It is just preseason football, and the results don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but the first preseason game is the culmination of weeks of hard work in training camp. The final score was 20-12 in favor of the Houston Texans, but that didn’t fully capture how one-sided things looked for the first half of the game when the starters were playing. The product that the Pittsburgh Steelers put on the field tonight was not great. Particularly the starting units, and the downfall was largely marked by sloppy play.
“Really sloppy performance, to be honest with you,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said while addressing the media after the game in a video posted on the team YouTube page. “It’s capable of happening obviously in the first preseason game but not that we find comfort in that. We work too hard to have the results we had tonight, so it’s disappointing.”
Each of the first two offensive drives features a botched snap from Nate Herbig to Justin Fields. On the first drive, two of the first three plays went for over 15 yards a piece. Then on first down, an aborted snap cost the Steelers five yards and put them behind the chains. They ended up punting as a result.
On the first play of the second drive, there was another botched snap that was nearly recovered by the Houston Texans. Then In the second quarter, Quez Watkins muffed a punt and gave the Texans the ball at the Pittsburgh 30-yard line. That led to their second score of the game.
The defense had its share of negative plays as well. The first touchdown of the game came on a 3rd and 8 from the 34-yard line. Joey Porter Jr. was called for a big pass interference penalty that gave up field position. There were also several missed tackles, including at least a couple by rookie ILB Payton Wilson.
Last year’s preseason was the exact opposite with crisp performances by the starting units on both sides of the ball. I think we all learned not to get too high from the preseason performances and should probably keep that in mind for this sloppy game.
“How we work off it obviously will define us, and we’ll have a good rep at responding to negativity as we push into our next opportunity,” Tomlin said. “We need to be significantly better.”
The starting point wasn’t great, but there are plenty of things to learn from and areas to focus on for improvement. Step one is fixing the snap exchange between the centers and the quarterbacks. Those are the routine things that the Steelers must be able to do routinely.
View today’s winners and losers put together by Alex Kozora for a closer look at individual performances.
