The Pittsburgh Steelers planned to run the ball against the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 18 and run the ball they did. Pittsburgh ran the ball on its first nine first downs, but the run-heavy game plan didn’t equate to success in the Steelers’ 19-17 loss. Mike Tomlin himself said the decision might not have been the right one, and former Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch said it was an example of Tomlin and the Steelers going against what he preaches.
“You hear Coach Tomlin over the years, and he says, ‘We don’t live in our fears.’ But yet, you did in this particular case, because now you came out and run-heavy type of offense,” Batch said on The DVE Morning Show on Tuesday. “You’re like, “What the heck?’ And if we’re all predicting that it’s gonna be run on first down, guess what? The Bengals were doing the exact same thing. So trying to pick up three yards, three yards, and then all of a sudden be in third-and-short situation. That was something that really did baffle me throughout the course of the game.”
The Steelers ran for just 74 yards against the Bengals, and while the idea to run the ball and maintain possession, especially with the weather not looking great heading into the game made sense, when the Steelers weren’t able to execute, they should’ve moved off the game plan. But they failed to adapt, and the offense continually was off-schedule and failed to do much of anything all night.
The Steelers had struggled with their defensive communication and in pass coverage, so they wanted to keep the ball away from Joe Burrow. The Steelers had a lot of success early in the season when they were able to win the possession battle, and that was the thought with their game plan against the Bengals. But when they kept running the ball despite their lack of success, it was, as Batch said, a clear-cut example of them living in their fears.
They were afraid of Burrow getting the ball and scoring, and for whatever reason, the Steelers thought that just hammering away on the ground was going to eventually work, and it never did. Had the Steelers looked to throw more earlier in the game, the results may have been different. But the Steelers lost their fourth straight game, and they’ll need to figure out a way to avoid their fifth straight postseason one and done against the Baltimore Ravens on Saturday.
