Steelers offense finally looked like a legitimate NFL offense
Finally, finally, finally, the Steelers offense looked like a 'real' NFL offense. I don't think it's any coincidence that in the first game, after Mike Tomlin made the decision to move on from Matt Canada, we amassed over four hundred yards of offense. We still didn't score enough points in my opinion, but we scored enough points in this game to win.
Think about that for a minute. You would think it would have taken the offense a little bit of time to adjust to a new play-caller, but it took no time at all. Hats off to Mike Sullivan. I think he called a great game and put the offense in a position to be a major factor in why we beat the Bengals as opposed to having the defense close out the game.
According to ESPN, the Steelers offense generated twenty-two first downs, was eight for seventeen on thrid-downs for a conversion rate of forty-seven percent, still not great, but much better than it had been, ran sixty-eight plays for four-hundred and twenty-one yards and possessed the ball for a little over thirty-seven minutes.
We had a veritable explosion and outgained our opponent for the first time all season. Again, think about that for a minute. We have seven wins thus far in the 2023 season and the win against the Bengals marked the first time we outgained an opponent. That is truly incredible and frankly sad at the same time.
Let's see what we learned on the defensive side of the ball.