The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 27-24 loss to the Indianapolis Colts almost felt like two different games. One was played from the opening kickoff until midway through the third quarter, and the other was played over the final 20 minutes of the game. The Steelers’ offense in particular, led by QB Justin Fields, was hapless until it suddenly exploded for three touchdowns on three consecutive drives.
Fields summed it up in his press conference after the game, stating that there was nothing complicated about their slow start.
“Poor execution, poor focus,” Fields said in a video posted on the Steelers’ YouTube page. “That’s it, it’s that simple. It’s not a complicated question. We just gotta be more focused and come out hot. We gotta come up, block the right guys. I gotta make the right reads, I gotta get the ball out when I need to get the ball out. So it’s not a deep question. It’s actually very simple.”
The Steelers had the ability to execute within them offensively. We all saw that over the final 20 minutes of the game. The Steelers were moving the ball up and down the field, and Fields was excellent during that time. But it was too little, too late after nearly closing the gap on a 17-point deficit.
It is hard to say for sure after the initial watch on television, but the offensive linemen appeared to be having issues with their assignments early in the game. Fields listed “block the right guys” among his list of execution errors. This isn’t a big surprise given that the Steelers had Mason McCormick making his first career start, Spencer Anderson playing with just three career starts, and Ryan McCollum taking some snaps as well. James Daniels has been a stabilizing veteran presence in the interior of the offensive line, and he exited the game pretty early with an ankle injury.
The running game wasn’t able to get going until Cordarrelle Patterson provided a spark before promptly exiting the game with an ankle injury. The passing game was out of rhythm to start, and they weren’t able to correct that with limited opportunities due to a pair of three-and-outs over their first three drives.
Fields and the offense ended up with a nice performance if you glance at the box score. They had over 400 yards of total offense and their highest scoring output of the season, but the early errors gave the Colts an opportunity to grab a 17-0 lead. That is going to result in a loss more often than not.
The slow start wasn’t isolated to the offense. The defense allowed two touchdowns on the first Colts’ two drives, including one finished off by Joe Flacco. DeShon Elliott pointed to a poor week of practice and not enough attention to detail as a reason why.
