The Pittsburgh Steelers’ wide receivers are not good enough. George Pickens is certainly good enough to be the team’s top option. However, the rest of the room? It leaves a lot to be desired.
Pickens earns praise for what should have been a four-catch, 86-yard performance with a touchdown on top of that. Instead, due to penalties, including an offensive pass interference called on Van Jefferson, it went down as a two-catch, 29-yard day for him. However, Pickens is acing the test. He took it to Pat Surtain II, and it seems like he is realizing his potential.
The rest of this wide receiver is not enough for the Steelers. If you want to know why they have just one touchdown through two games, part of the reason is because of this wide receiver corps. Is it the biggest problem? It just might be.
Through two games, wide receivers not named Pickens have just five catches for 28 yards. The Broncos came out in man coverage 72 percent of the time against the Steelers because they trusted their cornerbacks against the Steelers’ wide receivers. That allowed them to be much more aggressive in the second half when they sent six players on blitzes the entire half to slow down the Steelers’ run game.
When it came time for the Steelers receivers to win after the Broncos started to put a bracket over Pickens, no one could win. Justin Fields did not say that the wide receivers could not separate after the game, but his quote about the team facing so much man coverage hits the essence of this issue.
“They played a lot of man. We expected what we saw. We saw man. We had a few plays over the middle with [WR] George Pickens on that slant and a couple more. When it comes to man-to-man coverage, our receivers and tight ends just have to win,” Fields said.
Not only do the issues with the wide receivers hurt the passing game, but the run game can not get going. Denver played middle of the field closed to take away the middle of the field, and they rolled an extra body into the box. Did the Steelers get conservative in the second half, or did they not execute well because there were few options on the outside?
I would venture to say the latter. Watch the Steelers wide receivers on tape and see how little separation they get on a snap-to-snap basis.
“We aren’t being conservative,” running back Najee Harris said to Mark Kaboly. “We are just (expletive) ourselves. We make a play and get a penalty that pushes us back and gets us off schedule. The plays you want to run you can’t run anymore because it is 2nd and 12. If you take away those penalties, the stat sheet looks better.”
That sums it up pretty well. The Steelers have no room to win on the outside without Pickens winning. Pittsburgh’s offense is struggling because of penalties but also because teams have no fear of anyone other than Pickens as the wide receiver.
All that means is that the biggest weakness of the Steelers’ offense is its biggest weakness. They need to find a solution; maybe Roman Wilson can be that elixir. However, looking at their second-half struggles, look no further than the lackluster wide receiver play the Steelers have received.
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