PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Steelers want to be a running team. They are not particularly good at it. They don’t seem to be letting that bother them.
The Steelers finished the regular season fourth in the NFL in rushing attempts, with 533 carries. Despite that, they were 11th in yards and tied for 20th in yards per carry. Jaylen Warren and Najee Harris finished 30th and 52nd in the NFL in rushing success rate. As a team, the Steelers finished 27th in expected points added (EPA) per rushing play.
Even late in the season, after 17 weeks of futility in terms of being able to operate an efficient running offense, the Steelers were bound and determined to do that against the Cincinnati Bengals last week.
Despite the fact that the Steelers set a season high in points and yards the first time they played the Bengals in Cincinnati, head coach Mike Tomlin decided to change their game plan for the rematch in Pittsburgh last Saturday.
Because of the cold weather and improvements shown by the Cincinnati defense, Tomlin wanted the Steelers to focus on the running game on Saturday.
“We had an agenda in that game,” Tomlin said. “A personality that you value, along with a specific agenda in an effort to create an environment that’s conducive to winning a game, are things that we weigh from a planning perspective every day of our lives from a coaching standpoint.”
The plan backfired colossally. The Steelers rushed 23 times for 74 yards — a paltry 3.2 yards per carry. When you take out Russell Wilson’s four scrambles, the three running backs did even worse, combing to rush 19 times for just 58 yards and 3.05 yards per carry.
It wasn’t just against the Bengals. Good teams run the ball a lot, there’s no question about that. The top teams in rushing attempts this season were the Philadelphia Eagles, Baltimore Ravens, Detroit Lions, Steelers and Washington Commanders — all playoff teams.
But the Steelers were 11th in the of possession while leading, last out of that group, spending just over 523 minutes of the 2024 season with a lead. The Lions, Eagles and Ravens were spending lots more time milking a lead at the end of the game. The Eagles, Ravens and Commanders all have quarterbacks that do a lot of running.
The Steelers? They just did a lot of handing off — or tossing — to Harris and Warren to little effect throughout the course of the 2024 season.
But why? Tomlin was asked that on Monday, and he said, in a nutshell, that they run the ball so much because they don’t want to turn the ball over.
“For us, it’s about playing to a personality that we prescribe to engineer victory, to possess the ball,” Tomlin said. “And a component of possessing the ball is not only time, but managing risk. And obviously, there’s less risk with running the football than throwing it, and sometimes that’s a component of this discussion as well.”
The Steelers did have the 10th-fewest turnovers this season, with 17, so their efforts in that area did bear some fruit, but at what cost of a potentially more dangerous passing offense? That’s unknown.
The team was, however, undefeated this season (4-0) when they offense did not turn the ball over and they were 8-3 when winning the turnover battle. Among those three losses was Saturday’s regular season finale against the Bengals, when the Steelers earned two takeaways and turned the ball over just once on a special teams fumble.
On the two drives after those turnovers, the Steelers offense gained a total of 22 yards and scored three points.
After a Beanie Bishop interception gave the Steelers the ball with 1:10 to play in the first half, trailing 10-7. Russell Wilson started a two-minute drive that could have given the Steelers the lead. When Pat Freiermuth stumbled out of bounds a yard short of the first-down marker, the Steelers decided to run a quarterback sneak with Wilson to try to get one yard. He failed.
Tomlin then elected to go for it on fourth down, and the Steelers gave the ball to Warren on a handoff. He was stopped, handing the Bengals three points in a game they ended up winning by two.
“If you can’t get a yard, you don’t deserve to win, and so obviously we didn’t,” Tomlin said.
It feels like a microcosm of the Steelers’ season. They want to run the ball. They think they need to run the ball. They can’t run the ball, and so instead of doing something else, they’ve failed.