Well, wouldn’t you know it? It turns out scoring 16 points as an offense still isn’t all that satisfying even if it ends up with a win. Indeed, it might be even more of a disappointment when you put up over 400 yards of offense, reach the red zone four times, and only turn the ball over once.
In fact, what the Steelers did on Sunday—winning a game in which they put up over 400 yards of offense but scoring 16 or fewer points—is somewhat rare, but more on that in a bit. The simple fact of the matter is that Sunday’s output fell well short of one of the chief objectives they set out for themselves.
“Unfortunately, we still didn’t hit all our goals. Three touchdowns, that was one of our goals”, T Broderick Jones told reporters yesterday, via the team’s website. “We didn’t hit that, so we’re still working toward some of the goals that we look forward to. Just us being able to come together and continue to play together and be on the same page, I feel like we’ll be able to reach our goal”.
That’s not the first time a player alluded to that as a very specific intention. When WR Diontae Johnson mentioned it while talking about there being more energy earlier in the week, I didn’t think much of it, but clearly there was more to it than that. “Obviously, we didn’t score three touchdowns. That was our main goal, scoring three touchdowns, but you’ve just got to keep working”, he said, via the team’s website. “It’s gonna come”.
The thing is, the Steelers haven’t scored three touchdowns on offense in a game much at all. They’ve only done so once this year against the Los Angeles Rams, with RBs Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren and QB Kenny Pickett all scoring on the ground.
In fact, in 7 out of 11 games this season, Pittsburgh has produced only one touchdown or fewer in a game on offense, including in each of the past two games. The only touchdown on Sunday was a five-yard run by Harris late in the third quarter. The week before, it was a 74-yard breakaway run by Warren. Both of them scored a week before that against the Green Bay Packers.
Of course, the easiest way to fix this issue of not scoring enough touchdowns is to become more efficient, more detailed in the planning and execution in the red zone. Explosive plays are always welcome, but everybody scores most of their touchdowns from inside the 20.
The Steelers were only one for four in the red zone against the Bengals last Sunday, including one fumble that resulted in no points at all. Their final competitive possession that ended in a field goal inside the 20 requires a bit of a caveat, since they were playing less aggressively at that point trying to preserve the opportunity to go up by two possessions.
Still, it would be much welcomed if they could manage to find ways to get into the end zone with greater regularity. Even last season they only managed to score three offensive touchdowns in a game three times, and four the year before. For comparison, they did it 11 times in 2020, a year in which they ranked 12th in scoring offense.
