Takeaways: Little bite left in Steelers after loss to Bengals
Steel City Underground offers post-game takeaways for every 2024 Pittsburgh Steelers NFL regular season game, focusing on the black and gold, just for members of Steelers Nation.
On Saturday night, the Pittsburgh Steelers hosted the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2024 NFL regular season finale at Acrisure Stadium. The 19-17 loss was a morale let-down in many ways as it took entirely too long for the Steelers to find tempo and be effective in nearly every aspect of the game. When your kicker is your lone sure bet, things have gone pear shaped.
Pittsburgh didn’t initiate needed adjustments from their staff, and a less-than-energetic performance from players early led to a hurry-up and try fourth quarter that showed that, despite being guaranteed a playoff spot, there’s little bite left in the Steelers.
Coordination questionable
It’s bound to come up in chats among fans, so it may as well be addressed: coordination on offense and defense was sub par. Neither Teryl Austin or Arthur Smith seemed to get very creative or flexible when it came to play calling in this game; they didn’t make game-changing decisions based on what the Bengals were showing. That’s troublesome early in a season, but devastating when a team suffers its fourth loss in a row because of it.
Blame will fall on Mike Tomlin, as head coach, and platitudes aren’t going to put the bark, or fight, back into a Steelers team that looked like competitors before it all started coming apart the past four weeks of play. The Steelers haven’t played many “pretty” games this season, but they found ways to win. Against the Bengals, they looked deflated and desperate from the opening series.
How does Austin defend leaving Cory Trice, a rookie who has had little in-game experience due to injury this season, on an island until Tee Higgins left the game with an injury?
How does Smith defend a predictable rinse and repeat offensive scheme until the fourth quarter of a game?
They could have won this one
The Steelers had every opportunity to put the season finale into the win column had they received equal effort and output by the personnel on the field at any given time.
They started out very slow defensively after deferring the opening kickoff. Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow had Higgins, Ja’Marr Chase, Mike Gesiki, and even backup running back Khalil Herbert eating up chunks of yardage and scored on a nine-play, 73 yard opening drive. The Bengals made it look easy.
Offensively, the Steelers got a Najee Harris rushing touchdown in the second quarter, but followed that up with punt, turnover on downs, end of first half, punt, and punt before they found the end zone again in the fourth quarter when Russell Wilson hit Pat Freiermuth for a receiving touchdown.
What kept them from securing the win was overall effort and focus. Yes, there were some nice plays. Rookie Beanie Bishop was able to intercept a ball tipped by Patrick Queen. Preston Smith got a sack on Burrow, as did Keeanu Benton, Queen, and Nick Herbig. Connor Heyward made a major special teams play when he recovered a ball that had touched a Bengals player on a punt, handing the ball back to the offense down just two points.
The inability for George Pickens to secure more than 1 catch out of 6 targets was nearly unbelievable. Mind-blowing was Wilson not throwing the ball away and taking the hit (keeping him inbounds and the clock running) on 1st & 10 at the PIT 42 with 0:46 left in the game. Inexcusable was the sack he took on 2nd & 7 for a loss of five yards that led to another turnover on downs that handed the Bengals the victory.
In this game, out of 31 passing attempts by Wilson, just 17 catches were made; eight of those were secured by Freiermuth, who led the team. Wilson was sacked four times for a loss of 29 yards.
What now?
With the Steelers organization hell-bent on being a “run team,” the writing has been on the wall for weeks: opponents can stall the offense completely if they bottle-up Harris, Jaylen Warren, and an occasional handle by Cordarrelle Patterson. The Bengals only gave up 74 rushing yards. If Wilson can’t find open targets who can secure the ball, Pittsburgh has no offense.
It looks like Pittsburgh will be headed back to Baltimore for their playoff game, a scenario that was much less appealing than a game with the Houston Texans. The Ravens are heavy favorites to knock the Steelers out of future play.
Unless the Steelers find a way to get past the things that have been haunting them, or actually make immediate, necessary corrections, they’re looking like the one-and-done playoff team even die hard fans have started claiming they were two weeks ago.
