The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Cleveland Browns 27-6, took first place in the AFC North, and rushed for 200 yards, but Mike McCarthy left the game frustrated after three snaps from the Browns’ 2-yard line that produced zero yards and only three points.
McCarthy had good reason to revisit them. Pittsburgh reached first-and-goal after Rico Dowdle converted third-and-2 with a run up the middle, then immediately went away from the ground game for two straight incomplete passes before Jaylen Warren was stuffed on third down. Chris Boswell’s 20-yard field goal salvaged the possession.
Pittsburgh’s red-zone problems are old news at this point. The Steelers converted only one of four red-zone trips against New Orleans a week earlier. Against Cleveland, they improved to three touchdowns on five trips, but the first failure looked less like a talent problem and more like an offense talking itself out of its strength.
Pittsburgh Steelers abandoned their best answer at the goal line
Pittsburgh had just marched 86 yards in 13 plays, and Warren’s 51-yard run had supplied the drive’s biggest gain. Dowdle had already scored on a 9-yard run earlier in the game. The Steelers finished with 200 rushing yards, with Warren accounting for 143 of them on 17 carries.
Then came first-and-goal from the 2.
Aaron Rodgers threw an incomplete pass to DK Metcalf on first down and incomplete again on second down. Warren finally got the ball on third-and-goal, but Cleveland had every reason to attack the run by then and stopped him at the line.
“That series there, I wish I could have those three plays back,” McCarthy said after the game. “Those are things that you go back and you look at. But yeah, I wish I had that sequence back.”
Coach McCarthy spoke to the media after our win over the Browns. @Acrisure pic.twitter.com/h8eyTV4mXQ
— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) November 1, 2026
McCarthy disliked the outcome, but that’s different from saying each individual call was flawed. Some of Pittsburgh’s goal-line passes to Metcalf can start as runs, with an alert that allows Rodgers to throw based on the defensive look. Without knowing every check and pre-snap instruction, we can't pin both throws solely on McCarthy.
The problem was less about one call than about how the three worked together. Pittsburgh had just proven Cleveland could be moved on the ground, and two consecutive passes set up a third down where Warren received the ball with the defense prepared to squeeze every interior gap. If Rodgers had an advantageous one-on-one look to Metcalf on first down, the decision to take the shot makes sense. Returning immediately to another pass is where the possession started losing its identity.
Pittsburgh’s passing game also gave McCarthy little reason to keep forcing the issue. Rodgers finished 13-of-25 for 172 yards with no touchdown passes and an interception. Metcalf caught one of six targets for four yards.
“Offensively, we definitely feel like we should have scored more points today,” McCarthy said.
The Steelers can live with that lesson after winning by 21. They won’t get the same margin for experimentation after the bye, when they travel to Cincinnati on Nov. 15. Pittsburgh now has evidence that its ground game can dictate a matchup. McCarthy’s next job is making sure the play sheet doesn’t get in the way once that ground game reaches the goal line.
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