The Steelers have a SERIOUS problem.... | Pittsburgh Steelers News

It's obvious after the Steelers' week two loss to the New England Patriots that they have serious problems surrounding their entire offense right now that need to be fixed if the Steelers expect to win any sort of games going into the future. How's everyone doing today? I'm recording this right after the game and it's a sad one, it's a frustrating one. It's hard to wrap your head around how bad this offense looked and we can kinda hop right into it. But before we hop right into it, wanna remind you guys to subscribe to the channel. You can follow along this entire season. I know it might seem a little hard right now to wanna follow along with the team, but you can catch all your Steelers news, anything that you could possibly want here on the channel. So subscribe and hit the notification bell. But let's just hop right into this. Steelers lose to the New England Patriots 20 to three. After week one, I didn't wanna make a conclusion and I didn't want to overreact, but the offense obviously struggled. Coming into this game, I was hoping to see some strides. I know the Steelers didn't have Michael Pittman, but this was so far off from where I thought we would be even early in the season. This offense is nowhere near where it needs to be. It's slow, it's sluggish, it's not dynamic. You have players on the offense that are dropping the ball. The offensive line is an entire mess. There's nothing about this offense that's cohesive right now. The defense was okay. It was all right. I mean, obviously there was no help from the offense. The zone that they constantly kept running, there was a few plays there where it did get busted wide open, but 20 points against a New England offense, yes, they're missing A.J. Brown, but I think collectively they're okay. Let's just say the defense is not the problem here, right? And then obviously the cherry on top. At the end of the game, Steelers waved the white flag. They binged Aaron Rodgers in favor of Mason Rudolph for the last couple plays there. The game was out of reach anyways, but I just thought just a fitting way to end the game is to kind of take a knee figuratively and just concede the loss. Now let's talk about the quarterback first with Aaron Rodgers. 23 for 39, 187 passing yards and one interception. He did not play well today really at all. He looked indecisive. That probably was a big reason why. A big reason why he was so indecisive was because he was constantly under pressure, constantly running away from pressure, but there were multiple times throughout the game where he needed to get the ball out of his hands. He didn't. Multiple times where it seemed like maybe there was something else open down the field. Not like the receivers were really helping him. There was only one real drive where they were able to string a few passes together and they were all to Jeremy Bernard. But besides that, it was a really bad game for everyone and I think it starts with Aaron Rodgers. Truly one of the worst games as a Steeler. They showed a graphic up at the, they put a graphic up at the end of the game. This was the first time since 2010 that a team led by Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers didn't score a touchdown. And if you remember last week, the one touchdown they scored came off of an interception to Quan Brisker. So through two weeks, they've yet to single-handedly score an offensive touchdown with no help from the defense. They've yet to do that. And I think a big reason why they've yet to do that comes from what I think is the main problem right now with the offense. There's so many things that you could pick apart right now, but if there's one main problem that I need to point to that needs to get better, it's the offensive line. Like I said, Rodgers had no time to throw. He was constantly running around. There was nothing he could do, really, in a lot of spots. The run game, like I said at the bottom here, was better statistically, but there was still no push from the front of the line. Jalen Warren and Rico Dotto constantly were getting hit before they even crossed the line of scrimmage, and it's just not a cohesive unit right now. You have a lot of players that seem like they're just not, I don't even know how to really put that, but Dylan Cook, Spencer Anderson, Troy Faton, who's not playing well, Zach Frazier is all right, I guess. I know Mace McCormick had a little bit of an injury there in the second half, but this offensive line, especially after Omar Khan constantly investing high draft picks into the offensive line for it to look like this, this is not the first or second year of Omar Khan as general manager. He's been general manager for a minute now, and he is drafting these offensive linemen, and this is what it looks like, week two in 2026. It's terrible, and it can't continue if the offense wants to be anywhere near league average at that. I can't even put any high expectations for this offense. At this point, if they can get back to a league average, I'd be surprised, truly. And another part why this offense has really, really struggled is the wide receivers, and I'll pinpoint one right now. He's been a punching bag this week and next week, but DK Metcalf has been bad, capital B bad, through these first two games. Today, four catches for 27 yards. A few of those catches came late in the game. It was a long stretch there into the game where he was at two catches for two yards. They couldn't get him into the offense. When they did try to get him to the offense, he dropped passes. There was one drop pass that was brutal. It would've been a first down. The Seahawks would've kept moving. Maybe the game would've ended a little differently. I think the result that we got was gonna come anyways. That was pretty inevitable with how bad the team played. But again, he's dropping the ball, and it's of major concern. He's not the best receiver on the team right now. He's just not. He's listed as the wide receiver one, but he's not playing like it. And he needs to absolutely switch it up in week three. Week four, find something. I don't even know what they can do because the Steelers tried to get him involved in some ways. They threw screen passes to him, nothing. You try to get him involved, throw him the ball downfield, he drops it. So obviously there's a lot going on there right now. They were very high with him in camp, but none of that is translated at all. I guess a bright spot, if you wanna call it that, the offense today was the use of Jeremy Bernard. Four catches for 35 yards. I believe all of those catches, I'm pretty sure all of those catches, came on one drive. It was an awesome drive. It was awesome to see Jeremy really eat in that drive. Obviously didn't end in a touchdown, and then follows it up. One of the last drives of the game, fumbles the ball. He didn't really catch it to begin with, but kind of juggles the ball, and then it's an interception for the other team. Roman Wilson, five for 28. Again, a lot of those receptions came at the end of the game. And then Pat Farrar moved four for 32. Also have to include the running backs here as well. Not a whole lot to talk about, really. Like I said earlier, it's better than last week statistically, I suppose. 91 total rushing yards on 23 attempts for four yards of rush, not great. Jalen Warren had a pretty solid game. He probably was the best offensive player that we had on the entire field. 11-4, 43 on the ground. He had two catches for 43 yards. One of them was a longer catch that kind of inflates those numbers. And then Rico Doudle, he did leave the game in the second half with a toe injury. So that's something that we'll have to monitor as we head into the next week. Flip over from the offense to the defense here. Like I mentioned, the defense is not at fault here at all. Did they let some play, did they make mistakes? Did they have some long plays happen? Obviously, they had the long Trayvon Henderson touchdown really early in the game. 60-yard bomb to Romeo Dobbs in the second half. But all together, I think it was all right. Again, they're getting no support from an offense. They're getting support from an offense that scored three points, three, and was constantly punting and turned the ball over. It's hard to really expect much more out of any defense when your offense is doing that. But like I have pulled up here, here's some stats. T.J. Watt, again, really great game. Second half in a TFL. Alex Highsmith had a full sack. He had two half sacks. So together, he had one, two TFLs for him, half a sack for Nick Herbig, three TFLs for, wait, sorry, half a sack for Derek Harmon, and then three TFLs for Nick Herbig. So again, not a terrible output from the defense. You wish I was almost expecting a splash play from the team, from the defense at some point, because it's been so commonplace that they've been able to do that. But it just never came to fruition. You can't point the blame on them. They can't be the Superman of the team every single game. That's just not sustainable at all. So where do we go from this point? Well, next week, the Steelers play the Cincinnati Bengals, a really good Cincinnati Bengals team. Obviously, everyone knows about how amazing that offense is. Joe Burrow, T. Higgins, Jamar Chase, Chase Brown, list goes on and on and on. And then on top of that, their defense has shown strides. They are not obviously great, but they are a solid defense now, a complimentary defense that makes them much more dangerous than they were last year. So the offense, obviously, I don't need to tell you this, needs to get better, but I don't know how it gets better. I don't know where you go from here. Obviously, you need to get DK Metcalf's confidence up. You need to create more cohesion from this offensive line to give Rodgers some time to throw. And what you saw week one, they gave me a little bit of hope. With the offense was their ability to try to throw the ball downfield, at least their willingness to throw the ball downfield. They didn't do that at all this game. I don't know if that was a scheme problem, if that was a play-calling problem, if Aaron Rodgers had 0.01%, one second to throw the ball. Probably kind of a mix of all those things, but that just wasn't happening. So I don't know where you go. It's gonna be a tough week for practice for the Steelers. Hopefully they can right the ship offensively at all or show any strides. And the defense needs to put on that Superman cape. It feels like they need to put on that Superman cape every single week until the offense gets better for the Steelers to be competitive in any game, any game. So that's gonna kind of do it for everything that I have. We'll be back really soon covering practice this week, covering the Joey Porter Jr. situation, all that stuff. You can find it here on the channel. Hopefully you guys have a great rest of your Sunday. Try to calm down from this. It's gonna be okay. I say that and I don't really know, but we're all in this together, I suppose. So hopefully you guys have a great rest of your day. See you guys later.