Pittsburgh Steelers have nobody to blame but everybody

After a dismal start, Pittsburgh Steelers fans are looking in every nook and cranny to find a reason for the team’s start.

What separates football from every other sport is simple: It’s the ultimate team game. A total of 22 players consume the field for each and every snap, and should a single one of those players fail to execute their job, the whole play can go array. We’ve found this out the hard way with the Pittsburgh Steelers, with many players failing to do their jobs (and sometimes not even having the right amount of players on the field).

I mean, we’re talking about the Steelers. The six-time Super Bowl champions, current back-to-back division champion playing out of Pittsburgh, also known as the city of champions. If expectations were any higher, Mr. Dan Rooney himself would be able to touch them. Those expectations are rightfully place, as the Steelers appear to have all the puzzle pieces in place to make serious runs at deep playoff runs every year.

Except this year.

I would say all hell has broken loose in Pittsburgh, but that might be an understatement. Between the absence of Le’Veon Bell and the absence of potential this team has, things aren’t right in the steel city after the beloved Steelers sit at the bottom of the AFC North with a 1-2-1 record after week four.

So who’s to blame for the slow start? Scour social media and the line-up of potential candidates is still extending as you read this. Everybody from General Manager Kevin Colbert to Head Coach Mike Tomlin is being held as responsible, down to even the players themselves. As humans, it’s natural to seek a sole proprietor for misfortunes, and cheering for your favorite football team is no different.

After extensive studying and research, divulging and ingesting the first four games of the season, the answer has finally revealed itself. Steelers fans now can rest easy knowing who is at fault for the unsettling performances thus far.

Their name? Everybody.

The struggles have been kind to absolutely nobody on this roster, or in the front office either. Many want to point the finger to the defensive side of the ball, starting with defensive coordinator Keith Butler. Butler’s defense has been historically bad in the last five stretch of games, dating back to the home playoff loss against Jacksonville in which 45 points were scored on the defense. The narrative continues in 2018, as the team has allowed 400 yards of offense in three consecutive games now, giving up 29 points per game along the way.

Butler can be held for a large amount of the lack of success considering his position. Many times, players are still trying to communicate while the ball is snapped, or worse, during the play. It was revealed during the early parts of the season that the defense was found to be running two different plays at the same time, an obvious recipe for disaster.

Butler’s play-calling and personnel grouping can also come into question, as too many times we’ve seen Butler stay aggressive in scenarios where it isn’t deemed necessary and vice-versa. How many times do we need to see linebackers lined up outside in coverage on receivers?

Yet the blame doesn’t fall solely on Butler, as he can only stand and watch from the sidelines. At a certain point, responsibility needs to fall on the players to execute game-plans and simple assignments. The switch of Bud Dupree and T.J. Watt has both players playing at higher levels, yet there is not consistent enough pressure from the edge to make quarterbacks feel uncomfortable.

On the interior, the defensive line as a whole has remained extremely quiet. Where is Cam Heyward and Stephon Tuitt? Two Pro-Bowl caliber defensive linemen have yet to truly make their presence felt on the field. The play of Vince Williams and Jon Bostic has been acceptable so far, but when do they take the next step up in their play?

As far as the Steelers secondary goes, that could be an entirely separate article on its own. I’ll keep it simple: Anybody that isn’t by the name of Sean Davis, Mike Hilton or Joe Haden needs to play better. The rotation of Artie Burns and Coty Sensabaugh until “somebody separates themselves” is essentially grasping at straws at this point. Burns has the talent, but has been beaten too consistently to be a reliable corner opposite of Haden.

This defense isn’t the same as the legendary Steel Curtain defense of the 1970’s, or even the defense of the late 2000’s Steelers teams. Yet it’s a different game, as the league is evolving into an offensive-friendly league, and it appears Pittsburgh just hasn’t accepted the fact they need to evolve on the defensive side of the ball as well. It’s one thing to be good at either defending the pass or stopping the run, but if you can’t do both, you have serious problems on your hands.

The offense isn’t free of criticism, either.

Offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner replaced the vilified Todd Haley after concluding the 2017 season with hopes of running a better offense suited to the team. Four weeks into 2018, where is this offense at? The no-huddle offense is a strength for quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, why has this not been utilized yet?

We jumped on Haley for his questionable play-calling, yet it feels as if nothing has changed in that department. Handing off from the shotgun on 2nd and 20? Deep passes down the field on 3rd and short? Let’s stop with the cute play-calls, too. I’m a big fan of Ryan Switzer, no need to have him consistently next to Roethlisberger out of shotgun.

This offense will only go as far as Roethlisberger will take them. Big Ben currently leads the league in passing yards, and is on pace for one remarkable season in terms of throwing the football.

JuJu Smith-Schuster has been the team’s leading receiver thus far, picking up where he left off from his rookie season. Yet the real story of the team has been Antonio Brown’s presence, or lack thereof. The Roethlisberger-Brown connection was once considered the best in the league. Now, it’s nowhere near the tier it once established. This largely falls on Roethlisberger, who just can’t seem to throw a consistently accurate ball to the hands of Brown.

One cause of this (notice a trend: These all intertwine with each other) has been the sub-par play of the Steelers offensive line. With a unit that was supposed to be one of the best in the league with over $100 million devoted to it, both pass and run-blocking has not been to the standard that was set by this very group the past few seasons.

James Conner has been a great story. When actually given a chance to run the ball over ten times, Conner averages 4.0+ yards per carry. Yet when the team has chosen to abandon the run early in games, it doesn’t help to give the second year back small doses here and there. He’s not Bell, we fully comprehend this.

Combine all of the above mentioned and squeeze in the factoid that a lot of the fan base simply doesn’t like the current head coach of the Steelers. The criticism of Tomlin, at times, has been well deserved. Sometimes it feels like he truly doesn’t have a grip on his locker room, and his game management hasn’t always been the best.

This isn’t a calling card for Tomlin to lose his job, but there are things that need to be addressed and conversations that need to be had. Change needs to happen through every avenue of this roster and coaching staff, and it all starts with Tomlin taking that initiative.

We’re only a quarter of the way through the season. There’s plenty of time to right the ship and get things back on course. Yet with the current state of the division (Bengals and Ravens look capable of grabbing the division crown), time may not be in favor of the Steelers. Next Sunday against Atlanta will speak volumes of where this team is at. Undoubtedly so, these problems are foreign to the Steelers. There hasn’t been this much negative media attention surrounding this team in perhaps it’s history in the modern Super Bowl era.

Everybody in the Steelers facility has a job to do, a job that can absolutely be done better than in previous weeks. In football, you win and lose as a team, regardless of the efforts of individuals. Turning the tide of this season will require the entire team to flip the script of a 1-2-1 start.