Bettis and others say Steelers can still pull out of their funk, but it won’t be easy
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Just a few weeks ago, Steelers fans were wondering if their undefeated team would lose a game this season.
Now, the question is, will the Steelers win another game this season?
After three straight losses following its 11-0 start, this team is looking like it has forgotten how to play football, particularly on offense.
Each of the losses this month has been worse than the previous one, with Monday’s 27-17 upset by the Bengals in Cincinnati being the low point.
“I think they’ve got themselves in a funk, and they’re going to have to work hard to get out of it,” said former Steelers offensive lineman Craig Wolfley, now a commentator on Steelers radio broadcasts.
Few could remember the Steelers looking as inept as they did in the first half, when they went scoreless and didn’t get a first down until their sixth possession. They converted just four of 16 third-down chances and scored fewer than 20 points for the fourth straight game.
Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, leading a mostly short-yardage passing attack, completed just two of his first eight passes and looked more like a guy throwing darts in an English pub than the MVP candidate he was earlier in the year.
“Ben is trying to be perfect because guys are dropping balls, and you have to get a perfect ball in there. Everything’s not going to be perfect,” Hall of Fame running back Jerome Bettis told the Trib.
But how could a team that averaged nearly 30 points in its first 10 games suddenly look so feeble?
“The biggest problem is teams now have figured out how to defend the Steelers,” Bettis said. “Now, because Ben is getting the ball out so fast, they want to jam up the receivers and not let them get those short passes off. Now that forces him to have to hold on to the football and then you create pressure.”
The pressure has led Big Ben to make some bad decisions lately and throw costly interceptions. In Monday night’s game, the second-quarter pick by Mackensie Alexander led to a Bengals touchdown and a 17-point lead the Steelers couldn’t overcome.
“They have to go away from the plays that they ran earlier in the year because people have scouted them and figured out how to force Ben off that quick read,” Bettis said. “That’s how I see the season getting to the point that it has. But these are things the Steelers can work through.”
But how? In his day, Bettis was a locker room leader.
Who is leading the Steelers now?
“I think there is a leadership issue in that locker room,” said ESPN radio talk show host Stan Savran. “I wonder where the veteran leadership is. I believe you have to have a strong locker room in order to succeed, and I’m not so sure that exists.”
In the last five games, the offense has not scored a single point in the first quarter, a sign the Steelers are not showing up ready to play. Savran said while he blames the players first, he’s not letting coach Mike Tomlin off the hook.
“The (players) are professionals and they know what’s at stake, but, ultimately, he’s the head coach. The buck stops there,” Savran said. “It doesn’t excuse poor execution, but you do have to give him his share of the blame. He’s supposed to have the team ready to play.”
Wolfley says the pandemic is taking its toll on the team’s game preparation routine.
“When you go through this covid time, where they go covid intensive, you can’t really practice padded stuff. You can’t even be in the same meeting room together, my goodness,” Wolfley said. “I mean you’ve got Zoom calls and guys are trying to watch film and coaches are trying to emphasize points, and how do you know if a guy is getting it?”
But seemingly the biggest problem the Steelers are dealing with is their lack of a running game, which had all but disappeared before Benny Snell rushed for 84 yards on Monday night.
However, for the seventh time in the last eight games, the Steelers failed to rush for 100 yards as a team. Pittsburgh has not had a 100-yard rushing performance since James Conner pulled it off against the Browns in mid-October.
Obviously, the Steelers need to run the football more, Bettis said.
“For one, it gets pressure off of Ben. He doesn’t need to throw the ball 50 times,” Bettis said. “It also forces the defenders to play honest.”
Wolfley said if the Steelers start running the ball more, it will create more confusion for opposing defenders.
“If you’re a defensive lineman, 75% of the time you’re like, ‘I’m just going to rush the passer. I might get gouged on the run, but quite frankly you’re not running the ball very often or effectively so I’m just going to tee off. I’m not going to play my run gap,’ ” Wolfley said. “Well, it would be nice to instill a little more indecision, so (the defensive lineman) is not making an all-out effort to rush the quarterback.”
But then there is the other side of the ball. Earlier this season, the Steelers defense was arguably the best in the NFL. Lately, the D has been getting pushed around. Wolfley said you can’t underestimate the toll that injuries have taken.
“When you lose three, four, five guys off the starting defensive unit, you lose a couple percentage points of what that guy brings, especially when you lose (starting linebacker) Devin Bush. He’s the unicorn. How do you replace a unicorn?”
Despite the extenuating circumstances, is there a chance that the Steelers’ 11-0 start was just a mirage, that maybe they just aren’t that good after all?
“I think that this is a team that maybe wasn’t as good as 11-0 but not as bad as they’ve appeared to be in the last three losses,” said veteran WPXI-TV sports anchor Alby Oxenreiter.
Oxenreiter said despite the Steelers’ recent pratfalls, he doesn’t think they’ll lose the rest of their games, as some fans fear they will. In fact, he believes the Steelers will win Sunday afternoon against Indianapolis at Heinz Field.
“I think they’re a much better team than we’ve seen in the three losses. I have always felt that they were somewhere between the 11-0 team and the team we’ve seen lately,” Oxenreiter said. “Clearly, they have some issues to deal with. They have to find it again.”
So, how do they find it?
“Everybody’s got to look at each other and say, ‘OK, have you had enough of this? We need to get after this and make a concerted effort to turn it around,’ ” Wolfley said. “Deep emotions have to start driving you to get out of this rut. I’m a coach (Chuck) Noll guy. Coach Noll always used to tell us, ‘It’s not a 50-50 proposition. If the defense has to carry the offense, so be it. If the offense has to carry the defense, so be it.’ Those are the things that turn a team around.”