DENVER — After beating the Denver Broncos 13-6 on Sunday, the Pittsburgh Steelers are 2-0. They got to 2-0 by going on the road in the first two weeks of the season. They got to 2-0 without a single snap from their starting quarterback. They got to 2-0 while three different players made their NFL debuts along their offensive line.
The two wins have not been pretty, especially on offense. They also have not had to be.
At the end of the season, no one will care how pretty or ugly the Steelers’ first two wins were, just that they’re wins. When this schedule gets tough, wins are going to become mighty precious.
The Steelers offense in 2023 was an embarrassment. They somehow combined poor coordinating, poor quarterback and poor offensive line play into a turducken of bad offense that finished 28th in the league in scoring.
There was a lot of hope and promise this offseason that the Steelers 2024 offense would not be that. Through two games, they’re 25th in scoring. I’ll pause for celebration.
A big part of the problem is that the new-ness that gave the Steelers and their fans hope for this season remains new. Not only that, it’s banged up.
Russell Wilson missed his second consecutive game. The Steelers went to Justin Fields, who has managed things nicely through two contests, despite a meager statistical total.
Isaac Seumalo, their most experienced offensive lineman has yet to play. Instead, Spencer Anderson, Zach Frazier and Troy Fautanu have been making their NFL debuts, together at the same time.
Young offensive linemen are generally not very good. Multiple young linemen playing together is usually a recipe for disaster. And while the Steelers have moved in fits and starts at times, they have singularly avoided disaster.
“Playing offensive line as a rookie is tough,” guard James Daniels said. “I did it, but I started Week 4 or 5. They started out the gate playing, which I think is really, really hard to do.”
Despite that, Fields has not turned the ball over. Fields has played in 42 NFL games. That’s just the third time he’s gone two consecutive games without a turnover. After the game, Fields was asked if he feels good about the team’s chances if he doesn’t commit a turnover.
“I mean, yeah,” he said. “We have a great defense. That’s no secret. You never want to to turn the ball over. … Our number one goal on offense is to protect the ball.”
The biggest problem for the Steelers has honestly been the Steelers. Penalties wiped out at least seven points for the team on Sunday in Denver. They’ve had multiple other issues, with drops and missed alignments, poor decision and other seemingly basic stuff.
“When you have as much possession as we have, you expect more than 13 points,” Daniels said.
Those issues are frustrating, but they’re also correctible, and with the level of newness all around the offense, they’re not exactly unexpected, either.
“It’s very frustrating, but at the end of the day, we still got the win,” Jefferson said. “We still want to fix the things that we need to fix. … It’s just little things we’ve got to clean up, but there’s nothing like being 2-0 and going back home and playing our first home game.”
I’m not the kind of person that is going to argue for results over process, but in this case, the results are the process. The Steelers might have the best defense in the league. They were not playing great teams. They were dealing with a whole bunch of internal issues and new-ness that were
They did not need to score 20 points to win either of their first two games. They did not. They’re 0-2.
There will be a game — perhaps as soon as next week — where they will need to score more than 20 points to win. Them not doing so in the first two weeks doesn’t mean they won’t be able to in the future.
The Steelers have a long runway before they get to the meat of their schedule. Only time will tell if they make the necessary improvements. But there’s no reason to freak out just yet. After all, they’re 2-0.
LATEST O-LINE SHUFFLE
One of those areas of new-ness came between Week 1 and Week 2, as rookie tackle Troy Fautanu made his first career start against the Broncos, as Steelers Now reported earlier this week.
The thing nobody saw coming was Broderick Jones taking the field for the third series of the game. The Steelers apparently planned some kind of tackle rotation between their 2023 and 2024 first-round picks.
“I’m not sure what the plan was for me,” Fautanu said. “They told me I was going to get to go. Whatever happened with the rotation, I can’t control that kind of stuff.”
“I knew Troy was starting,” Jones said. “I really didn’t know how much I would be playing. I knew I would be playing. I just wanted to go out there and do the best of my ability every chance I had, which I didn’t. A couple stupid calls. I just gotta play more cleanly. I gotta be better.”
Well, that’s clear. Jones entering was a disaster. He nearly singlehandedly took at least three and probably seven points off the board with three penalties on one drive that cost the Steelers 25 yards, and negated a huge completion to George Pickens.
The rotation was a bad idea. Mike Tomlin — who wasn’t asked about it — shut it down after one drive, mercifully. He did say that Jones was benched for his penalties — obviously.
It’s very clear that right now the Steelers’ best tackles are Fautanu and Dan Moore Jr. They should be playing. Let Jones get his right arm in a better place, let him take more practice reps at left tackle, and see if he can change that dynamic down the road.
WHAT A DEFENSE
The Steelers got pretty conservative in the second half, and did no while taking a bunch of penalties that put them behind the sticks. The result was an uninspiring final 30 minutes.
But they entered those final 30 minutes up two scores, and it wasn’t until Will Lutz’s second field goal with 1:54 to play that Denver got it back down to one.
The game very much had the feel that Denver and Bo Nix could have gone out there against T.J. Watt and company for two games without seriously threatening to take the lead. The Broncos top back, Javonte Williams, rushed for 1.5 yards per carry.
Nix was sacked twice, threw two interceptions, and finished with a passer rating of 55.2.
“If we’ve got the lead in the fourth quarter, we feel like we can really take advantage of that. If we’re not playing catch up, we can settle down and just take care of your assignments,” Heyward said.
The Steelers have a formula that’s working. Play great defense. Do just enough on offense. Don’t turn the ball over. We’ll see how far it can take them, but for now, they’re 2-0.