3 things we learned from Steelers loss against the Washington Football Team

The Steelers cannot run the ball with any consistency or with any effectiveness

Having been a Steelers fan since 1978, I grew up watching the ‘power run’ game that we deployed for the balance of the 1970s and well into the 2000s.  Steelers fans have simply grown accustomed to us being able to at least get a yard if we needed a yard to pick up a first down.

We have also become accustomed to the Steelers being able to ‘pound the rock’ in a ‘goal to go’ situation.  Neither of the aforementioned seemed to work against the Washington Football Team. According to ESPN.com, we ran the ball 21 times for 14 yards; let that marinate for a minute.

The Steelers ran the ball for 14 yards; that is disgraceful.  It was almost like we weren’t even trying to run the ball.  Intrinsically, I know we did try to run the ball, but we were just not effective in doing so.  After being up 0-14 on the strength of our passing game, led by Ben Roethlisberger, our franchise QB, we just could not seem to get into any kind of rhythm, thus we had a difficult time sustaining drives.

What really frustrated me is this:  on a short week, I would have thought that we would have wanted to establish the running game.  I can probably count on one hand the number of snaps our FB actually lined up at FB and we called a typical Steelers running play.  This predilection to use the passing game as an extension as the running game is not going to get it done, it’s just not.

Let’s take a look at the second thing we learned.