The Wild Card round of the playoffs will be a delicate balancing act for the Pittsburgh Steelers on offense. Their four-game losing streak and over a month of poor offensive play suggests that changes need to happen, but you also don’t want to get too far outside of what you have practiced all season. OC Arthur Smith acknowledged this dynamic during his weekly press conference Wednesday.
“I thought in the middle part of this year, we were playing really good offense and obviously we’ve hit a rut or whatever you want to call it,” Smith said in a video posted by TribLive’s Chris Adamski on X. “Problem solving that, understanding things have been an issue. Understanding you need to change some things up. Don’t use the same logic that got you into that rut, and so that’s the fun part about it.”
What can actually be changed at this point? There are a lot of tendencies that the Steelers can break with a simple switch in philosophy. Their conservative approach hasn’t worked in recent weeks. The run game isn’t clicking, and the offense hasn’t been able to extend drives to control the pace of the game. Running for a yard or two on first down every time is putting the offense in a bad spot on second and third down.
Then the problem feeds into itself as three-and-outs knock the Steelers out of rhythm and prevent them from running a high volume of plays. Your game plan can’t be fully realized in a small number of snaps when drives are consistently just three or four plays long.
One personnel change they can make is to use of QB Justin Fields. He hasn’t been included much throughout the season since Russell Wilson was inserted back into the starting lineup. Mike Tomlin said the Steelers are “open” to using Fields more and Smith said they will be using everything at their disposal in this game, including Fields.
That change of pace should help, and it will also force the Ravens to dedicate some practice time to stopping Fields and watching extra film on those packages from earlier in the season.
When the offense was at its best earlier in the year, Russell Wilson was spreading the ball around to eight or nine players per game. The Steelers need to find ways to get Calvin Austin III more involved. He was enjoying solid production while George Pickens was out injured. There’s no reason that can’t continue with Pickens commanding more attention now that he is healthy.
Darnell Washington was starting to be a weapon in the short and intermediate passing game earlier in the season, too. That has all but disappeared. It would be great to get him a couple looks throughout this game.
In reality, the Steelers don’t need to change a ton, but they do need to get back to what made them successful earlier in the year. The conservative, ball-control approach isn’t getting the job done.
