PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin called his first-team offense’s first performance of the preseason “junior varsity,” when the Steelers had two fumbled snaps and gave up two sacks against the Houston Texans last Friday.
His might need to find a lower level of football to compare Saturday’s outing against the Buffalo Bills to. Maybe junior high. Or pee-wee.
Tomlin said that he intended for Russell Wilson and his starters to play four series in this game. He sent them out there for a fifth before giving up and going to the backups.
The first unit was completely ineffective.
In 20 plays, Wilson’s unit gained 19 yards. That’s impressively poor. They also took two penalties: a false start by Calvin Austin III and a holding penalty by Darnell Washington.
Wilson was sacked three times, with Broderick Jones getting tossed aside like a rag doll by Greg Rousseau, who had 2.5 sacks. On the half, Ed Oliver was given the other half as the Steelers statistical staff scrambled to figure out which of the half-dozen Bills that surrounded Wilson deserved credit for the sack.
Wilson finished a better-than-it-looked 8 of 10 for 47 yards. One of his incompletions hit Van Jefferson in the hands. The other, George Pickens was out of bounds by millimeters, if that, and a faulty camera angle negated Tomlin’s attempt at a challenge. The paucity of offense wasn’t necessarily the quarterback’s fault.
It was the mistakes and the negative plays adding up for the second straight game that were attention-grabbing. Each of the five drives had a sack, penalty, or other negative play.
It’s almost impossible to evaluate the offense at large in those conditions. Najee Harris looked solid, running four times for 17 yards — a 4.3 yards per carry average. Jefferson got to the half with three catches for 19 yards.
Obviously, new Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith is not trying to give away much of his newly installed offensive scheme in this setting. The offense just struggling could be explained away.
But shooting itself in the foot for a second straight game? That’s unacceptable. We’ll see what Tomlin calls it this week.