Following each game in the 2023 Pittsburgh Steelers season, I will highlight the event or string of events in the game that was the turning point. Not all turning points will be earth-shattering but are meant to give a unique look at how we arrived at the outcome of the game, one that may be hard to see during the live watch.
The Pittsburgh Steelers got blown out in back-to-back weeks. Losing to the Philadelphia Eagles was relatively inconsequential, but losing to the Baltimore Ravens has the potential to change their path through the playoffs.
Last week, the score didn’t fully reflect how bad that game was for the Steelers. This week, the 34-17 final score probably looked worse than it actually was. There were multiple turning points throughout the game, but Russell Wilson’s fumble in the second quarter felt like the biggest missed opportunity.
It was one of those plays that went from Go! Go! Go! to No! No! No! in a hurry. There’s nothing quite like watching an explosive play turn into a fumble right near the goal line. The Steelers had a great chance of taking a 14-7 lead early in the second quarter, but instead they allowed a 96-yard touchdown drive to go down 14-7. They managed to even the score up later in the game, but they never had the chance to protect a lead, and the game could have looked very different if they were afforded that opportunity.
The Ravens shanked a punt to give the Steelers the ball near midfield to start that drive and they put together a nice drive on offense with 52 in five plays before Wilson fumbled. He turned back the clock by a decade and called upon a younger version of himself to take off for 19 yards before Ar’Darius Washington came out of nowhere to force the fumble.
Could Wilson have cut further outside instead of bending it back inside? It looked like he had additional real estate to work with out there. Or if he was uncertain, then sliding and taking the first and goal from inside the five-yard line would have worked just as well. The Steelers haven’t been the best in the red zone this year, so I understand him attempting to punch it in on the scramble, but this ended up being a crushing play for the Steelers.
Wilson took responsibility.
“I just thought I had a chance to go to the end zone and tried to cut it back and just got hit,” Wilson said. It’s unacceptable, it can’t happen.”
He also said he’s not going to fear going for it in the future, but admitted he would be watching the tape back to see if he could have gone further to the right or cut it back inside sooner. It was a miscalculation, and one that cost the Steelers dearly.
