MORE Steelers News After PIT’s Week 2 Loss To Seattle: Alex Highsmith Injury News + 4 BIG Concerns

MORE Steelers News After PIT’s Week 2 Loss To Seattle: Alex Highsmith Injury News + 4 BIG Concerns

What’s going on, Steelers fans? I hope you’re enjoying your Sunday evening uh after the Pittsburgh Steelers lost their week 2 matchup versus the Seattle Seahawks. We got more to talk about here today. Uh I recommend you guys check out our instant reaction video that we actually recorded right after um the game today during our live watch party. I put out my takeaways. Um and a lot of that still stands, but we got some updates from Mike Tomlin and Aaron Rogers and their postgame press conferences. Got some very big injury updates, including one on Alex Heismith here coming up. Uh, and then I’m going to finish today’s show by going over my list of really big concerns that the Steelers need to get right and need to fix if they want to be a Super Bowl caliber team this year. And then four silver linings uh that I’ve taken away from these first two games as well. Uh, so let’s just start with the injury updates here, guys. Make sure you click that subscribe button if you haven’t already. Actually, before we get into the injury updates here, uh, we went live today. We added almost 2,000 subscribers just this week on Steelers Talk. So, thank you guys so much for all the support that you’ve given to me, to Ponzi, to our entire team here at Steelers Talk. Tomorrow, we’ll have another video coming out in the morning, as well as our Steelers Talk live show, which begins at 5:00 p. p.m. Eastern. We also go live for every single Steelers game. Uh, we went live today. It was it was an awesome show, guys. Thank you so much for all of your support. And with that, let’s get into our injury update here. Uh, starting with Alex Heismith. Obviously, big part of this Steelers defense. Uh, really big disruptor for this defense. Once again, it seems like he can’t stay healthy. It was his groin in uh training camp and in preseason, and now he’s dealing with a high ankle sprain that will keep him out four to 6 weeks. Now, if there’s a silver lining to Smitty’s injuries is that he never really has like a seasonending injury. He just gets these kind of medium level injuries that keep him out for a month or a month and a half. And unfortunately, we’re going to be missing Smitty here for at least a month up to a month and a half depending on how the injury rehab goes for him. But high ankle sprain had to leave the game today. Also, Isaiah Louderdermilk also had a high ankle sprain. So, you’re missing two members of your uh rotation here on the defensive line for a month to a month and a half. Now, the good news is it seems like the Steelers have enough depth on this on these on those two units, a DT as well as outside linebacker to be able to survive these injuries. Nick Herbig played a really good game today. Um, when you watch the film back, man, he was really disruptive. He was in the back field a lot. He’s really doing a good job. Um, you know, maybe you downgrade a little bit in run defense, which is a little scary given how bad the run defense has already been uh through the first two weeks uh with Herbig instead of Alex Heismith, but Herbig can certainly get after the passer. And then Jack Sawyer is probably going to be asked to uh play a little bit of a bigger role here on early downs in the weeks to come. Um Sawyer, I think, needs to get better in run defense, too, even though he did have some flashes today. Had some good moments. And then on the interior, it looks like Derrick Harmon is going to be back sooner rather than later. Hopefully this next week is what the indication seems to be. Uh so if you replace Louderm Spot with Derek Harmon in the weeks to come, uh that should be even an upgrade on the interior of the defensive line here. Um moving over here to postgame comments uh that I thought were interesting. Mike Tomlin on the week’s performance said, quote, “I’m I’m concerned about a lot of things.” Uh he continues to say, “We didn’t perform to the level that we desire. No shit.” and he says, “Certainly there is a lot that has my attention leading into this upcoming week.” Um, so obviously, you know, this team has a lot to work on. We’re going to talk about that in my concerns uh list here in just a second. Uh, but you know, hopefully Tomlin and this coaching staff figure out some of the things that they can do better. Um, especially, you know, offensive linewise, especially offensive play calling wise, especially run defense-wise. This team certainly has uh quite a few things to work on after a little bit of a bumpy start here. these first two weeks. He also uh when he described Caleb Johnson’s uh blunder today, he said it was uh I think he I think he called it a poor judgment from a young player. So, nothing too damning or anything like that. I don’t think they’re going to cut him. I’ve been seeing that a lot on Steelers Twitter. They’re not going to cut a third round pick, Caleb Johnson, that they have a lot of belief in for the future. Um but maybe they take him off of kickoff. Like, we’ll see. He hasn’t been too effective as a kickoff return man uh to start the season. So, we’ll see uh how that play affects Caleb’s usage on kickoffs, but um no, they’re they’re not going to be cutting him, guys. And then I thought Aaron Rogers had some interesting comments today talking about how it’s week two. It’s good for us to have some struggles last week. Probably some people were feeling pretty good with everybody outside the building talking about how great we were on offense. That’s the leak. You can’t ride the ride the highs or ride the lows. You got to refocus every single week. Um, and you know, it is worth noting, guys, that you know, early in the season, a lot of teams are trying to figure some stuff out. Um, you know, just look at last year, the Philadelphia Eagles, their first four weeks, they go two and two. They don’t even look that good. They almost lose games to like the Saints. They lost to the Falcons, a nonplayoff team, uh, at home. And, you know, they go into the by-week and they figure some stuff out and then they’re Super Bowl team. Not saying the Steelers are going to be doing that. Steelers have a lot to fix here over the next few weeks. uh getting themselves ready for a playoff push this year. But, you know, I I I I think it’s interesting here that Rogers views it as a positive uh that you struggled this week and you get kind of that wakeup call and hopefully this is a wakeup call for the Pittsburgh Steelers saying, “Hey, man, we’re not that good.” All right. And sometimes that’s important to for teams to know where it’s like, we’re not so good where we can just go out there, roll the ball out there, and dominate teams. All right? We got future Hall of Famers all over this roster. Um, but we still got to put in the work. We got to bring a level of focus here. Bring a level of intensity. And I know that the Steelers have been dealing with some injuries and yada yada yada, especially on defense. But, um, at the end of the day, man, like you got to go out there, you got to prepare well, and you got to execute your assignments. And you know, that’s been a little bit of a struggle through these first two weeks. Um, speaking of that struggle, I want to talk about my four concerns, all right, with the Steelers through two weeks. I think if the Steelers can’t fix these things, uh, their chances of being a Super Bowl caliber team this year go out the window. Um, you know, and honestly, they might have to fix all these things to be able to even have a shot at a seventh Lombardi trophy. We’ll start with the offensive line, uh, and specifically in pass protection, but also in the run game, you know, you know, I’ll actually start with the early down offense. This is another struggle that they’ve had the first two weeks is that they’re just not very successful on first down. And like a lot of these teams, the Jets and the Seahawks today came out with two high safety structures um on first down and the Steelers want to run the football to get them out of those and they’re still not successful, especially with Kenneth Gainwell running the football. Now with Jaylen Warren, they actually got through a little bit, but the thing is they’re they’re getting a pretty decent split between Jaylen Warren and Kenneth Gainwell through these first two weeks. And Gainwell has just not been effective, plain simply, uh through these first two weeks. And then on early down passing offense, they’re not doing a nearly a good enough job on that either, which sets up second down and longs, which sets up uh you know, third and longs, which is just it’s just an unending cycle there that you want to break. And you want to be able to be really good on first down so you can be really good on second down so you can be really good on third down. Um and hopefully you don’t get to third down all that often. Some of the best teams in football don’t get to third down that often because, you know, defenses can throw a bunch of exotic crap at you and it’s a lot a lot more difficult to convert on third down than it is on other downs. So, um you know, that certainly needs to get better and the offensive line just in general needs to play better. You know, when teams go out there with two high safeties and they pretty much dare you to run the football and you can’t, like that’s just that’s just going to create bad things for the offense. You got to be able um to move the line of scrimmage. You have to be able uh to do your assignments uh correctly. It’s been an issue over the last several years with Pat Meyer coaching the offensive lineman. Um and specifically in pass protection as well. There’s just been too much pressure on Aaron Rogers these first two games. Now Rogers um and the receivers I think do have a little bit of a of a role to play in that. Rogers held the ball quite a bit today actually. Um you know he got rid of the football the fastest I think out of all 32 NFL starting quarterbacks in week one. um this week, you know, I the number hasn’t come out, but I’m guessing it’s going to be uh not as high as it was last week in terms of getting the ball out fast. It just didn’t seem like there’s a lot of opportunities to throw that ball down the field for Aaron Rogers and the Steelers passing offense today. Be really interesting to see what the film says about that. Whether it’s the receivers, whether it’s um you know, the poor scheme, whatever the case may be, we’ll have answers to that on the show here over the next few days. But that’s another thing. Not only is the offensive line not getting the job done in the run game, they’re not getting the job done in pass protection, um, but also there’s a seeming lack of open wide receivers, or at least there was today. It a big distinguisher on offense from week one to week two was there was a lot of open receivers week one, and there wasn’t a lot of open receivers this week. And I think a big culprit of that is they didn’t get the underenter play action game going as well as they did last week. Um, and some of that does come down to not being able to run the football the way that you want to. But just a lot of shotgun today from Aaron Rogers in the Steelers offense. And I think this offense really needs to be, you know, a lot of under center. It needs to be a lot of deception. Aaron Rogers’s play fakes are so good. You know, the play action game can really be a weapon for this team when operating under center, but you have to really make teams respect the run game, right? That’s what makes everything go. And, you know, Jaylen Warren has been pretty darn good. We’ll get the Jaylen Warren in our silver linings. Um but um overall the run game has not been what it’s been built as or what the expectation is for it uh for a team that wants to run the football a lot and uh base the play action game off of that run game dominance. So um you know we’ll see about the wide receivers. I’ll look at the film, see if it’s more uh guys just not creating separation, whether it’s a poor scheme, whatever the case may be. There’s a lot of too high safety coverages today from Seattle. um lots of twoman. So, really difficult to throw the ball down the field in twoman, especially if you don’t have receivers that can get open. So, really interested to watch the film on that. And, you know, those are kind of the three big concerns that the Steelers have on defense, at least for me right now, or on offense, I should say. Um you know, it’s not good when your offensive line, your early down offense, and your wide receivers seem to be an issue uh this early into the season. Now, obviously, it went a lot smoother in week one when they were able to stay on their plan a little bit more when they weren’t down 10 points in the fourth quarter and had to really force themselves to throw the football for most of the fourth quarter. Like, you know, maybe things go different if you don’t have some of those kind of weird outlier mistakes that we talked about in our instant reaction uh earlier today. Uh but certainly there’s some concerns with the offensive line. And if this team wants to be the Super Bowl caliber team that they want to be, the offensive line has to play a hell of a lot better. I’m looking at you, Brick Jones. I’m looking at you, uh, Troy Fahutano, who did not have a good game today, by the way. Um, and just everybody needs to do their job better up front. Also, uh, we have to find ways to get receivers open, and if you don’t have guys that can separate versus man, go get somebody that can. All right, so that’s that that one’s pretty plain and simple. You know, Rogers is not somebody that can move uh very well, you know, if he’s being forced to hold on to the ball more than 3 4 seconds in the pocket. um you know he can adjust in the pocket and he can you know avoid pressure for an extra half second but he’s not somebody that’s going to be able to scramble around make like a eight play eight second uh scramble work like that’s just not something that Aaron Rogers has in his bag. So you have to find ways to get him answers that are workable uh within the structure of this offense and they didn’t do a good enough job of that today. Um and then you got to be better on early downs. You got to get those defenses out of those two high structures so you can open up more downfield opportunities for Aaron Rodgers. So, um, you got to fix those three things if you want to be the type of offense you want to be. And then on defense, the big concern is the run defense, right? Another 100 plus yard performance today from a running back. That was Kenneth Walker today, uh, you know, who didn’t have a good performance last week against San Francisco. Charbanet was okay today. Uh, there was moments where the Steelers did a really good job in run defense, mostly against Charbanet, but there was something about Kenneth Walker that they just couldn’t bring down, especially in the second half. Um, that toss play for the touchdown was an absolute joke. on third and goal from like the 20. And you know, just in general, this is the first time that that Mike a Mike Tomlin defense has given up two straight uh 100 plus yard rushing performances to start a season. So, this is something that definitely needs to get better for the Pittsburgh Steelers moving forward. Uh there’s no doubt about that and it’s been an issue for the first two weeks. So, I don’t know if you have to put YA Black at nose tackle and get Keo Benson the hell out of there. Uh I would recommend that. I don’t know if you have to play Cole Hulkcomore at linebacker because Pton Wilson once again was out of position a lot today. I don’t know exactly what the answer’s going to be, but hopefully the Steelers figure out that answer in the weeks to come. Hopefully they can stop Raandre Stevenson and Trayvon Henderson versus the Patriots next week. Uh but then you know we talked about some of the big concerns like if you can’t fix the run defense, you can’t fix the O line, you can’t fix a the receiver room not being able to separate and you can’t uh play better on early downs, this team won’t be very good this year, plain and simply. So those are the four things I think the Steelers really need to get better at. And if they don’t, this team’s in a lot of trouble or at the very least they’ll be very limited. Uh but some of the silver linings, all right, number one, Jaylen Warren looks phenomenal. All right. Even in week one, he didn’t get as many touches as he did this week, but he was still averaging 4 and a half yards per touch. Today, had over 130 yards. Had that amazing catch and run um where he put the Steelers in scoring position before they threw that weird uh kind of kind of fluke interception where Calvin tips it up into the Seattle Seahawks defenders arms when it would have gone right in Pat Footh’s arms. It was an awesome play by Rogers. Um, but Warren, whether it’s on the ground, whether it’s through the air, whether it’s in the screen game, he’s just a differencemaking player. He makes people miss. He’s got excellent contact balance. He’s got a really good spin move. Um, you know, he is just a truck out there, man. And like people saying that he can’t handle a heavy workload, man. Like, he absolutely can. If you want to look at a running back that doesn’t have kind of the physical capabilities of a number one running back, doesn’t have the contact balance, doesn’t have the power, look at Kenny Gainwell, man. Like, and that’s with all due respect to Kenny. Um, I think he’s a decent third down back. Um, decent receiver receiving back, but like giving him carries on the first two downs, it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Like, if you want to give Jaylen Warren a break, put Caleb Johnson out there. He’s more of an early down back. But they’re they keep putting Kenny Gay out there. And every time he touches the football, uh, it seems like he gets one or two yards or no gain on a run. And it just completely uh puts this offense in a tough position. And, you know, Jaylen Warren, every time he touches the ball, it seems like he does something. He gets extra yardage. He gets seven, eight, nine yard rushes. You know, he will catch the ball out of the backfield to make big plays happen. So, this offense needs to continue to find ways to get Warren the football. He is this team’s feature back. He is by far the best running back on this football team. And honestly, you know, if he keeps having performances like this, might be one of the best running backs in the National Football League. Um, so if they keep feeding Jaylen, I think that good things are going to happen. Um, another thing that’s a silver lining is that the pass rush actually hasn’t been that bad through two games. Nick Herbig was getting uh to Sam Darm today. They had some really nice blitzes. You know, I I think I hear a lot of Steelers fans say, “Oh, Terrell Austin’s defense is so milk toast.” You know, it’s just soft zone and all this different stuff. They have been dialing up a lot of pressure these first two games. Um I would I would be willing to say maybe 40% uh blitz rate throughout the first two throughout the first two games. I think the first game they blitzed on 43% of defensive plays. Uh this week it wouldn’t surprise me if it was very similar. They’re trusting the guys on the back end to hold up in one-on-one coverage. And, you know, they haven’t had a ton of sacks these first two weeks, but they’re putting a lot of pressure on quarterbacks. And kudos to Justin Fields and Sam Darnold for handling that pressure pretty darn well uh in these two football games. So, um you know, TJ Watt, no sacks, no forced fumbles through these first two weeks. Uh little concerning because he did pay him all that money, but he does look explosive. He does look like he’s out there and he’s he’s doing a decent job in run defense still. is still an elite run defender. Um, but you know, I think teams are very conscious of uh TJ Watt and they’re trying to get the ball out pretty quickly against the Pittsburgh Steelers and they’ve been pretty successful at that. I think the production is going to come for TJ. Um, and I still think he can still be a very high level player in this league, but the lack of production is a little bit concerning from him. But overall, the pass rush, they’re getting decent pressure, the pressure rate is pretty good, the blitz rate is pretty good. Uh, then in the red zone, they’ve been pretty darn good on offense. um you know outside of like I said kind of that fluke tipped up uh kind of weird interception from Calvin today um you know they should be five of five in the red zone to this point. So that is a really great silver lining or when this team has opportunities to score Aaron Rogers has been really good about putting these this team in positions to score touchdowns and you know if outside of a fluke kind of mistake there like they should be five for five uh on the season uh in that regard. That was a big issue for Russell Wilson and Justin Fields last year. it just couldn’t get the ball into the end zone in the red zone. Um, this year it seems like that, uh, specific area of the Steelers offense has actually been pretty good with Aaron Rodgers in there. Um, also, um, I would say the final silver lining here, guys, is not a ton of penalties. I think they’ve only had like four penalties in two games. Like, that’s pretty darn good and pretty clean football from the Pittsburgh Steelers. Now, obviously, you want to limit the turnovers uh that you had today. Um but you know overall you know if you are a lowly penalized team you’re going to have give yourself chances to win football games and allow the other team to kind of beat themselves. Now obviously the Steelers beat themselves today in other ways outside of penalties but um you know that is certainly something to keep in mind and is a silver lining that they are um not a heav heavily penalized group which does point to some good coaching and discipline there. So listen guys, at the end of the day, with all the concerns, with all the silver linings, with all the good and all the bad, all right, even uh with that kind of really weird two outlier mistake performance today where like if you take away that weird mistake from Caleb Johnson that you’re not going to see every week and you take away that weird interception in the red zone that you’re not going to see every week from the Pittsburgh Steelers, the game is 24-24. um at least in terms of the scoring that we know happens and the Steelers would have uh had a would have been in position to go out and try and win a football game. And if you just take away Caleb’s mistake, the Steelers get the football on that drive down three with a chance to tie or take the lead in the fourth quarter. But instead after that mistake, you’re down 10 and you got to score twice to even have a shot to win. And it’s kind of forcing Rogers and the offense to pass the football and, you know, kind of play desperately in the fourth quarter. like the dynamic of the game completely flipped after that complete outlier of a mistake. And if you take that away, even if you take the other mistake away, like the Steelers are in pretty decent position to win that football game, even with how poorly they were playing. So, I know I know the the popular response right now is to catastrophize and say this team sucks and this team is going to be terrible this year and we have to fire Mike Tomlin and that um you know, everything has to be blown up right now and all this different stuff. We have to cut Caleb Johnson. My my word of advice is to take a breath and just try not to overreact. All right? Like if I think these first two weeks have taught us anything is to not to overreact through the first two weeks of the season. Are there things that this team definitely needs to improve on? 100%. But with as bad as the Steelers played today, um if you take away two kind of weird gift mistakes that the Steelers gave the Seahawks, which I don’t think are going to be main stays in future weeks, this team has a chance to still be competitive and win versus a very good football team there in the Seattle Seahawks. So, um you know, coming down to brass tax, they got to play better, especially on the O line, wide receivers, run defense, all that stuff. If they don’t, this is not going to be the Super Bowl caliber team that we were hoping this team was going to be heading into the year. But with that said, I think there is a good opportunity over the next several weeks. All right, you got New England who hasn’t been playing great these first two weeks either. Um, then you got Minnesota, you know, first year uh quarterback here in JJ McCarthy. So, two very young quarterbacks uh for this defense to feast on next week or next two weeks. Then you have a by-week to get yourself completely right. Then you get the Browns in a game you absolutely should win at home. And then you get the Bengals and Joe Burrow now has turftoe. Uh he might not even be available for that Thursday night football game. So really this next stretch of four games or so before the Green Bay Packer game is so important for the Steelers, right? Uh because their schedule gets a lot tougher after that. You got Baltimore twice, you got Buffalo, you’ve got uh Green Bay, you you know, you got a lot of these tough teams coming up. And if you can get to that Green Bay game, you know, sitting at 5- one, 4-2, you know, that’s probably the sweet spot that you want to be in there, uh, to feel good about this football team and their chances of making the playoffs. Um, so you got to play better, but there’s a lot of really good opportunities and, you know, the Steelers could absolutely rip off four straight wins over the next five weeks in my opinion. um you know, you can get right, you can use that buy the similar way that the Eagles did last year. Like the season is not over because there was kind of a fluky performance today from the Steelers in terms of the weird mistakes that happened. Um you know, if those two things don’t happen, like I said, there’s a chance we’re we’re sitting here talking about the Steelers having another gritty win. So, um I’m not giving up on this team, at least not yet. I need to see multiple performances of really bad play for me to really give up on this team at this point in the season. To this point, we just haven’t seen that. The defense certainly needs to get better, especially against the run. I’m I laid out my concerns, okay? So, I’m not saying that there’s nothing wrong with this team right now. They certainly need to get better. Um, but there’s also silver linings and there’s a lot of reason to still have hope and optimism for this football team uh moving into the rest of this season. So, know it was a little bit of a longer one today, especially for an at home kind of rant sesh here. Uh, hope you guys enjoy the rest of your evening. We will have another Steelers talk video, probably an overreaction Monday uh video for you guys tomorrow morning on this channel. So, make sure you guys click that subscribe button if you haven’t already. Until next time, guys. Here we go. Simmers.

Pittsburgh Steelers news after Pittsburgh’s Week 2 loss vs. the Seattle Seahawks keeps coming in as we just got a major injury update on Steelers star edge rusher Alex Highsmith, and Jack comments on the post-game remarks from guys like Mike Tomlin & Aaron Rodgers after a tough Week 2 loss in the home opener this afternoon. Also on today’s show, Jack shares his list of 4 things that concern him after the first 2 games of the Steelers 2025 season that will hold this team back if they cannot be fixed in the weeks to come, and 4 silver linings that should give Steelers fans some hope heading into Patriots week in Week 3.

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