Pittsburgh Steelers: 3 bright spots in a bad loss to Oakland

The Pittsburgh Steelers’ already bad stretch has taken an even darker turn. With three straight losses, this one in Oakland pretty much tops them all.

It’s been a rough stretch for the Steelers. You might say it’s as bad as it being 1995 since your last win in Oakland. Losses to Denver and the L.A. Chargers are tough to take when in a playoff race, but losing to a 2-10 Oakland team in a really tough stretch on the schedule is catastrophic.

The first half was pretty mediocre, only scoring 14 points. The offense did only have four possessions in the first half and got into the red zone on three of them. Those resulted in two touchdowns and a missed field goal by Chris Boswell.

The second half is where things went bad. Ben Roethlisberger didn’t leave the locker room when the team went to the field for the second half with a rib injury. Josh Dobbs took over as the quarterback and the offense struggled mightily. In the four drives with Dobbs under center, they only totaled 64 yards combined with two punts, a turnover on downs, and an interception.

Oakland took a 17-14 lead with under six minutes to go in the game when Big Ben took over the offense again. He drove the offense down the field to take the lead back. Unfortunately, the defense couldn’t stop Derek Carr and the Oakland offense from scoring the go-ahead touchdown with 21 seconds remaining.

After an amazing hook-and-ladder play to JuJu Smith-Schuster, the Steelers were in range to kick the game-tying field goal. On the try, Chris Boswell slipped on his plant foot and the kick came out extremely low and was blocked. What a way to end it.

Despite the horrific loss, there were some bright spots.