The Pittsburgh Steelers won their preseason finale this year, but it wasn’t a great day from them overall. Against the Carolina Panthers, they played sloppy football. That includes being called for 13 penalties. They played some of their starters, too, and those players were part of the problem. While it was only the preseason, Ben Roethlisberger still isn’t happy seeing that from the Steelers.
“You can’t take it lightly because what it does is it bleeds into the regular season,” Roethlisberger said Tuesday on his Footbahlin’ podcast. “I’m not trying to say anything about Coach [Tomlin] and him being okay with stuff, but sometimes there needs to be accountability… You can’t be okay with some of the dumb penalties.
“You can’t be okay with the extracurricular stuff. It is preseason, so you’re gonna get a lot of penalties from guys that maybe don’t play anyway. You’re gonna hurt the team… And you’re gonna be like, ‘We’re gonna address this tomorrow.’ No, you can’t address it tomorrow because tomorrow doesn’t help with right now. I hope Coach gets on guys and starts to say, ‘This is unacceptable. We can’t do this anymore.'”
Roethlisberger isn’t wrong. Last year, they started the season with a lack of discipline. The second-most penalized team in the league last season after week 2 was the Steelers. They still managed to start out 2-0, but neither of those games was easy.
Also, Tomlin is probably just as frustrated as Roethlisberger. When the preseason began, one of the biggest things he wanted to see out of his team was discipline. He stressed that he didn’t want to see them commit any unnecessary penalties. They did a decent job to start the preseason, but they ended on a down note.
After the Panthers game, Tomlin made it clear that he was unhappy with the Steelers’ sloppy play. It’s likely that he brought that up with the team, like Roethlisberger wants him to do.
We’ll see if the Steelers play a cleaner brand of football in Week 1. That might be easier said than done, though. The Steelers added a lot of new pieces this offseason. Some of them, like Aaron Rodgers, didn’t suit up for the preseason. Therefore, the Steelers haven’t had all their starters play yet, which could lead to some growing pains to begin the year.
Hopefully, Tomlin has already ironed out those issues with the team. The New York Jets aren’t the best team in the league, but they’ll be hungry to start the year with a win against the Steelers. Add in other factors, like Rodgers and Justin Fields facing their former teams, and that game may have an added element of tension. The Steelers need to focus on doing routine things routinely, though.
