The Pittsburgh Steelers were embarrassed yesterday by the Indianapolis Colts. It’s a sight that is becoming all too frequent lately, their fifth multi-score loss of the season, this time by a margin of 30-13. And oddly, the most embarrassing drive may have been one that ended in just three points.
Already leading 24-13, the Colts ground out a 15-play, 70-yard possession spanning nine minutes of game time, one that consisted nearly entirely of runs. More specifically, 13 consecutive runs by backup running backs Trey Sermon and Tyler Goodson, the latter receiving his first NFL carries as an undrafted first-year player out of Iowa.
Asked if he had ever been a part of anything like that drive before, he had an amusing answer. “Yes sir, I went to the University of Iowa”, he said after the game, via transcript provided by the team’s media department. “That is a running back’s dream. To run the ball 13 times whether it was me or Trey that was in there, it was just fun and exciting to have that opportunity”.
Not for the Steelers defense, of course, which allowed the Colts to dictate to them, and head coach Mike Tomlin acknowledged after the game that they were suffering from the effects of attrition at that point. It’s a wonder that they were even able to stop it, eventually, landing on 3rd and 6 and the Colts turning to QB Gardner Minshew to put the ball in the air. The pass fell incomplete and they kicked the field goal from the 13-yard line.
“It just showed that we’re capable of running the football whenever we want to”, Colts head coach Shane Steichen said about the drive after the game, via the team’s website. “You’ve got to do it at a high level and execute. Obviously, that’s a big part of it. Do you want to do that every week? Heck, yeah, you want to do that every week”.
That was just a part of their success on the day, however. The Colts ran for 170 yards as a team on 34 carries, averaging five yards per attempt. Already down starter Jonathan Taylor, his top backup, Zack Moss, exited the game after just four carries for 13 yards.
They rode the wave of Goodson (69 yards on 11 attempts) and Sermon (88 yards on 17 attempts) to paydirt, even though none of the backs scored on the ground. All three of Indianapolis’ touchdowns came from the arm of Minshew, one of which happened to go to Moss before leaving the game.
The Steelers, already down their top two linebackers for the season, lost safeties Damontae Kazee and Minkah Fitzpatrick during the game as well, the latter to injury and the former due to ejection. It led Tomlin to, once again, acknowledge after the game that they will have to address the attrition they’ve suffered up the middle.
That second-half drive, even though they kept it out of the end zone, just put an exclamation point on the crisis in the middle, however. Cameron Heyward and Keeanu Benton and Elandon Roberts are not enough. It’s not working.
