Steelers vs. Bills: Road to the playoffs took a detour

The Steelers undrafted, rookie signal-caller made too many mistakes and doomed the offense

Let’s just call the performance by Devlin Hodges what it was; Terrible.  Hodges finished the night with 23 completions on 38 passing attempts for 202 yards.  He threw one TD pass, but also threw 4 INTs, which proved just too much for the offense to overcome.

Look, I really hope that ‘Duck’ will put this performance behind him, will come out in next week’s game and light it up, so to speak.  The reality is that he needs to rebound because he did not play well.  Are we expecting too much from an undrafted, rookie free agent QB? Maybe, maybe not.

On a night where we needed Hodges and the offense to finally become the complimentary piece to the defense, the offense imploded.  As was stated above, the ‘O’ line had neither a good game in pass protection nor in the run game.  In what was an atypical performance, the offensive line surrendered 4 sacks.

The ‘O’ line also was not able to establish control of the line of scrimmage in the run game.  The Steelers offense finished with a meager 51 yards rushing.  Coupled with the aforementioned 4 INTs, 51 yards rushing generally do not lead to victory; it did not against the Bills.

Against the Bills, The Steelers offense seemingly was and seemingly has been stuck in neutral all season.  Through 14 games of the season, the offense is now ranked 30th in average yards per game.  We had been ranked 28th almost the entire year.  Well, I guess there’s something to be said for consistency.

Let’s take a look at how the defense performed.