Steelers vs. Ravens Week 12 Matchup did show us one great thing

The Steelers did underperform against the Ravens in Week 12. There were a lot of mistakes.

To be honest, in most of the game we saw the Steelers underperform. We saw them give up a huge play late in the game on defense, we saw them make a special teams mistake, which we haven’t seen Ray-Ray McCloud make yet. Special teams coordinator Danny Smith is in the Covid protocol, and that likely had something to do with it.  We saw them have a ton of issues in the RedZone. However, of all the things we saw the Steelers do wrong, there was one area in which they performed better in the second matchup than they did in the first against Baltimore.

Steelers were able to move the ball

Until the Steelers got into the RedZone, they did move the ball significantly better than they did in the first game, and better than we have seen in most of the games this season. It isn’t good that Ben had to throw it 51 times to do it. It has become obviously clear that Benny Snell Jr. is not able to overcome the offensive line’s weaknesses in run blocking. The run games will probably continue to be dormant until James Conner gets back. Yet, the Steelers found themselves in the RedZone 5 times in Week 12 against the Ravens. In their first matchup, they only got in the RedZone 3 times.

This is rather interesting considering the Ravens turned the ball over twice as many times in Week 7 than in Week 12.  You could make a case that the Ravens were dealing with a lot of missing personnel on their defense, however, at the start of the Week 12 Matchup their secondary, and most of their linebackers were healthy and ready to go for this game. The Steelers had a lot more success on offense until they got to the RedZone.