Momentum had been slow to gather in the early portions of yesterday’s game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals. After Pittsburgh’s opening drive stalled in the end zone, the two teams exchanged largely unsuccessful drives, combined going 0-for-6 on third down.
The Steelers had a chance to start opening the game up 10 minutes into the second quarter, however, after reaching the red zone again. Even after QB Kenny Pickett failed to find the end zone on 3rd and goal, injuring himself in the process, they were still knocking on the door.
Should they have taken field goal? Should they have gone for it? As it was, head coach Mike Tomlin elected to leave the offense out there with QB Mitch Trubisky lined up in the shotgun from the 1-yard line. Some have criticized the decision to pass up the three points. Analyst and former Steeler Chris Hoke has a bigger issue with the play call, and particularly the execution.
“You talk about that 4th and 1, I have no problem with it. I have a problem with the play call and actually the push from the offensive line”, he said on the KDKA Extra Point postgame show yesterday. “They line up in shotgun with Najee Harris in the sidecar. Then you look at James Daniels and Broderick Jones and they didn’t even get a push. They get knocked back and Mason Cole gets beat.”
“It’s just a disaster right there”, he added. “They’ve got to come off, pin their ears back, line up under the [center] and do something more physical than a shotgun, coming off lollygagging. You can’t do that when it’s 4th and goal at the 1”.
Certainly, that’s no big revelation. Any decent offense should essentially be able to get a yard at will in any game situation. Head coach Mike Tomlin more or less said as much in his postgame comments while defending the decision to pass up the field goal. “We’ve got to be able to get a yard”, he told reporters.
Nobody really got any push coming off the ball. The only player who really moved at all was LT Dan Moore Jr. and that’s because his blocking assignment was slightly upfield, but once he was there, he wasn’t moving anybody.
He and Nate Herbig, who had come in to replace injured LG Isaac Seumalo, got the only perceptible push. Everybody else was stalemated or worse. Perhaps largely because nobody was surprised by a run call in spite of the fact that they ran out of 11 personnel with their quarterback in shotgun.
Pickett had just been injured one play before that. Nobody really anticipated that the Steelers would actually put the ball in the air on 4th and goal under those circumstances. Maybe with some heavier bodies they could have gotten more push, but as it was, that run wasn’t going anywhere.
For a team that had been riding the hottest run game in the league, the failure to punch it in from one yard out should be an embarrassment. The Steelers still managed to rush for a respectable 130 yards, but if it’s not going to produce points, what difference does it make, really?
