I don’t think anybody could put forth a coherent argument detailing the Pittsburgh Steelers’ ails that doesn’t focus heavily on the offensive side of the ball. Putting up points has clearly been their weakest link for the past two years. Yet it would also be foolish to let the defense off the hook.
And DL Cameron Heyward isn’t about to do that. Commenting on the I Am Athlete podcast recently talking about the state of the team, he spent some time taking his own unit to task and acknowledging their culpability.
“I think the one thing that’s going unchecked in all this is defense, and that comes to my side of the ball”, he said. “If we just make them settle for field goals instead of touchdowns, that changes the outcome of that game. There have been great defensive teams around here, and we can’t run from that”.
Let’s not forget the fact that the defense allowed the New England Patriots to score 21 points in the first half last Thursday. Indeed, it only took them halfway through the second quarter to put up that amount of points. Yes, by that time, the offense had only scored three, but the defense needs to keep these games competitive. They knew that going into the season.
“Offense is going to have their hiccups sometimes, and they’re growing. They’re young”, Heyward acknowledged. “But I just look for a trending upwards, a way of everybody complementing each other, and we’re putting up points when we need to and making sure we make them settle for field goals”.
They haven’t been holding their opponents to field goals lately, however. At least not the last two weeks. Each of their past two opponents has found the end zone three times. Against the Cardinals, which they only put up 10 points, perhaps that wouldn’t have made a difference, but 17-10 at halftime against the Patriots certainly could have changed the complexion of that game. 13-10 would have looked a whole lot better
And that’s what they had been doing. The last time they allowed three touchdowns to a team was back in Week Four against the Houston Texans and, before that, in the opener against the San Francisco 49ers. In their first six games after the bye, they only allowed multiple touchdowns (and never more than two) in just two games, and they won both of them.
As we’ve talked about previously, leading into last week, the Steelers actually had the best scoring defense in the league since their bye. But they’ve given up 45 points over the past two weeks, 22.5 per game, after only allowing 15 points per game on average prior to that.
This is as much of an issue as the lack of offensive production, or at least it’s quickly becoming one. If you’re allowing opponents to put up 20-plus points, you need to know that you can’t count on your offense to win that game, especially if it requires them to come back from a multi-score deficit.
