PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – There are comments that are red flags for a football team, especially one past the halfway mark of the season. Steelers captain Cam Heyward said a big one after a 25-10 loss at the Chargers Sunday night.
Trust. Or in this case lack of it among your teammates.
“We talk about it, but do we really know what we are doing play-in and play-out,” Heyward said. “Do we trust the guy next to us? Defense, offense, do we trust each other to be in the right spots to make plays?”
There was more.
“I think that comes down to just trusting that the man next to you is going to do his job,” Heyward said. “It’s not about being a superhero and making some extravagant play, lock it in play-in and play-out. Trust the guy next to you and get it done.”
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Linebacker Patrick Queen said something similar to the superhero comment.
“Sometimes it’s not going to be that splash play that everybody thinks about, it’s going to come down to everybody executing,” Queen said. “It’s going to come down to everybody being in their gaps. You got to line up and everybody got to do their job extremely well to be able to get off the field.”
“Inconsistent as it could be,” said captain TJ Watt about the defense. “Too much up and down and not enough Steeler football. We can’t continue to live and die with the turnovers as a defense. We need to get off the field. We need to stop the run. Critical third downs, we need to do a better job. No excuse for it, we got to play better.”
It's not that the defense was the root of the Steelers problems on Sunday, but it made mistakes as well. To Watt’s point, they’ve been all over the map in terms of what you can expect from series-to-series, half-to-half and game-to-game.
“There were just plays to be made on defense that we didn’t,” Heyward said. “You gotta use this as a lesson and learn from your mistakes. On the offensive side of the ball, we had turnovers. Obviously, we didn’t convert, especially in the red zone. Special teams, same thing.”
“We need to get off the field,” Watt said. “Our job is to get on and off the field as soon as quick as possible. Good defenses spend a lot of time on the bench. We haven’t been doing that enough in totality this whole year.”
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“Get back to just playing football, there is too much up and down, it’s got to be more consistent, top to bottom,” Heyward said. “I’m not looking for an excuse, I’m just looking to play better.”
Heyward said they need to go back and reiterate things in practice and meetings. They need to get better and stop riding the rollercoaster. He said the sky isn’t falling but they need to address the problem. They’ve got to accept responsibility, not run away from it.
“Looking at the film, being honest with our teammates and owning it as a player,” Heyward said. “To have success on the field, can’t just have a good play and say, ‘oh, I did my job’. It’s got to be 60, 70 plays of locking in and doing your job.”
“You got to put your head down and work,” said linebacker Payton Wilson. “You got to go back in the lab. I know that’s what everyone says but it’s really the only thing you can do. We got to fix some things. We got to get a lot better.”
“We are going to have to take a look at it for sure,” Watt said. “That’s the third one this year, to lay an egg time after time is unacceptable. We need to look at everything.”
And do so quickly, Cincinnati is in town Sunday. Joe Flacco and the Bengals carved them up for 470 yards and 33 points in the last meeting.