The mantra of the week for the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense was that the dam was about to break with just some minor issues to fix to overcome the sluggish start in the first two games. Arthur Smith told that to his player, and they listened. Several players repeated that phrase in different ways leading up to the Week 3 game against the Los Angeles Chargers.
It wasn’t a full bursting of the dam in Week 3, but the cracks were definitely starting to form, especially in the second half.
Pat Freiermuth talked about the offense gaining momentum after the Steelers’ 20-10 win at Acrisure Stadium.
“I think we could have put three more points if I didn’t drop that ball, and then the illegal formation and stuff like that,” Freiermuth said in a video posted by Yardbarker’s Aaron Becker on X. “When we harp on those in practice and get them off the film, we’re gonna be hard to stop. And I think you guys saw that today. We gotta keep rolling, execute, and I think we’re really close.”
After being one of the NFL’s most penalized teams over the first two weeks, the Steelers’ offense only committed two penalties against the Chargers. Both of them were illegal-formation penalties. They had more penalties from Broderick Jones on one drive last week than they did in this entire game on offense. One of them wiped out an 18-yard completion to Freiermuth, which created a 23-yard swing including the five penalty yards.
There is still room to improve, but the cleaner play led to better results. Even with the first turnover of the season from Justin Fields, the Steelers put up their best offensive performance of the year against the No. 1 defense in the league entering the week.
In the first half, the Steelers managed just 113 yards and a touchdown. They wore the Chargers’ defense down and had 272 yards of total offense in the second half. And that was with one drive being cut short after just one play by the interception. In other words, the Steelers’ offense had more yards in just the second half against the Chargers than they did in either of their first two games in total.
They are definitely starting to show that they’ll be difficult to stop. Look no further than the time of possession over the first three games.
They have a positive time of possession differential of 23:32. That is nearly an entire extra half of game time that they have possessed the ball over the first three games. When you consider that the offense was somewhat unimpressive over the first two weeks, that is a very positive sign for the Steelers if they are close to overcoming their minor issues, as Freiermuth suggests.
