The Pittsburgh Steelers lost 24-10 at home against the Arizona Cardinals. Not much of anything went well for the Steelers. They opened the game with a great offensive drive, including a 38-yard pass to WR George Pickens. They were also running well and gaining chunks of yardage at will. The drive ended in a field goal for the Steelers, and it was mostly downhill from there. QB Kenny Pickett got hurt and the offense grinded to a halt until the game was already out of reach late in the fourth quarter.
LT Dan Moore Jr., while speaking to the media in the locker room after the loss, was asked if he could put his finger on why the offense can’t sustain success.
“That’s a good question,” Moore said in a video posted on the team’s YouTube page. “But at the end of the day, we gotta be more mentally tough. We lack execution right now as an offense, and mental toughness in certain situations. Not converting on third downs is one of those examples. We just, we gotta help our defense out and keep drives alive.”
Last week, it seemed that the offense figured things out as it possessed the ball, limited the defense’s exposure, and amassed 421 total yards. The talk all week was about building off that performance, but the loss to the Cardinals puts the unit back at square one. The Steelers had 317 yards of total offense and scored just one touchdown against a team that has allowed the fourth-most touchdowns this season. The Steelers ran 58 plays to the Cardinals’ 63.
They had three drives that went three-and-out. The Cardinals scored 10 points on the three drives following the three-and-outs. The defense was banged up with ILB Elandon Roberts getting injured and OLB T.J. Watt and S Minkah Fitzpatrick having injury issues throughout the game. Putting the defense in scenarios where it only has a minute of game time in between Steelers drives is not a winning recipe, especially with the injuries piling up.
The Steelers did not play complementary football. The offense wasn’t able to sustain drives or help put the Cardinals on a long field, and the defense couldn’t get off the field. The one time it did have a long field to defend, the Cardinals drove 99 yards on their way to their first touchdown of the game. Special teams had their own issues, too. Chris Boswell missed a field goal and Miles Killebrew got penalized for running into the punter, grabbing a facemask, and fair-catch interference.
To Moore’s point, the lack of execution and mental toughness must be solved if this team has hopes of making the playoffs. The path looked very doable with the Steelers’ strength of schedule, but this game proved that no opponent can be overlooked. While most of the players insisted the Steelers did not overlook the Cardinals and that their preparation all week felt good, Jaylen Warren admitted they took them “lighter than we should have.”
