The Pittsburgh Steelers have averaged 32 points and 433 yards from scrimmage over the course of the past two games. They had not hit either of those marks in any one game all season, let alone averaged them for any sort of stretch.
On top of that, it marked the second and third instances of the season in which they netted both 250-plus passing yards and 100-plus rushing yards. The only other time they managed both in the same game was their first game against the Cincinnati Bengals, in which they managed only 16 points.
On top of that, they managed to go an entire game without a three-and-out drive and produced points on more than half of their possessions. They averaged 3.05 points per possession during that span, and that includes non-competitive drives. There was little that they couldn’t do.
“That’s what we wanted to do all season, when we’re able to fire on one cylinder and the defense is expecting us to do something, we’re able to counter that and do something else”, TE Pat Freiermuth so eloquently phrased, via the team’s website. “That’s what we were expecting to do the whole season, but I’m glad it’s starting to come together when we need it most”.
What he’s trying to say is that the Steelers in the past two games have reached a level of execution that has allowed them to respond to whatever defenses tried to stop. If they sold out for the run, they could win via the pass. If they tried to shut down the passing game, they could run the ball.
Rarely has Pittsburgh even approximated that level of versatility. The running game has had its bright spots here and there throughout the year, and even the passing game has had a moment or two, but to have both aspects working at this level, well, there’s a reason guys like Freiermuth sound relieved.
Notice he said that it’s starting to come together, meaning that this is something new. Every week we heard offensive players talk about how they were close but that execution was holding them back. They talked about knowing how good they could be if they could just clean things up.
This is what they were talking about. These past two games, this is the offense that they had been referring to all these months. They kept working at it and working at it, and at least for the past two games, they’ve finally arrived.
The change at quarterback with Mason Rudolph is obviously a factor. But so is the dominant performance of the running game, particularly last week. So is the continued progression of the offensive line, which has only allowed two sacks the past two games, Broderick Jones an imposing force in the run game, and fairly soft, avoidable ones at that.
The question is, what are these two games? Can they play anything close to that way against the Baltimore Ravens? Against any team they might face in the playoffs? A lot of their prior issues were unforced errors, and they’ve cleaned a lot of those up, truth be told. But it’s hard to feel confident about 30-point, 400-yard efforts being anything more than a fluke until we see a more extended pattern.
