Saunders: Despite Busy Offseason, Steelers Still Have Many of Same Problems

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t have a lot of good moments in the team’s preseason win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, and their struggles were reminiscent of the team’s issues a year ago, when it finished 9-8 and lost in the Wild Card round.

Kenny Pickett had a strong 2-minute drill to close out the first half, a Justin Layne interception set up Mason Rudolph to do the same in the closing minutes of the game, and somehow that was enough for the Steelers to win the game, 16-15, despite being thoroughly dominated in just about every other aspect.

The Steelers were out-gained 367 to 279, out-possessed 34:21 to 25:39, committed twice as many penalties, and gave a lot of credence to the team’s seven-win Las Vegas-projected total.

“They controlled the football game,” Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin said. “Down in and down out, we didn’t perform well enough. We didn’t perform at a high enough level to control the game. I thought their defensive front in the environment, in particular, controlled the game.”

That came in spite of getting fairly good quarterback play from all three of Mitch Trubisky, Kenny Pickett and Mason Rudolph. Quarterback is the big variable for the Steelers this season. On a team that brought back the vast majority of its starters, the loss of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is a notable and important exception. None of the three competitors to replace him is a sure thing to be able to do so.

But there are other reasons to be bearish on the Steelers’ chances of having a successful season in 2022. Even if the team gets Roethlisberger-like performance out of whoever starts at quarterback, this was only a nine-win team a year ago. With so many starters back where they were, that makes it hard to see big improvements in a lot of places.

The Steelers had a productive and busy offseason, but not a lot of that energy was spent on improving the team, compared to just filling holes that had opened. James Daniels replaced Trai Turner, Myles Jack took Joe Schobert’s old spot, Levi Wallace took over for Joe Haden, George Pickens has pushed Chase Claypool to the slot, where he will replace JuJu Smith-Schuster.

Center seems to have been shored up by the arrival of Mason Cole, but largely, the places that were trouble spots for the Steelers last year like tackle, inside linebacker, outside linebacker depth and running back depth, are still problems.

The offensive line, in particular, was atrocious on Saturday. Trubisky spent his entire time with the first team running for his life. There was nowhere to run for any of the team’s running backs. For as good as the offense looked against Seattle last Saturday, it seemed wholly incapable of consistently replacing that success this week.

“I thought Mitch [Trubisky] played well,” Tomlin said. “I thought he created and  extended some things when there wasn’t much there. We’ve got to do a better job in protecting him and having some semblance of a running game if you want a fair evaluation, and I’m just being bluntly honest.”

On defense, the Steelers struggled to get off the field, with Jacksonville converting on 10 of 20 third downs. There were far too many missed tackles and it was a lack of efficiency by Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars receivers that was a bigger limiting factor in Jacksonville not scoring more points more than it was the Pittsburgh defense.

The team does have some more salary cap space it can scrape together, but this was not a one-year rebuild. The Steelers just had too much to do this offseason to get back to being a realistic Super Bowl contender.

While it may be frustrating to watch another season of the Steelers’ tackles fail to protect their quarterback, Devin Bush be up and down at inside linebacker and more, those will probably have to be targets for improvement next offseason before they’re able to be fully addressed.

Despite a higher number of moves than is common for the team, the Steelers entered this offseason with a fairly singular focus: figure out who the team’s quarterback of the future is. If they can do that, fixing the offensive line, linebackers and adding more appropriate depth will be a lot easier job next offseason.