Week 2 might have been even uglier offensively for the Pittsburgh Steelers, but they still managed to defeat the Denver Broncos. They actually looked like they had something going in the first half, but the second half was much uglier. Penalties were really the biggest issue of the day, with the Steelers continuing to shoot themselves in the foot. Once the Steelers get past that, Justin Fields believes they’ll be off to the races.
Speaking to Aditi Kinkhabwala of CBS Sports after the game, Fields was asked how if he felt like he took a step forward in the game against the Broncos.
“I think I did, but like I said, you can make those great plays, and they get taken away by those penalties,” Fields said. “So, we need to get rid of those penalties and then we’ll really be cooking.”
That has unfortunately been the story for the Steelers’ offense. In Week 1, it was less prevalent, but still ripped good plays away from them. One of Fields’ best throws to George Pickens in Week 1 was called back on a questionable offensive pass-interference call. This week, it was more of the same. Fields’ best throw of the day was called back as a result of a holding call.
The Steelers have several new pieces on offense, but that doesn’t excuse how sloppy they were in Denver. At times, it felt like the referees were getting more screen time than the players. Broderick Jones had a particularly awful series where he was penalized three times, resulting in him getting benched. As Mike Tomlin would probably say, it was a junior-varsity effort.
In the same interview, Fields went into greater detail on the Steelers’ offense.
“I think we did enough to win,” he said. “I don’t think we played good enough, as an offensive at least. Of course, our defense played great, came up with some big stops, but still got some work to do on the offensive side of the ball in terms of not shooting ourselves in the foot, self-inflicted wounds with penalties.”
The Steelers’ greatest enemy was themselves. The Broncos defense played well, but most of the ugliness came from the Steelers not executing correctly. It’s something that Tomlin and the coaching staff will definitely address this week, and hopefully it’s cleaned up going forward.
Once that gets cleaned up, Fields could be correct that the Steelers will really begin to cook. The big plays to Pickens in particular would be a massive boost to this offense. Pickens even had a touchdown wiped out due to a penalty in this game. It should’ve been a much better week for the offense, especially because it started so promising.
