The Steelers 2018 season ended yesterday at Heinz Field with
a 16-13 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals, but today what feels more
significant than how it ended with that win is why it ended with that win.
Beating the Bengals raised the Steelers’ record to 9-6-1,
but all that gets them is the distinction of being the team with the best
record to miss these playoffs, because Baltimore defeated Cleveland to win the
AFC North, and Indianapolis handled Tennessee to secure the sixth and final
spot in the conference playoffs.
Over the next many weeks and months, there will be an
avalanche of opinions and theories offered as to why the this season ended with
no playoffs for the Steelers. Some will be based on statistics and others will
be driven by emotion, and it will fall to Steelers President Art Rooney II to
figure out what’s what and then chart a course for the team to follow to
address the pertinent issues during the offseason.
But that’s for another time, for a time likely to come after
much thought and consideration, as it should. Right now, though, there seems to
me to be one thing that put the Steelers in the position in which they found
themselves at the start of the Week 17 slate of games, and that thing is a major
contributor in their season ending about a month prematurely.
Turnover ratio.
Protecting the football is a non-negotiable element when it
comes to winning in the NFL, and when a team compounds a deficiency in that
category by not taking it away from its opponents, well, the degree of
difficulty toward becoming a successful team over the course of a particular
season increases exponentially. The 2018 Steelers weren’t particularly
fastidious when it came to protecting the football, but they were downright inept
when it came to mitigating their turnovers with takeaways.
As this regular season approached Thanksgiving, the Steelers
sat atop the AFC North with a 7-2-1 record fashioned largely on the strength of
a six-game winning streak. But starting on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the
Steelers went into a tailspin in which they lost four of their next five games
to bring them to the doorstep of their regular season finale needing help from
the Cleveland Browns to defend their AFC North title and squeeze into the
postseason.
All four of those post-Thanksgiving losses came in one-score
games, and in those losses the Steelers were a combined minus-6 in turnover
ratio, and in only one of those four were they as good as even in turnover
ratio. Certainly, the giving away of the ball was a critical element in the
losing, especially in Denver when one certain touchdown was fumbled through the
end zone for a touchback and then a late opportunity to tie the game was
thwarted by an end zone interception.
But as the season progressed and the Steelers’ body of work
expanded to give them a defensive identity, opponents had come to understand
that taking risks wasn’t necessarily all that risky against a unit largely
incapable of making them pay the ultimate price.
This despite coming into the final weekend with 48 sacks,
which put them third in the NFL, and that alone should have resulted in more
takeaways because the opposing quarterbacks were being forced into regularly
making quick decisions with the football that should have resulted in plenty of
opportunities for interceptions, and with defensive players constantly around
them while they were in the act of trying to throw the ball there should’ve
been a high probability of strip-sacks that led to fumble recoveries.
But after generating no takeaways against the Bengals, the
Steelers finished with 15, and four of those came in one late September game
against Tampa Bay. A far more typical outcome was what happened at Heinz Field
yesterday, when T.J. Watt forced two fumbles, one of which was a strip-sack,
and the Steelers also got their hands on two or three of Jess Driskel’s passes,
only to finish with no takeaways for the fifth time this season.
As they had so many times previously, the Steelers were able
to overcome their lack of takeaways, and the Bengals’ injury-depleted offense
was able to muster only a couple of field goals to complement their lone
takeaway – an interception that Shawn Williams returned 58 yards for a
touchdown – and so they escaped with that 16-13 victory.
Then with most of the 63,874 staying in their seats and many
of the Steelers finding a spot on the field that provided a good view of the
scoreboard, the final few minutes of Browns vs. Ravens took over Heinz Field.
Down by just two points, the Browns looked to be driving toward a go-ahead
field goal attempt, but the Ravens, who had come into Week 17 as one of only
three teams with fewer takeaways this season than the Steelers’ 15, put the
Browns away, clinched the division title, and effectively closed the door on
Pittsburgh’s playoff hopes.
And it all happened via an interception by linebacker C.J.
Mosley. Such is the power of a well-timed takeaway in the NFL.
No comments:
Post a Comment