Arthur Smith was receiving a whole lot of praise just a few weeks ago when the Pittsburgh Steelers were 10-3 and firmly in control of the AFC North. In Week 13 against the Cincinnati Bengals, they scored 44 points and proved they could hang with elite offenses in a shootout. Over their current three-game losing streak, they have scored just 40 total points. Smith deserves some of the blame for that.
“When you look at the production overall, Arthur Smith had to be better, right?” former Steelers offensive lineman Willie Colon said Thursday via FS1’s Breakfast Ball. “When they bracket George Pickens, they play that track coverage, you can’t find him. If Jaylen Warren isn’t having explosive plays, the run game is non-existent.”
For the first time during this losing streak, the Steelers don’t have the excuse of missing Pickens on offense. He spent three games out of the lineup with a hamstring injury and the offense suffered as a result. There was hope that the Steelers could return to their previous form of explosive offensive production with Pickens, but that didn’t end up being the case in a bad Christmas Day loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
The Steelers had one explosive pass play of 41 yards to Pickens, but he was otherwise a non-factor. He finished with three receptions for 50 yards. The passing game managed just 162 net yards after the 43 lost yards in sacks. That is lower than in the loss to the Baltimore Ravens, though a bit better than in the loss to the Philadelphia Eagles and the win against the Cleveland Browns.
The fact that it’s anywhere in the same conversation as those three games without Pickens in the lineup is a problem. How did the Steelers only find four receptions for 31 yards for Calvin Austin III, for example? He was a player on the rise without Pickens in the lineup. It would be great to see his production take another step forward with Pickens commanding more attention from opposing defenses.
Until the loss to the Chiefs, the Steelers’ run game hadn’t gained over 130 yards since Week 10. They did that six times over the first 10 games but have generally struggled to get anything going on the ground lately. The success against the Chiefs was buoyed by 55 rushing yards for Wilson on scrambles and 45 yards by running backs in garbage time on the Steelers’ final drive of the game.
Smith seemed to be doing a good job getting the most out of Wilson and the young offensive line in the middle portion of the season. Now the offensive line is allowing sacks at an unsustainable pace, Wilson is turning the ball over at a higher clip, and the running backs can’t get much going outside of the occasional explosive play.
After 17 weeks, the Steelers are 13th in points per game, 18th in total offense, and 25th in passing offense.
There is plenty of blame to go around, but Smith is the architect behind it all. If his concepts aren’t working, then the Steelers need to make adjustments as all good teams do. Mike Tomlin spoke of making changes during this long week before their regular-season finale. Perhaps some of those will be small tweaks to the offense’s schematics. Right now, it seems like opposing defenses have solved Smith and the Steelers.
