Steelers lay an egg in disgusting first-half performance Texans

If you were one of the out-of-market fans who couldn't find the Pittsburgh Steelers on TV today, you didn't miss much. In fact, you can be glad that you didn't witness what the rest of us just did in the first half of Week 4 against the Houston Texans.

After gaining some momentum in their win on Sunday Night Football against the Las Vegas Raiders last week, Mike Tomlin's team laid an egg early this afternoon. This thing got ugly really fast.

It started with the Steelers surrendering a touchdown on the opening drive of the game. From there, quarterback Kenny Pickett threw an interception on one of his first passes from the afternoon -- a turnover that ultimately resulted in three points the other way for the Texans.

By the end of the first quarter, Pittsburgh trailed 10-0, and by halftime, the Steelers were down 16-0. Tomlin is fortunate that things didn't go even worse than what they did. His team looked atrocious.

Steelers have inexcusably poor start vs. Texans

Though the first two quarters of play, the Steelers mustered up just 53 total yards on 24 players, according to ESPN box score stats. On the defensive side of the football, they allowed 271 yards and 6.6 yards per play to the Texans.

Quarterback C.J. Stroud has ripped this defense to sheds in the first half, while Kenny Pickett has struggled mightily to move the chains. This was quite literally one of the worst first-half performances from Pittsburgh in recent memory.

What's worse is that this team showed no signs of life heading into halftime. The Steelers did have a shot to make a scoring drive with just under two minutes remaining in the first half, but a penalty killed the drive.

I wrote earlier in the week about how the Steelers might come out sluggish. They played a night game in Las Vegas before making an emergency landing in Kansas City. Just a few days later, they flew out to Houston for this Week 4 contest.

However, there is no excuse for how downright awful this team has been in the early going. The coaching staff needs to take some serious heat for this. Week 4 was a game that we would have circled on the calendar as a win, but this couldn't have gone any worse. We could see some mid-season firings at this rate. It's time for serious change.