The Pittsburgh Steelers, riding a 5-game winning streak, went to Huntington Bank Field and promptly dropped a 24-19 decision to the then 2-8 Cleveland Browns.
Instead of cementing their lead in the AFC North, the Steelers now cling to a ½ game advantage over the Baltimore Ravens.
- So what do we make of this mess?
Three things come to mind: Playing Thursday Night Football on the road sucks, you have to hate playing in Cleveland, and, most consequentially, every play counts in the NFL.
Russell Wilson hit with a high snap. Photo Credit: Chaz Palla, Tribune-Review
Mistake by the Lake = A Miserable Stage for Pittsburgh to Play
Comparisons between an NFL game and a theater performance breakdown fast. But they do provide one useful parallel: In theater, the actors’ work defines the quality of the production, but the stage they play on colors their performance.
The Pittsburgh Steelers lost at Huntington Bank Field because the Cleveland Browns played better.
- But it is hard not to note the stage they were playing on.
Thursday Night Football is bad idea. Sure. Special event games like Thanksgiving and season openers are fine. An occasional sprinkling of Thursday Nighters during the rest of the regular season is maybe OK. Maybe.
But requiring every NFL Team to turn around and play a Thur$day Night Game game on three day$ rest highlight$ the NFL’$ $ingular focu$ on the player’$ $afety.
Playing on Thursday amplifies home team advantage (“they” say that trend has softened lately; so be it, the overall tendency is clear.) Home teams don’t collect get-out-of-jail-free cards – see last year’s Thursday Night debacle at Acrisure against the Patriots.
- But the Thursday Night home field advantage is real.
And even more real when the Steelers play the Browns in Cleveland on Thursday Night. In 2009, the Browns humiliated the defending Super Bowl Champions. In 2019, the Browns gave the Steelers their own “Body Bag Game” – people forget but Pittsburgh lost 5 players and 3 starters to injury before Myles Garrett assaulted Mason Rudolph.
And, as Bob Labriola lamented long ago in the Steelers Digest, when it comes to Cleveland you gotta hate place.
Cleveland’s the place where cars with Pennsylvania license plates were lucky not to find their tires slashed after games in the 60’s and 70’s. This is the venue where, in 1988, Hall of Famer Mike Webster once blew not one, but two snaps to punter Harry Newsome – and one he did get off correctly got blocked.
Oh, and can we again mention 1991, where a ball got deflected only to land on Leroy Hoard’s chest who’d been decked and was lying in the end zone? (Video courtesy of Steel City Star.)
The ‘91 Steelers defense defined in one play.
A year after giving up fewer yds than the ‘85 Bears, the Steelers could hurry the QB, knock the ball down, put their opponents on their backs…..and it still wasn’t enough.@BernieKosarQB @BigMouthLeroy @VintageBrowns pic.twitter.com/CvCQn11Viw
— Steel City Star (@steelcitystar) March 26, 2019
Or maybe we’ll just talk about 2024, where on his first trip to the Mistake by the Lake young punter who has been quietly been an unsung hero of the season shanks a 12 yard punt at the absolute worst moment? Yeah, Labroila’s right — you gotta hate the place.
Slow Starts Finally Bite the Steelers in the Butt
Afterwards, Mike Tomlin delivered the loss’ autopsy in 39 words:
Particularly early on I thought it took us too long to warm up to the action. We were penalized, some pre-snap penalties. Just weren’t really sharp. We got going. Our guys fought, but it wasn’t enough to secure victory.
Although they’ve been better in recent weeks, the 2024 Steelers have been notoriously slow starters. That hasn’t mattered because the Steelers have overwhelmed opponents in the second halves of games.
The Steelers outscored the Browns 16-14 in the second half, including shutting them out in the third quarter and dominating them 3-0 in the turnover battle. None of that mattered because the Browns took a 10-3 lead into halftime thanks to opportunities the Steelers squandered.
- Chris Boswell missed a 58 yard field goal Tomlin probably shouldn’t have had him try
- Justin Fields failed to convert a 4th and 2
- After a 46-yard Russell Wilson to Calvin Austin moonball, the Steelers settled for a field goal
- Myles Garrett strip-sacked Russell Wilson with 3:19 remaining in the first half
The Steelers defense forced punts after the missed field goal and failed 4th down conversion attempt. But the Browns answered the Steelers successful field goal with a touchdown drive of their own, and transformed Garrett’s turnover into a field goal while bleeding all but 40 seconds off of the clock.
Arthur Smith: In Search of Consistency
After scoring 4 touchdowns in the win over the Washington Commanders, Arthur Smith’s offense went seven quarters without touching the end zone again.
Then in the 4th quarter, Jaylen Warren stormed into the end zone to answer a Browns touchdown. Two plays later, Nick Herbig strip-sacked Jameis Winston and Deshon Elliott’s recovery. It only took 3 plays for Russell Wilson to hit Calvin Austin with a phenomenal 23 yard strike in the end zone to put the Steelers ahead.
- In under two minutes, the Steelers offense had scored two touchdowns – in the Red Zone no less.
Five plays later, Donte Jackson intercepted Winston with just over 4 minutes remaining.
Pittsburgh, seemed was primed to put Cleveland away for good….
Arthur Smith confers with Mike Tomlin. Photo Credit: Chaz Palla, Tribune-Review
…All they needed was one first down. All they got was six yards on two Najee Harris runs and a way off target deep shot from Justin Fields to George Pickens, followed by a 12-yard Corliss Waitman punt.
Talk about a Tale of Two Offenses. A glance at the stat sheet shows just how misleading NFL numbers can be sometimes:
- Russell Wilson was 21 of 28 for no picks one touchdown and 116.7 passer rating
- Wilson completed “moonballs” to Austin, Pickens and even Van Jefferson
- Jaylen Warren ran strong and a Justin Fields 30-yard run sparked the offense
- Pat Freiermuth and Darnell Washington caught 8 passes for nearly 75 yards between them
Yet for all of those fancy facts and figures, the Steelers offense was ineffective outside of the two touchdown drives. The offensive line got manhandled. The Steelers couldn’t convert in short yardage. Sure, Justin Fields’s 30-yard run jump-started the first touchdown drive, but Fields didn’t have the “Slash” effect a la Kordell Stewart in 1995.
My friend Matt C. Steel has argued on Steel City Insider that overreliance on the shotgun is sabotaging this offense. Matt has forgotten more X’s and O’s than I’ll ever know. And Wilson did start in the shotgun on 3 of his 4 sacks. But on the strip-sack he started under center. He also made several highlight-ready passes out of the shotgun.
- The 2024 Pittsburgh Steelers lack the talent to field a “great” offense.
But right now the whole of the Steelers offense is smaller than the sum of its parts. I don’t have the solution to this equation. But Arthur Smith must solve for “X” and do it quickly.
A Word on the What IF’s
Would the Steelers have been better off just letting Nick Chubb score to save time?* Should Tomlin have used a timeout? Should Tomlin have accepted or declined the penalty?
- There may be “right” and “wrong” answers to those questions.
But those answers are irrelevant. If the Steelers defense delivers after Tomlin makes any one of those decisions, the questions are moot.
It’s like asking “What happens if Waitman booms off his final punt as he has all season instead of shanking it?” The Steelers probably win. But we’ll never know.
That’s not to scapegoat Waitman – he doesn’t deserve it – it simply drives home the reality that fortunes in the NFL shift on a dime.
*OK, that makes logical sense in the abstract. But when does a Pittsburgh Steelers defense just yield at the goal line?
