HAVE THE STEELERS LOST THEIR PHYSICAL EDGE?
Tomlin decries a lack of physical play in losses
Are the Steelers, who have built a legacy as the NFL’s toughest and most physical team, losing their edge?
Is the franchise that once rolled up its sleeves and showed off its biceps, as a former opposing player once claimed, losing its aggressive manner?
For the third week in a row, coach Mike Tomlin had made a reference, either direct or indirect, to his team’s lack of physical play, something on which the Steelers have prided themselves for decades.
He said it again on Tuesday, noting the Buffalo Bills “were the more physical football team” in all areas during the Steelers’ 26-15 loss in Orchard Park, N.Y., on Sunday night.
“It can be highlighted in their front and our ability to run the football, but I thought in all elements of play they were the more physical group,” Tomlin said. “We don’t want to make that common. We have to be accountable to that. We’ve got to make sure we’re not saying that moving forward.”
But it has been something of a recurring theme for the Steelers, whose signature has always been their physical brand of play.
Last week, Tomlin blasted his team’s inability to gain 1 yard on seven key plays in the loss to Washington, saying, “If you can’t get a yard, you don’t deserve to win.”
In the previous game against the Baltimore Ravens, in which he angrily criticized his team’s “junior varsity” performance, Tomlin took an indirect shot at his offensive line when he said there
were “too many unblocked people at the point of attack.”
Even offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner lamented the lack of physical play on the offensive line after the Steelers rushed for a seasonlow 21 yards on 14 carries against Washington, saying, “There comes a time when that physicality has to be matched.”
It was equally apparent against the Bills when the Steelers rushed for 47 yards on 17 carries — the fifth time in the past seven games they failed to gain 50 or more yards on the ground.
But it hasn’t just been running the football. The Steelers’ defensive backs, in particular cornerbacks Steven Nelson and Cam Sutton, were not physical enough with Bills receiver Stefon Diggs, who was wide open on many of his 10 catches for 130 yards.
The Steelers thought Diggs, who is 6-foot, 191 pounds, was pushing off on many of his routes, though he was never penalized for offensive pass interference. But Nelson and Sutton did little to combat that.
“Diggs played a real physical game and made physicaltype plays,” Tomlin said. “Their coverage people played aggressive and physical. And the return game, their return guy was vertical. They won the battle of field position because of that definitive element of play.”
Granted, the recent altered schedule of playing three games in 12 days may also have caught up to the Steelers. That appeared to be the case in the second half in Buffalo when the defense started to wilt.
The Steelers, though, are back on a normal schedule this week and even get an extra day to prepare for Monday night’s game in Cincinnati. Tomlin said he has not ruled out the possibility of having a padded practice to perhaps regain some of that lost physicality, particularly in the running game.
“It’s disappointing,”
Tomlin said. “But part of fixing it is first acknowledging it.”
Surprising snap counts
Running back Jaylen Samuels played a seasonhigh 27 snaps, four more than James Conner (23).
Rookie linebacker Alex Highsmith, starting his second NFL game for injured Bud Dupree, had more snaps (68) than T.J. Watt (64).
And, for the first time this season, JuJu Smith-Schuster played every offensive snap (57), in part because Diontae Johnson was benched for most of the first half after he dropped a pass on each of the first two possessions.
Smith-Schuster is 12th in the league with 79 receptions, but his yards (653) rank 38th and his per-catch average (8.3) is the lowest of the top 85 players with at least 430 yards.
“We mentioned we would have an all-hands-on-deck mentality because of the number of games we played in a short number of days,” Tomlin said. “We thought it appropriate to play a lot of people. Outside linebacker and T.J. Watt are not excluded from any of that.”
If you were wondering ...
The Steelers have played well in stretches in their back-to-back losses, especially on defense. There just haven’t been enough of them. Here’s why:
Since taking a 14-0 lead on the Washington Football Team late in the first half on Dec. 7, the Steelers were outscored in the next 4½ quarters, 46-10, on the way to losing back-to-back games.
That stretch, which lasted 71 minutes, 12 seconds, saw the Steelers’ 7-0 lead in the second quarter in Buffalo on Sunday night turn in a 23-7 deficit midway through the third quarter.
In that time, the Steelers had 16 first downs but managed to convert just 3 of 16 third-down opportunities, or 18.75%.