Steelers Commentary Steelers Gameday
Saunders: Don’t Call It a Collapse, This Is Who These Steelers Are
PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Steelers lost their third straight game by 14 or more points on Wednesday, getting dominated by the Kansas City Chiefs, 29-10 on Christmas Day.
The loss comes on the heels of losses by margins of 34-17 to the Baltimore Ravens on Saturday and 27-13 to the Philadelphia Eagles last Sunday.
In the most critical stretch of the team’s schedule, with three games against Super Bowl contenders in 11 days, the Steelers were out-scored 90-40. It’s their first time losing by three straight 14-point margins since 1988.
Certainly, the Steelers aren’t playing their best football, and certainly the results have not been pretty, but this doesn’t represent some kind of late-season collapse from the 2024 Steelers.
This is who they’ve always been. They’re a good team, not a great one. Faced with the task of stacking wins against a mediocre schedule early in the season, the Steelers largely succeeded, getting out to a 10-3 start.
But that mark was always more of a factor of who the Steelers had played and who they hadn’t played. They were never a true Super Bowl contender. They were never in the same league as a team like the Chiefs or the like the Eagles. Their historic run of success against Baltimore masked a clear disparity in the difference between those teams until Saturday.
So the Steelers leave their most critical stretch of the season just as everyone should have seen them before it: they are not Super Bowl contenders. They are not one of the best teams in the AFC. They will now be significant underdogs to win the AFC North.
But they’re still a much better team than they have been. They clinched a playoff berth earlier than they have since 2020. They still have a shot at the division entering the final week of the season.
The signs of progress from the near past are obvious. Losing three games in 11 days to Super Bowl contenders is nothing like last season, when they lost three straight games in early December — two of which came at home against two-win teams. Those streaks happening at the same time of year doesn’t make them at all the same.
This is a good team that isn’t great. It’s possible for good teams to beat great teams in the NFL. It happens all the time. Why isn’t it happening right now for the Steelers?
They’re not playing clean football, and some things have become repeated issues. They’ve failed to get out to quick starts on offense all season. Against mediocre opponents, that can be handled. But playing from behind all day against teams like the Eagles, Ravens and Chiefs is a death knell.
Against the Chiefs, the Steelers exacerbated their routinely slow starts on offense with a slow start on defense.
“You can’t spot anybody points,” Steelers defensive captain Cam Heyward said.
The Steelers have the second-most rushing attempts in the NFL this season. The aren’t team with the personality, or the receiving talent, to spend long stretches of games in comeback mode.
They also continued a concerning trend on defense of miscommunications allowing wide-open passing options.
“First off, guys can’t be fucking wide open,” strong safety DeShon Elliott said. “That’s the first thing. Do your job. I thought we communicated. Guys weren’t doing their freaking job. Just get back to the drawing board. It’s Week 18. We shouldn’t be having these problems in Week 18. This is a Week 1, Week 2 problem. So I don’t know where we went down the line and started becoming a whole different defense of who we were.”
Elliott’s return hoped to allay some of those issues, and the team was better than it had been in terms of missed assignments. They also tackled much better with him in the lineup after that being an issue the last two weeks.
But once again, they ended up on the short end of the stick turnover-wise. They forced a fumble, but couldn’t recover it, and got no interceptions. The Steelers are now 2-14 since the start of the 2022 season when they fail to win the turnover battle.
“The formula to beat those guys is getting turnovers against them and we didn’t do it,” outside linebacker Alex Highsmith said. “We had balls on the ground, just like last week and we didn’t get on them, and they had two turnovers. It’s definitely a big difference in the game.”
Quarterback Russell Wilson also failed to live up to his end of that bargain, as well. Wilson threw another interception on Wednesday, this time while in the red zone, forcing the ball into triple coverage, trying to find Pat Freiermuth.
Wilson confirmed that he was expecting George Pickens to run a deeper route to take the attention of the safety. But when he didn’t, a 13-year veteran quarterback just cannot force the ball into harm’s way like that. Especially when he had three open options on the right half of the field.
In addition to not taking care of the ball, for two games in a row, Wilson has looked harried by the pass rush, has failed to keep his eyes down field, and has missed way too many open receivers, especially considering how precious of a resource that can be with this under-manned wide receivers unit.
Wilson will probably rebound. This has not been a pretty stretch of play for him, but he’s a vet. He’s been better. He probably will be better again.
The young offensive line, it was hoped, would have used that early season of light schedule to grow and develop and build as a unit. Instead, it seems that they may be hitting something of a wall. Left tackle Dan Moore, who surprised with his early-season play, has regressed to prior form. Broderick Jones, Zach Frazier and Mason McCormick continue to look promising but frustratingly inconsistent. The Steelers have some of their big pieces of the future, but to expect them to become dominant in the next two weeks if probably folly.
So what to make of this stretch then? The Steelers are who we thought they were, not as good as the great teams, better than the also-rans, and probably better than the recent versions of themselves.
But that doesn’t seem to tell the whole story. Veteran leaders Cam Heyward, Patrick Queen and Highsmith said there’s deeper issues with the defense’s sudden downturn than some turnover luck and a slow start against a good team.
“There’s got to be a want-to,” Highsmith said. “There’s not enough of that right now. There’s got to be a want to. It’s that time of the year where we’ve got two guaranteed games left. We’re gonna find out who wants it, you know what I mean? Everybody in this room gotta want it. That’s the only way we’re gonna move on and get better. …
“At the end of the day, we’ve just got to hold each other accountable. Those guys that don’t want it, hard lessons need to be learned. There’s a lot of guys who want it. There’s a lot of guys in the locker room who do. Every man’s just got to look himself in the mirror and see how they can get better. I’ve got to look myself in the mirror and see how I can get better over the next week and a half.”
That’s pretty damning stuff from a not-all-that-experienced member of the defense. The thing about losing three games in a row to better teams is that you’re still losing three games in a row. Even if they were games that were expected losses, frustrations still mount, personalities fray.
Even if the losing streak itself isn’t a problem in the big picture, the fallout from it could become one.
“I just look at Cam and see how long he’s been here,” Queen said. “Every single time I come out here, I just want to win for him and T.J. and those guys. Whatever motivation you’ve got to find, you’ve got to find it.”
These Steelers are going to the playoffs. They’re talented enough to win a playoff game. Doing that would solidify that this team has taken a step forward from its recent past and is on the right track to its ultimate goals.
How they deal with the fallout of three losses in 11 days may very well define whether that happens or not.
Read This Next
