The Steelers have been defeated. They lost to the Washington Football Team at Heinz Field. Here is what went wrong.
The Steelers lost to the Washington Football Team earning their first loss of the season. I would say there were three main reasons they lost this game. First, they dropped a lot of passes, second, Randy Fichtner called a horrible game, and third, the Steelers did not make plays at opportune times.
All three of the factors lead to them losing to a bad Washington Football Team that that had a 4-7 record in the bad NFC East. This was easily the Steeler’s worst game of the season.
Dropped Passes
The Steelers had a lot of drops in the game. Diontae Johnson was the main culprit and he has struggled with dropped passes over the last two games. The Steelers ended the night with seven dropped passes. The problem was these dropped passes were in key situations and forced the Steelers to have to punt and go for it when they didn’t want to.
Mike Tomlin needs to get Diontae Johnson on the jugs machine. He is a receiver with outstanding potential but holding onto the ball has been a struggle for him as of late. If he takes the extra time on the jugs machine, he could become an outstanding receiver.
Bad offensive play call
Randy Fichtner also called a horrible game. This was his worst game of the year. He called a running play on third and ten deep in Steelers territory with a seven-point lead. He needed to get more aggressive. Also on the Washington Football Team’s goal-line stand, he ran the ball on all four downs. He lacked aggressiveness and not taking risks became a risk in itself.
The team tried throwing underneath all game. It worked on some plays, but it also got figured out by the Football team. This Steelers needed to add more running plays and also stretch the field more to set up the underneath. When the opposition knows that it is coming, it is not effective.
Poor situational football
The Black & Gold also did not make plays at opportune times. They did not convert on either fourth-down attempt and that made losing Chris Boswell worse. Matthew Wright is an inexperienced kicker, but you still pay him to play on Sundays and they were afraid to use him.
They also weren’t converting first downs. According to ESPN, they only converted 6 of 15 tries on third down. That would probably explain why they only scored 17 points against a 4-7 team that was 3-7 before this game.
Conclusion
This loss falls on the coaches and the players. There were some bright spots like TJ Watt but otherwise, this Steelers team did not bring it this Monday night.
It must be hard to play on Wednesday and then turn around and play again on Monday. Their routines may have been thrown off by the fact that the Ravens game got moved three times. This is not an excuse however, the Steelers need to come prepared to play every game.