The Pittsburgh Steelers dropped to 7-6 over a five-day span that saw them lose to the 2-10 Arizona Cardinals and the 2-10 New England Patriots. There have been a lot of deflating moments for this team over the last few years, but the Steelers might have reached a new low. Yeah, QB Kenny Pickett was hurt, and the defense has been dealing with multiple key injuries, including one to OLB Alex Highsmith in the Patriots game, but it is December football in the NFL. Those excuses only last for so long.
Dan Hanzus and Marc Sessler broke down the Thursday Night Football loss to the Patriots on Around The NFL podcast and what it means for the Steelers’ season.
“We have been talking about how the Steelers aren’t really passing any of the smell tests throughout the season, and yet they kept winning.,” Hanzus said in the episode posted on the show’s YouTube page. “Well, now they’ve kind of been exposed and with the schedule now tightening up. Even though an NFL season isn’t very long, even with the added game, just 17 games each, it does have a way of filtering out the pretenders and the contenders by the end of December into January, and I think that’s what’s happened to the Steelers here.”
The Steelers have won too many games by the skin of their teeth and haven’t put up a statement game where they won comfortably all season. Good teams will have at least a couple games throughout a season where they prove their mettle, and Pittsburgh has not had that. It finally all came crashing back to reality over the last week in an eye-opening way. The issues are too big to ignore now. It’s not as if there have been zero changes. This game featured a different starting QB in Mitch Trubisky, and the unprecedented move to fire offensive coordinator Matt Canada in-season was made just a couple weeks ago.
At some point, the blame cannot continue to be passed around or pinned on just one person or one thing. It is a total team failure, and it left defensive captain Cameron Heyward openly wondering after the Patriots game if personnel changes would be needed to fix the team.
“I’m never totally on board with just putting everything on an offensive play caller,” Hanzus continued. “There’s usually a lot more going on, like bad quarterback play and bad blocking and an inability for the wide receivers to make a play or show that they even care or want to be in the building.”
The Steelers’ quarterback play was nowhere near good enough last night, and it hasn’t been for much of the season. The difference with Thursday night’s bad quarterback play is that the football was turned over. The Steelers have been able to find wins throughout the season when they protect the football and force turnovers on defense. Trubisky was only intercepted once last night, but at least two more of his passes could have been picked. The one interception he did throw led to the Patriots’ second touchdown and made it a 14-3 game. That put stress on the game plan, being down early, and made it so the Steelers could not rely on the one thing that has been working for them recently—the running game. It put the ball in Trubisky’s hands too much and limited the ball needing to be in Bailey Zappe’s hands as much.
Frustration will continue to mount within the Steelers’ locker room, and rightfully so.
