Snap Back to Reality - Initial Thoughts After Steelers Bad Loss @ Chargers
Screenshot via Steelers Youtube.
The Pittsburgh Steelers on primetime has become the bane of my existence. What the hell happened to my squad, man? We were truly and thoroughly spoiled during the Ben Roethlisberger years. These days, when the Pittsburgh Steelers play on primetime, I want to crawl into my hidey hole with a blankie and not look at my damn cell phone.
We only have to survive one more primetime regular season game this year, folks. That’ll come week 15 on Monday Night Football vs. the Miami Dolphins, who, funny enough, just beat the Buffalo Bills yesterday.
Anyways, the Steelers dropped the ball in front of the whole world, yet again, losing to the Los Angeles Chargers 25-10. Like Ireland, this was essentially a home game for the Steelers away from Pittsburgh. In fact, if you listened to the broadcast, you may have heard them mention that the Chargers were practicing their silent count on Friday ahead of this game, but that didn’t end up meaning much.
This thing was a slugfest from the start, but I was largely feeling good about the game up until Aaron Rodgers went down in the end zone for a safety midway through the first quarter. That drive started at our own 6-yard line. It went: Kaleb Johnson run on first down, Kaleb Johnson run on second down, Chargers safety on third down. I’m sorry, I loved Kaleb Johnson the prospect, and I was happy when we took him, but coming into this drive, we had a grand total of 11 yards of offense. If you’re trying to get your rookie some touches to get his confidence back, I’m all for that…but maybe backed up on your own 6 yard line after getting smoked on your first two drives isn’t the best spot to be doing that. With that being said, we can go week to week this entire season so far and find a ton of similarly headscratching examples of personnel deployment, situationally. This coaching staff loves to act like all 53 players can do all things, but I digress.
#8 was terrible in this game, and that safety was, really, only the beginning. I’m not sure when this happened in the game, I’ll go back and find it and point it out in the next post, but early on, Rodgers took a pretty big hit from Bud Dupree (above) while he was trying to climb in the pocket, and he was never the same after that. I think it rattled him a bit, and I understand it. The jury was out, at least in this game - the Chargers were ready for him to climb the pocket, like he often does, and when their pass rushers didn’t win quick, they did a good job of keeping their eyes up and tracking him down before he could extend plays.
Even when Rodgers was able to push the ball down field, he was just off the mark. He knows it, too. He said as much after the game: “We weren’t getting guys open and putting it all together. At times, they were getting open, but I just missed throws that I usually make. I expect to play great every single week, and this wasn’t my best performance. I have to play better to win. Whatever it takes. If it is better checks or better throws, whatever it is, I have to play better and I will.”
Honestly, I’m glad he said that about the checks. After the Green Bay game, I insinuated that he seems to have a ton of freedom at the line of scrimmage, but that doesn’t always feel like a good thing to me. Not in the year 2025. Anyways, that was a bottom-three performance of his career for most analytical purposes, and this is a guy with 250+ games under his belt. So, yeah, pretty bad.
If you’re looking for a silver lining, look no further than Jaylen Warren, who time and time again proves he’s our most valuable offensive weapon. With a score of 15-3 entering the 4th quarter, he really turned it on and worked us into the red zone, but for whatever reason, that drive stalled out after we stopped feeding #30. It’s becoming a regular occurrence that I’m talking about this. Death. Taxes. The Steelers underutilizing their best weapon. He played 46.2% of the offensive snaps last night, and no that’s not a fuckin typo. It’s coaching malpractice is what it is. He finished with 70 yards on the ground (5.0 yards per) and 21 more through the air. Just imagine if we gave him 25-30 touches per game like we should. We’d probably have 7 wins right now.
Lastly, I wanna talk about the defense, because I think there’s real life people out there that believe they were a part of the problem last night as well. Like all defensive performances, this one wasn’t perfect, but the Steelers offense couldn’t muster a single first down in 7 out of their first 9 drives. Here’s how many plays the offense ran in each of those drives: 3 plays (Punt), 4 plays (FG), 3 plays (safety), 9 plays (missed FG), 3 plays, 2 plays, 3 plays…I’m going to stop now but I think you get the point. I’m not exaggerating much when I say that the defense was basically on the field the entire game. In the end, the Chargers nearly doubled us in time of possession, but that has everything to do with the offense being as stale as ever, and less to do with the defense struggling. All things considered, I really liked the defensive performance through three quarters, and it should come as a shock to no one that a team as old as ours was gassed in the end. The defense did enough to win this game against a very good Chargers team.
Maybe one day our defense and our offense will both put together a good performance at the same time, and we’ll really get to see what this team is capable of. Maybe. Right now, this is looking like one of the most inconsistent football teams in the NFL. I find myself extremely disappointed on this Monday evening, but that’s probably my own fault. I think back to my initial prediction for this team of 9-11 wins, and that still looks pretty damn likely even with some tough games coming up on the schedule. Perhaps things are playing out roughly how I thought they would, but I just don’t like the look of it now that we’re here. The good news is that we still have a one-game lead over the Ravens in the AFC North, and the AFC as a whole is wide-the-fuck-open. Are the Steelers real players in the conference? I have no fuckin idea.
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