4 reasons Steelers will be better than they were in Week 3

The Steelers fell apart in their Week 3 loss to the Bengals.

The Steelers dropped a winnable game against Cincinnati in Week 3. It was an abysmal performance in all 3 phases when all was said and done. However, I am not going to jump on the trend of announcing that Pittsburgh is entering the dark ages after 1 terrible game.

Like it or not it was a better loss than the Packers’ Week 1 38-3 clubbing by the Saints. Ironically involving the quarterback, some people are dreaming of coming to Pittsburgh at the end of the season. Instead, I’d rather point out realistic reasons as to why this loss was more of an anomaly for the Steelers.

First, injuries are as big a part of the loss as anything.

The list of injuries was too long to explain to someone through words alone, so I looked up the Steelers snap count for this game in ProFootballReference and made a pie chart to visualize just how bad the injury situation was by the end of the game.

To give the chart context there were 40 players that played at least 1 snap on offense or defense Sunday against the Bengals. Only 17 of those 40 players were starters. The part that makes it that much worse is that 16 of the other players were either ‘3rd string’ or lower on the depth chart. Some players’ roles change based on packages or formations however this is based on our most used packages on offense and defense.

This doesn’t take into account the importance of certain players and their roles. Tj Watt is possibly the best defensive player in the entire league while both Stephon Tuitt and Tyson Alualu are 2 of the best if not the two best run defenders on our team.