Labriola on loss to the Raiders

The first Sunday of an NFL regular season is sometimes referred to as an overreaction Sunday, as winning teams are cheered for performances that may have been nothing more than one, while losing teams warts can end up being described as devastating and irreparable. The second Sunday of an NFL season then inevitably becomes Redemption Sunday, when the league settles into its natural state, which can be described as parity or mediocrity, depending on the observer’s level of cynicism. individual.

The 2021 regular season is two weeks old, and by the end of Monday night’s game between Green Bay and Detroit, a few 0-1 teams after Week 1, 18 of the league’s 32 teams should be at 1-1. While it’s a scientific fact that water always finds its level, it’s a fact of life in the NFL that the most common winning and losing streaks both lie back to back.

The Steelers were among the teams that saw their winning streak interrupted during the Week 2 schedule, and draw an analogy to why they lost, 26-17, to the Raiders at Heinz Field, it is because they tried to make bread without yeast.

You see, the Steelers are one of those teams that can win just about any game against any opponent if they play well, just like they can lose any game against any opponent. opponent if they don’t. There are no Alabama v Mercer clashes in the Any Given Sunday League. Against the Raiders, the Steelers didn’t play well, they didn’t follow the recipe, so to speak, and so what came out of the oven after more than three hours was inedible.

The Steelers have a specific recipe for winning this season because they are an imperfect team, a team that goes in every game they play with certain shortcomings besides being one that goes in every game being an injury or two away. others, or more pronounced, deficiencies. The Raiders have successfully exploited some of them, and attrition has increased the misery. Add it up, and it turned an otherwise perfect Sunday afternoon in mid-September into a disappointment for the 63,707 paying customers.

On September 12 in Buffalo, the Steelers followed the recipe religiously and were rewarded with a 23-16 victory over a Bills team that rebounded with a 35-0 shellacking from the Miami Dolphins the following Sunday. Either way, the Steelers are most likely not as good as they showed them at Buffalo, and the Dolphins aren’t worth as much as they showed against the Bills.

The Steelers’ troubles actually started about 48 hours before they got the opening kickoff against the Raiders. Joe Haden and Devin Bush had both appeared on the injury report with bad groins, and the Steelers were at risk of being left without two critical elements for a defense that would face an offense that had racked up 491 total net yards and scored. 33 points against Baltimore’s historically stingy and physical defense. Haden and Bush were both inactive against the Raiders, and it wasn’t long before the Steelers lost two other important pieces – Tyson Alualu to a broken ankle and TJ Watt to a groin injury.

Knowing it would take a village to face Darren Waller, a tight winger by description who was more of a Chase Claypool athletically, the Steelers’ defense was neutralized by losses to Haden, Bush, Alualu and Watt. The pressure on quarterback Derek Carr was less fierce, and the cover possibilities on Waller and Henry Ruggs became more predictable to accommodate the skills of players who had to step up and play more minutes and fill larger roles. .

Maybe that was a big part of the problem, but it was still only part of the problem. Open field tackles against the Bills weren’t done with the same consistency against the Raiders. The way the cover played down Stephon Diggs didn’t happen against Henry Ruggs, who passed Ahkello Witherspoon and moved behind Minkah Fitzpatrick for a 61-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter that turned a two-point Raiders lead into a nine-point lead from the Raiders.

And the way the different phases complemented each other in Buffalo was missing at Heinz Field. There was no splash play on the special teams, where there was a blocked punt for a touchdown against the Bills. In the second half against Buffalo, the offense responded to the points scored by the Bills with a practice that came right back and restored the size of the lead. Against the Raiders, it worked the other way around, with the defense unable to keep Las Vegas off the scoreboard after offensive scores that ultimately nullified any progress towards a comeback.

When JuJu Smith-Schuster ran 3 yards for a touchdown to turn a 6-0 deficit into a 7-6 lead, the Raiders went straight to the field and reclaimed the lead, 9-7, with a command. from 53 yards who scored a basket of 41 yards. When Najee Harris’ 25-yard catch-and-run for a touchdown reduced a 16-7 deficit to 16-14, the Raiders responded with that 61-yard touchdown pass to Ruggs. And when Chris Boswell hit a 56-yard field goal to make it a one-scoring game, 23-17, with 3:42 left in the fourth quarter, the Raiders responded again by moving 46 yards to set up a 45-yard one. field goal with 20 seconds remaining to score the result.

When Ben Roethlisberger had said before the start of the regular season that offense was going to be a work in progress, that there would be hardships to endure as a result, it was assumed that the defense would be there to support the process. But now, with Alualu possibly finished for the season, and with Watt, Haden, and Bush all facing soft tissue injuries of unknown severity, it would help if the offense could speed up its development. Because right now the 2021 offense looks too much like the 2020 version which eventually became a version that couldn’t run the ball effectively and had to rely too much on short passes and hoping the receiver could then run for the first try or get it in the end zone.

Roethlisberger completed passes to seven receivers, and only two averaged over 10 yards per catch, while Carr completed passes to nine and six receivers averaging over 10 yards per catch.

“I think we’re still working on it,” Roethlisberger said of the offensive identity after two games. “I think the good news, if you will, is that it’s still early days and we can try – we still have time to find out. We have a good team (from Cincinnati) coming here (Sunday next), a division opponent. We have to get it right. And it’s frustrating. The best way to find an identity is for the quarterback to play better. So that’s what I have to do. So I I’m going to work on me to get ready to go and do better reads, better throws and try to put ourselves in a position to win a football game. ”

And the thing is, it can happen. But they have to follow the recipe.