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It is one thing to lose a football game.
It is something much worse to be ridiculed on national television.
The Steelers took a well-deserved beating on the Amazon Prime telecast Thursday night on their way to an embarrassing 21-18 home loss to the New England Patriots that left their playoff hopes on life support and turned up the heat on the man most responsible for the rotten performance, Mike Tomlin.
“Playing a 2-10 team two weeks in a row, and this is their effort?” analyst Kirk Herbstreit asked.
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“Pretty terrible,” play-by-play man Al Michaels added.
It was what we have come to expect from these sorry Steelers. Mental mistakes. Wasted timeouts. An inability to convert third downs. Another short-yardage failure. Another poor punt by Pressley Harvin III.
It all comes back to Tomlin, whose approval rating in this town has never been lower.
The Steelers dug themselves a 21-3 hole against a team that came in averaging an NFL-worst 12.3 points per game and had scored a total of 13 points in their previous three games. It was easy to see it was going to be a long night from the start when the Patriots went 75 yards for a touchdown on their opening drive. Quarterback Bailey Zappe, who did a fair Tom Brady impersonation and finished with three touchdown passes and a 115.2 passer rating, connected with JuJu Smith-Schuster or a 37-yard gain on the third play of the possession. It was the Patriots’ first completion of 30 yards this season.
The Steelers never recovered.
And you didn’t think it could get worse after the 24-10 home loss to the pathetic Arizona Cardinals on Sunday.
This latest fiasco made three losses in four games, if you count the defeat in Cleveland on Nov. 19 to a rookie quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson.
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It’s enough to make you wonder what the Steelers have to do to salvage their season.
Or if they even can.
The Steelers fired Matt Canada as offensive coordinator. That didn’t do much of anything to help the team’s horrible offense. It produced just 264 yards of offense against the Patriots and was 3-of-14 on third downs. Somehow, though, it did manage a rare second touchdown.
The Steelers changed quarterbacks out of necessity after Kenny Pickett’s ankle injury against Arizona. Mitch Trubisky was no better. He threw a 25-yard touchdown pass to Diontae Johnson but also had an interception that set up an 11-yard touchdown drive by the Patriots and led to a fairly robust “Ma-son Ru-dolph!” chant through Acrisure Stadium.
There’s not much left to change.
Well, other than the head coach.
That’s something Art Rooney II will have to seriously consider after the season if the Steelers don’t find a miracle turnaround.
It’s easy to think Tomlin’s shelf life here might just be expiring in his 17th season.
The Steelers still have a winning record at 7-6 but likely will have to win three of their final four games against Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Seattle and Baltimore to make the playoffs. If they fall short, it will be for the second season in a row and the fourth time in the past six seasons. They haven’t won a playoff game since the 2016 season.
This collapse is a poor reflection of Tomlin.
There was another illegal-formation penalty when Chuks Okorafor failed to line up properly. That’s inexcusable at this point of the season.
The Steelers failed on a 4th-and-2 play from the Patriots 8 on the first play of the fourth quarter after being set up by an interception and return by Mykal Walker to the New England 16. “They got seven points off their turnover on the short field. We got zero off ours,” Tomlin said. “That was the difference in the game.”
The Steelers wasted two timeouts in the fourth quarter, one when they didn’t get a play call to Trubisky on time, the other before they decided to have Trubisky sneak for a first down on a fourth-down play. Speaking of inexcusable.
And how about the play selection on the Steelers’ final real drive? Canada couldn’t have done any worse. The team had a 3rd-and-2 on its 49 with a little more than 2 minutes left. One or two running plays likely would have given them a first down and pushed them closer for a tying field-goal try by Chris Boswell. But Trubisky threw incomplete for George Pickens on third down and then incomplete for Diontae Johnson on a deep ball on fourth down.
I couldn’t help but wish that Ben Roethlisberger, who was in the house with his two sons, had come out of his suite to throw those two passes.
Tomlin was terse after the game when asked where the sinking Steelers go from here.
“We get ready for our next opportunity. That’s what we always do. Obviously, this stings, but we’ll be back.”
Pressed about how he can possibly feel confident about his team in its current state, Tomlin growled, “Because this is what we do. This is who we are.”
No, what the Steelers are, at least at the moment, is a lousy football team headed nowhere.
Again.
Ron Cook: rcook@post-gazette.com and Twitter@RonCookPG. Ron Cook can be heard on the “Cook and Joe” show on weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan
First Published December 8, 2023, 3:30am
Ron Cook: The Steelers have officially hit rock bottom
