The Pittsburgh Steelers under head coach Mike Tomlin love knockdown, drag-out fights. That’s exactly what Sunday night’s game against the Dallas Cowboys was. And the Steelers typically win those games. They forced three turnovers, allowed only one red-zone touchdown, and won the penalty battle.
But it was the Cowboys who won the game, 20-17, on a last-minute touchdown from QB Dak Prescott to WR Jalen Tolbert. It was the quintessential Steelers game, and they couldn’t pull it out at the end.
“Another thing that’s very alarming is they lost, the Steelers did, on how they like to win games,” former Steelers front office executive Doug Whaley said on The Black & Gold Zone on WPXI after the loss. “They won the turnover margin; Dallas turned it over three times. Dallas had 11 penalties for [87] yards. They were one-of-four in the red zone. So this is the way [the Steelers] have to play and they still get beat? This is going to be a long season, it’s going to be a tough way to make some victories if you are getting beat the way you are constructed to win games.”
So how the heck did the Steelers lose a one-score game in which they won the turnover battle, 3-1? Both sides of the ball had their issues. The offense was ineffective for large stretches of the game. And the defense couldn’t get off the field in some key situations.
First, the offense. The Steelers managed only 226 yards of total offense against the Cowboys. And Dallas was without star pass rushers Micah Parsons and DeMarcus Lawrence for the game. Then they lost another pass rusher early in the game, but they still sacked Steelers QB Justin Fields three times.
Fields finished the game 15-of-27 passing for only 131 yards but he did throw for two touchdowns. He also carried the ball six times for 27 yards for 158 total yards of offense. The Steelers as a whole had 226 yards.
And that was against a defense that was 26th in the league in rushing yards allowed going into the week. RB Najee Harris continued his slow start to the season with only 42 yards on 14 carries. And the Cowboys’ pass defense wasn’t scary statistically either as they allowed the 19th-most passing yards in the league through four weeks.
ESPN’s Mina Kimes thought this was a prime opportunity for the rushing offense to break out. Yet the Steelers’ offense was largely impotent. In a game where the Steelers were never out of it until the final seconds, the offense couldn’t get the running game going consistently.
And the defense, despite snagging three turnovers, gave up 445 yards and allowed the Cowboys to go 9-of-15 on third downs and 1-of-1 on fourth down. That fourth-down conversion was the Prescott-to-Tolbert game-winning touchdown.
This was the perfect scenario for a Steelers win, and they couldn’t do it. This was a team that two weeks ago was riding high atop the AFC North with a perfect 3-0 record. Two subpar performances in a row have the Steelers 3-2. Now they’re looking up at the Baltimore Ravens in the standings.
As Whaley said, if the Steelers are struggling to win games the way Tomlin wants them to, they’re going to struggle going forward. The offense has to perform better overall, and the defense has got to get off the field when it has the opportunity.
