The Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t play good football in their 34-17 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Saturday. On offense, they struggled to consistently move the ball and had two costly turnovers, and defensively they struggled with tackling for the second straight week. On special teams, they failed to recover two fumbles on punts that were there for the taking. After a game like that, it could be easy for a team to want to wipe it and move on, but Steelers DL Cameron Heyward is taking a different approach. When asked what his message to the team would be after the loss, Heyward told reporters that the Steelers have to learn from their mistakes and “own” the loss.
“More football to be played, but unless we own what we did, learn from what we did, it’s going to continue to happen. We’re going to play good teams week in and week out, and especially when we get to the playoffs, there’s not a sorry team there. It’s about guys being in their gaps, guys making tackles, guys knowing their jobs and assignments. As a team, we have to learn from this,” Heyward said in his press conference via the team’s YouTube channel.
After missing 20 tackles in Week 15 against the Philadelphia Eagles, the issue cropped up again against Baltimore. It’s not something the Steelers can ignore, and they have to look in the mirror, recognize they’re not at their best and work to get better. Heyward’s message is simple. They can’t just assume things are going to get better if they don’t look at their mistakes and work to fix things.
The problem is that there isn’t much time before Wednesday’s tilt with the Kansas City Chiefs, but the Steelers are going to have to put in work on the short week to ensure the same issues don’t crop up against Kansas City. Mike Tomlin said the Steelers need to get “back to the lab” to fix their tackling issues, and it’s going to take every guy on defense to make sure that Pittsburgh is more sound next week. As Heyward said, the Steelers don’t have an easy road the rest of the way with the Cincinnati Bengals up in Week 18 after the Chiefs, and the playoffs right after.
Costly mistakes like missed tackles, turnovers and not taking advantage of mistakes by their opponent aren’t going to fly come January, and those issues could continue to cost Pittsburgh games if they aren’t fixed. Learning from the Ravens loss and the Eagles loss will be paramount for the Steelers to continue to be a winning team, and we’ll find out on Wednesday just how much they’ve learned and fixed from their last two outings.
