The Pittsburgh Steelers dropped their first game of the season against the Indianapolis Colts on the road. After a sluggish start riddled with errors, they made a great effort to get back into the game. They ultimately got the ball back with well over 2 minutes remaining to attempt to either send the game to overtime or win outright, but the early-game slop popped back up with a crucial mistake.
The botched snap issues that have been plaguing the team all season (and preseason) finally came back to bite them. They didn’t turn the ball over, but they took a 12-yard loss with the clock running to essentially put the game out of reach.
Mike Tomlin was asked about Justin Fields after the game and summed it up rather succinctly.
“I appreciate his fight, but he and we were a little bit sloppy at times,” Tomlin said in a video posted on the Steelers’ YouTube page. “Too sloppy to comfortably secure victory.”
You can point to any number of mistakes in this game, some of them were specific to Fields and others were more of a larger issue in all three phases.
Focusing on Fields, he deserves credit for the way he fought to get back into the game. He led three-straight touchdown drives starting near the end of the third quarter and gave the team a legitimate chance to secure victory. But the first two-plus quarters? It was not his best work.
Some of the issues that have plagued Fields throughout his career popped back up. He was holding onto the ball too long, and took far too many sacks. After taking two sacks per game over the first three contests, Fields took four in this game. The offensive line shares some blame, but he needs to be smarter about throwing the ball away and knowing when to give up on plays.
His fumble serves as a great example of what I am talking about. He tried to use his legs to escape pressure long enough to make a heroic play, but instead he tripped, tried to get back up, and fumbled the football.
The botched snap at the end was a back breaker, too. He was set, but looked away and the ball bounced off his helmet. Blame Fields, blame Zach Frazier, or blame the guard who was operating the silent count. It has now happened too many times to be pure happenstance. Fields took full blame in his postgame press conference.
The sloppiness extended beyond Fields, too. The defense missed too many tackles and blew too many assignments. Interceptions were dropped, fumbles weren’t picked up, and penalties were an issue once again.
Where does that leave the quarterback competition? Russell Wilson is reportedly very close to being fully healthy. While Fields had one of his best statistical performances, the box score didn’t paint the full picture. All eyes now shift to Tomlin’s Tuesday press conference to see if Fields did enough to secure the starting job through four games.
