Last week was your vacation. We’re back with our regularly scheduled “weird stats that also make us sad” edition.
– I’ll start off with a tease. A stat of the weird so good, so painful, I’m writing a separate article on it. I’ll link it here.
– Let’s look at the score. Pretty basic enough, 24-10 in the Arizona Cardinals’ favor. But the 10 points the Steelers scored stinks worse than usual. Coming into this game, the Cardinals had allowed 20-plus points in 11 of 12 games, the only exception being giving up 16. Meaning Pittsburgh scored a season low against Arizona’s defense.
In fact, the last time the Cardinals allowed 10 or fewer points in a game was Week Seven of 2021, a span of 40 games. So of course the Steelers had to be the team to break the streak.
– From 2017-22, the Steelers never scored 10 or fewer points against an NFC team. It’s happened twice this season. Their seven points in Week One against San Francisco and the 10 they put up Sunday against Arizona.
– QB Kenny Pickett has left the game due to injury three times this season. The Steelers have lost all three of those games (Texans, Jaguars, Cardinals). They represent 60 percent of the team’s losses.
– As Dave Bryan noted, and in hindsight foreshadowed during the week, this was the Cardinals’ first win in Pittsburgh since 1969, Chuck Noll’s first year coaching the team.
– This is only the Cardinals’ second win against the Steelers, regardless of location, since 1995. Their last came in 2007, a 21-14 win.
– A very specific stat but a weird one all the same. The Steelers lost this game by 14 points and yet they were not sacked once in this game. The last time Pittsburgh lost by that much and was not sacked? You have to go all the way back to 1994 when they fell 30-13 to Seattle.
– Sticking with that theme, the Steelers ran the ball 31 times and still lost by 14. They haven’t lost by that margin while running 30-plus times since a 31-10 loss to the Cleveland Browns back in 2014. It’s only the third such instance under Mike Tomlin, the other a 2007 loss to the New England Patriots.
– Cardinals TE Trey McBride caught eight passes yesterday. No other Cardinal caught more than two. McBride also had 89 yards receiving. Only one other Cardinal had more than 20 yards receiving, TE Elijah Higgins, who had just 21.
To put it another way, McBride was responsible for 61.5 percent of Arizona’s completions and 61.4 percent of their passing yardage.
– Arizona finished the game 10-of-17 on third down. That’s the best mark of a team with at least 10 conversions against Pittsburgh since the Philadelphia Eagles went 10-of-14 in a 2020 loss to Pittsburgh.
– Worse yet, Arizona started the game 0-of-4 on third down. Meaning, they finished the rest of the game 10-of-13. That’s 76.9 percent. Exclude their end of game kneel down and they really went 10-of-12, 83.3 percent.
– Pittsburgh finished 1-of-3 in the red zone Sunday. Over their last three games, the Steelers are just 1-of-8 inside the 20. That’s 12.5 percent. Yikes.
– The Steelers were flagged for nine penalties against the Cardinals, their most in a loss since last year’s blowout defeat to the Philadelphia Eagles.
– Finally, in the last six games that the Steelers have been favored by 5.5 points or more, as they were against the Cardinals, Pittsburgh is 1-4-1. Not against the spread but in true win-loss outcome. They’ve lost to the Cardinals, Raiders, Bengals, and Washington Football Team over that span. They also tied the Detroit Lions, and their lone win came over the Chicago Bears, who covered the spread in a 29-27 outcome.
The Steelers are currently 6.5-point favorites against the New England Patriots for Thursday night. Sleep with one eye open.
