-down play. Somehow, the Steelers kept the Titans out of the end zone, forcing them to settle for a field goal.
The penalties didn’t stop there, and the broadcast announced it was a single-quarter high this season for penalties with nine accepted penalties, 12 overall in the first quarter.
Throughout the game, there were 10 accepted penalties against the Steelers for 80 yards and they came in all varieties, including an unsportsmanlike conduct call on rookie OT Broderick Jones after the go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter. That penalty moved Chris Boswell back on the kickoff and resulted in a 29-yard return to the Titans’ 48-yard line. It didn’t end up mattering, but it could have been catastrophic, as Tomlin put it, for the Steelers.
The Steelers have a long week ahead of them following the Thursday night victory and with the refs coming to practice, they need to figure out how to clean up their play. The margin of error has been too small for the team this season to be shooting itself in the foot with penalties.
