Steelers Deliver Second Half From Hell

It wasn’t, all things considered, a bad first half for the Steelers yesterday.

Sure, things didn’t start well, what with Seattle marching down the field and getting their first opening-drive touchdown in 22 games, but after that, the Steelers’ much-maligned defense settled in and didn’t surrender another point. A 14-7 halftime lead seemed secure; Mike Tomlin’s team had won 14 straight games when leading at the half, trailing only Detroit in that department.

If you’re going to end a streak, I suppose you might as well make it ugly. The Steelers did just that.

The final thirty minutes were a combo platter of incompetence, cowardice, ignorance, confusion, and ineptitude.

Let’s go in order, shall we?

Incompetence

So many things happened that could fall into this bucket that it’s hard to narrow down the list, but let’s go with this: The defense, which bowed its back nicely after allowing that opening-drive score, reverted right back to its leaky ways at the start of the half and beyond. Seattle forced the Steelers to punt, then marched right down the field for a tying score.

It was obvious that when Seahawks Offensive Coordinator Klint Kubiak had a chance to script out a drive, he had Mike Tomlin and Teryl Austin in a blender. On Seattle’s half-opening drives, they totaled 17 plays for 145 yards, or a tidy 8.5 yards per play.

Other than a three-and-out that ended with a Sam Darnold interception, and a trio of plays designed to kill clock and force the Steelers to burn timeouts, the Seahawks did as they wished in the second half. They averaged 6.7 yards per play after posting 5.7 in the first half. They made the adjustments, the Steelers did not.

They also, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, ran the ball down the Steelers’ throats for the final thirty minutes. The holes were gaping, and the attempts at tackling were abominable.

Cowardice

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Tomlin, who famously “doesn’t live in his fears,” very much kowtowed to them when he had a chance to be aggressive and trust in in his offense. I know, crazy, right?

The game was tied at 14 and still very much in the balance when Aaron Rodgers hit Jonnu Smith for nine yards on third down, setting up a 4th and 1 at the Steelers’ 48. What happened next? That’s right, a punt!

Here was Tomlin after the game, defending the decision to kick, despite having a four-time MVP at quarterback, and presumably a plethora of options to get a single yard:

“It was a 14-14 game, and neither offense was lighting up at that juncture. We absorbed some attrition on defense and so I wanted to protect that group and keep them on a long field.”

Mike! Question for you! If you wanted to protect your banged-up defense, wouldn’t one way to do that, albeit one with a small level of risk, be to let your offense try to get one yard, and thus stay on the field, allowing said defense to rest? Also, aren’t you the guy who has routinely said that if you can’t get one yard when you need to, you don’t deserve to win? I’ll hang up and listen.

What, you might be asking yourself, did one automated, math-based fourth-down decision bot think of the decision? The bot did not like it! Well, the bot disagreed with it, at least. Bots don’t have emotions, which makes them different from Steelers fans, all of whom I imagine desperately wanted to see the team go for it.

Ignorance and Confusion

Pairing these two together, because why not? Kaleb Johnson is probably a shoo-in for Least Heads-Up Play of the NFL Season.

Yes, I’m making you watch this again.

Here’s what Johnson said afterwards:

“If I wasn’t sure (of the rule), if I was sure, it doesn’t matter. I’ve still got to do what I’ve got to do. I’ve still got to execute it the way it has to be executed. I’ve just got to stick to it and move on. It is part of life.”

That play marked the first time in over 40 years that a kicking team scored a touchdown with an end zone recovery.

It would be easy to blame Tomlin and Danny Smith for this, but you can lump me with the people who think it’s reasonable to at some point put the impetus on the player.

Either way, terrible all the way around, and the singular play for which this game will be remembered. Johnson, who has shown no burst whatsoever, probably shouldn’t get a helmet for several weeks. Perhaps he could take some sort of test on the rules to get his roster spot back.

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Ineptitude

This applies across the board, and not just to the second half, so let’s just stick with broad strokes.

-The Steelers still can’t run the football. They’ve got 41 carries for 125 yards through two games. Any sustained success in that department is fleeting.

-Their vaunted $158 million defense suffers lapse after lapse after lapse. Jalen Ramsey, despite having an interception, got beat routinely by Cooper Kupp, and also by rookie Tory Horton, whose first NFL catch was a touchdown with Ramsey trailing several steps behind. He also got cooked on a deep ball to Jaxon Smith-Njigba.

-$41 million man T.J. Watt was kept mostly away from Darnold, registering just two quarterback hurries. By and large, the defense couldn’t get to Darnold at all, and he routinely had all day to sit back and make decisions.

-Part of Watt’s silence was that Alex Highsmith was hurt, and the Seahawks didn’t respect whoever was lined up across from him, be it Nick Herbig or Jack Sawyer.

After the game, Watt tried to come to terms with the fact that the Steelers have now allowed the Jets and Seahawks, neither of them offensive powerhouses, to top 30 points:

“We’re too talented. We have way too good of schemes. To allow this to happen week after week.”

I don’t know, man. Are you? Other than a great play on the ball by Ramsey to secure an interception, and Cam Heyward tipping a pass that led to Herbig’s first-career pick, the defense didn’t do much in the way of splashy, game-flipping plays. And when the Seahawks needed to, they moved the ball at will.

It got so bad that Seahawks fullback Robbie Ouzts delivered a rare double pancake to Payton Wilson and Patrick Queen on a 20-yard run by Kenneth Walker. If any play outside of Johnson’s blunder was a microcosm of the game, and especially the second half, it was that one.

Sunday’s debacle was a loss that felt like more than just a single defeat. The defense is now a full Defcon 1 situation, and there was no Rodgers magic to bail them out. The coaching blunders were a mix of old (fourth-down cowardice) and new (seriously, how does Johnson not know the kickoff rule).

It was, in other words, a real debacle. And unless things change quickly, there will be more to come.