Steelers Not Touting Dominance of ‘Highly Penalized’ Bills

PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Steelers are 2-0 in the preseason after Saturday’s 27-15 win over the Buffalo Bills at Acrisure Stadium.

Not only that, but for the second straight week, the first-team Steelers were dominant, scoring two touchdowns while not yielding a point to Josh Allen, Stefon Diggs and the high-powered Buffalo offense.

But the Steelers know that that come September, those wins will be erased from the ledger, and they certainly don’t feel that they’ve accomplished anything to this point.

The offense, which has showed unprecedented scoring and on explosive plays, has played just three drives, which for head coach Mike Tomlin, is not enough to draw any real conclusions.

“I like the fact that we’re getting some splash,” Tomlin said. “But it’s just not a large enough sample size. But that’s the thing that we all battle this time of year. It’s a limited sample size. If you’re looking to feel good, you can find it, but I don’t know that I or we are looking to feel good. We’re just working.”

On defense, the Steelers did not allow a point to a first-team offense that put up 30 in one half against them last season. But the Bills also gave the Steelers a helping hand with 12 penalties for 90 yards in the first half alone.

“Not anything to be proud of,” cornerback Patrick Peterson said. “Those guys were highly penalized today. That helped us out on a couple of those drives. … We know where we want to be at the end of the year and we’re not going to be too high off this preseason performance.”

Outside linebacker T.J. Watt said the real work to be done from Saturday’s game will be taking apart the game on film and seeing how they can use it to make themselves better over the next two weeks before the regular season starts.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of corrections to made,” Watt said.