The Pittsburgh Steelers—a week removed from demolishing the Carolina Panthers—struggled to put away the lowly Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In the end, they couldn’t emerge as victors, and this loss left plenty of questions about the level of play this Steelers team is capable of as they try to speed up the retooling process and return to the playoffs this season.
Here’s a look at what we learned from the team’s 27-24 loss.
Flag football
Forget for a minute that NFL referees did everything possible in this game to reinforce their inability to get anything right without the crutch of instant replay. Forget that flags are so inconsistent that players have no idea what is or isn’t ‘legal’. The Steelers absolutely have to do something about their inability to avoid penalties.
Pittsburgh was called for 13 (!) total penalties (125 yards) with a high number of personal fouls to boot. While the penalties did little to affect the outcome of the game, they do prevent the team from playing up to its full potential.
For a team that obviously has playoff aspirations, that has to get cleaned up. Mike Tomlin likes to talk about discipline and playing smart, but his team doesn’t do that on a weekly basis. It’s time he put his money where his mouth is and got his team to stop shooting itself in the foot.
A high-powered offense that is clicking
The more we see of Le’Veon Bell, Antonio Brown, and Ben Roethlisberger, the more it becomes clear that the Steelers have one of the best combination of skill position stars in the NFL. Roethlisberger is a top-ten quarterback who is still playing his best football. Bell is one of the league’s top three running backs right now. Brown is a top five receiver.
Add into that mix a fast-developing star in Markus Wheaton, the punishing LeGarrette Blount and stalwart Heath Miller and you have a brilliant offensive machine that is suddenly pushing the right buttons at the right times and returning from a long slump of mediocrity.
If Roethlisberger and coordinator Todd Haley can keep things moving in the right direction, this team will be in contention and will be primed for a deep run in the playoffs. The key remains getting better each week. The past two weeks represent an excellent growth trend for a team that spent the early Haley era trying to find itself on offense.
Pass-blocking woes
If there’s one area where the offense is still deficient, it’s the offensive line. New position coach Mike Munchak is working to bring the offensive line up to snuff, but so far the results haven’t been there. Kelvin Beachum had a terrible day at left tackle. Ramon Foster’s absence has created a void. The rest of the line is solid but unspectacular against the pass rush.
Ben Roethlisberger does still tend to hold the ball far too long when he can’t get to one of his first three reads, but the avalanche of sacks on Sunday was more due to poor blocking of a vicious rush than their quarterback’s career-long tendencies.
Pittsburgh can ill-afford an injury to their signal caller. Keeping him upright takes some effort given his style of play. Beachum right now is the weakest link. If he cannot be replaced, he must be helped with a tight end. Failing to do so leaves Roethlisberger open to a potentially catastrophic injury, given the lack of talent behind him on the depth chart.
Next man up
With Jarvis Jones, Ike Taylor, and Ryan Shazier out, the Steelers had to work hard to overcome injuries involving three key members of their defense. The results on Sunday were mixed. Arthur Moats, replacing Jones and splitting snaps with James Harrison throughout the game, was serviceable and made some nice plays. He looks like a player who could start for many other teams.
Sean Spence was up and down in place of Shazier and looks like a talented, speedy player—similar to the LB he replaced. But he needs some polish on his game before he can be counted on in a regular role. The fact that the Steelers regressed in run defense is a mark against their depleted front seven and leaves questions about this team going forward.
The secondary wasn’t terrible, but struggled against the tall Bucs receivers for much of the contest. The fact that Mike Glennon was able to carve up the secondary for some significant plays further exacerbates the issues Pittsburgh has created for itself by ignoring their secondary in the draft for years.
Strong words regarding abysmal officiating
You can never chalk a game’s final result up to the way the officials called the game, but today’s game was one of the worst officiated Steelers contests in recent years. The calls were heavily one-sided, rules were inconsistently enforced and it seemed as if every big play entailed survival of the referees and their antics.
Neither team benefitted from the ridiculous display or need for TV time that the officials exhibited in Pittsburgh. It was one of the poorest and most frustrating performances ever by an entity that has been increasingly criticized in the media.
While the NFL clearly has bigger problems with credibility off the field, the credibility of the men who are tasked with enforcing the rules on it is at an all-time low. The league’s refusal to use sensible rules enforcement and instead focus on annually different “points of emphasis” causes players to constantly question what is and is not allowed. When officials are blatantly unfair or refuse to let teams play football, the game’s popularity and overall product suffers big-time. Something has to give here.
