The Pittsburgh Steelers lost to the 2-10 Arizona Cardinals on Sunday by a score of 24-10. There is no simple answer as to why they fell flat, as it was a combination of many factors. The offense couldn’t sustain drives, and when they did, they couldn’t finish them. The defense allowed way too many points to the struggling Cardinals, and special teams did nobody any favors in the field position battle with a few key penalties.
One thing you can point to as a turning point is the sequence at the end of the first half that saw the Steelers turnover the ball on downs at the one-yard line. Not only did they come up empty, but they lost QB Kenny Pickett to an injury that required a minor surgery and the Cardinals took the ball 99 yards down the field to score before halftime.
Former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger posted his weekly YouTube show Footbahlin’ on Tuesday evening to recap the loss to the Cardinals. One thing he discussed was the play call on 4th and one that saw Mitch Trubisky line up in shotgun for a run play.
“I don’t mind doing RPOs or different things there. My issue was, you have a new quarterback coming in the game. Now, I know he’s been around. He’s a veteran. He is a backup. You shouldn’t have never skipped a beat, but you’re telling me his first snap of this game is fourth and one on the one…you’re right, get under center and run your most basic run.”
Roethlisberger also talks about what he would have done if he were the quarterback in that situation.
“Diontae Johnson is one-on-one on the outside, and when I was playing in that situation…we would’ve called the run play in the huddle, and we would’ve called x signal. And that’s just basically if we get this perfect look, we’re throwing the ball, which maybe could have happened there.”
If you look back at the play, Johnson does run a route on the outside, but Trubisky looked pretty dead-set on handing that ball off the whole way. You don’t see his eyes reading anything before handing it off. With nine guys stacked in the tackle box, it may have been an opportune time to utilize Johnson one-on-one. Of course, if the play ended up being a pass and that failed, there would have been endless outrage asking why they wouldn’t run it on 4th and short. That is the nature of hindsight with these things. The added factor of it being Trubisky’s first play stepping in complicated matters, which probably led to a call from the sideline to run the ball no matter what.
