CHICAGO — Before the season kicked off, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin said he could see his defense doing ‘historical things’ after a big-name laden offense that saw the additions of Jalen Ramsey and Darius Slay to a team with lots of talent.
“We feel really good about the prospects of this group,” Tomlin said on WDVE in August. “We gotta write that story, but we’ve got enough talent, we’ve got enough schematics to do big, big things. And when I say big things, I’m talking about historic things.”
They have done some historic things, but not on the good side. Instead, the Steelers defense is on track to be the worst one of Tomlin’s tenure, and have allowed 30 or more points to opposing offenses five times.
In the Super Bowl era, the team record in six games, and in the Tomlin era, the Steelers have already equaled that number with five.
The Steelers keep falling backwards in a lot of ways. They are also on pace to allow the most yards per game in the Tomlin era this season. Despite still being great at forcing turnovers, the Steelers have fallen into a boom-or-bust defense that does not get off the field and force punts.
Steelers team captain Cam Heyward acknowledged that standing now at 6-5 and in second place in the AFC North, the time crunch is getting real.
“If we make a couple plays at the end and we win this game, we say, ‘Oh, we’re moving forward and we can learn from this,’” Heyward said. “But the hourglass is going, and the sand is falling through. There’s not a lot of time for mistakes.”
The Steelers will face the Buffalo Bills and they can still make gains if they can get one over the Baltimore Ravens in two weeks. Yet, the team’s inconsistencies and mediocrity, especially defensively, make it hard to see that.