The Pittsburgh Steelers’ loss last Sunday to the Cleveland Browns was unique in one key way: it was the only game of the year that was consistently competitive. There was only about a minute’s worth of game action during which it was anything more than a one-possession game, form the time the Browns kicked a field goal at the end of the first half to the time the Steelers opened the second with a 74-yard touchdown run by RB Jaylen Warren.
Indeed, they scored 10 unanswered points in the second half to draw even at 10-10 midway through the fourth quarter. Buth both sides of the ball failed like. While it was the defense that gave up the game-winning drive in the closing moments, it was the offense just before that sequence that did absolutely nothing: three passes, three incompletions, and 15 seconds. Head coach Mike Tomlin explained his reasoning for the strategy on the final drive that left Ben Roethlisberger rather confused, throwing on three straight downs, including long on second down.
“Field position. We play to win and we play not to lose”, he said on the Mike Tomlin Show yesterday. “We had the ball with a minute and 40-some seconds left to go. We’re gonna aggressively pursue victory. That’s how we live”.
“Oftentimes, when games like that don’t unfold the way that you like, there’s many ways to analyze it and second-guess yourself”, he added. “There’s a spirit in which we play, and we’re committed to it. We play and play to win, so the aggression component of it, that is us”.
The first pass on the drive from QB Kenny Pickett, all three targeting WR Diontae Johnson, was arguably dropped, although it wasn’t a particularly well-placed ball on a shallow out route. There was a clear miscommunication on second down on Pickett’s deep ball on what he expected to be a go route.
Johnson was seen shaking his head as he leaned down into the huddle for 3rd and 10. And then Pickett overthrew him on a corner route on the possession play, the receiver having gotten in front of the coverage. It wasn’t an easy throw, but a play was there to be made that wasn’t.
Actually going into it play by play, you can’t fault the pre-snap decisions. The execution was poor on one end or the other, if not both, on each throw. Those are execution failures, not design failures, especially in a tie game where you have to score points and you only have one timeout remaining.
The Browns game back with four straight completions by rookie QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson to quickly get from the Browns’ 35 to the Steelers’ 26, and that was all she wrote. Cleveland executed when Pittsburgh did not. Pretty simple stuff. If the plays as called were executed properly, we wouldn’t be talking about this.
