Last Sunday’s game against Vegas was just the 15 th start of Pickett’s career, so he’s still very much in the figuring it out stage, and the rest of the offense should eventually make appreciable strides in finding and establishing some sort of identity as he continues to figure it out. That their offense actually resembled a cohesive, functional unit against the Raiders should be taken as a resounding victory in and of itself and escaping that game with an actual win that counts toward their record is an added bonus. The Steelers offense was so stagnant and threadbare in the first two games of the season that I openly speculated about the possibility of drafting Caleb Williams and suggested that Matt Canada’s brain had been infected by cordyceps. Stock up: Having your cake in the first place The final score ended up being a lot closer than most of the game felt, and the Steelers could’ve prevented hundreds of cases of rapid onset hemorrhoids simply by playing a tad more aggressively in the fourth quarter. Still, it’s hard to overlook the fact that the Steelers squandered several opportunities to usher the grim reaper to the Raiders doorstep, just as they did against Cleveland-namely, they went three-and-out on each of their subsequent drives after going up 23-7 late in the third quarter, which allowed the Raiders to quickly overcome a multi-possession deficit. Of course, none of that happened, and the Steelers ended up winning that game, so mewling about the mechanisms that spurred that outcome is little more than grist for the mill.
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Josh McDaniels opting to kick a field goal down eight with three minutes ‘til the gun was an iffy decision at the time and an outright bad decision in retrospect, but it was (and is) also a damning indictment of the Steelers offense: McDaniels believed-and was debatably justified in believing-that he could take three points, kick the ball back to the Steelers, force a three-and-out, and get the ball back before the two minute warning with a chance to win the game with a touchdown. Pittsburgh’s offense looked better against the Raiders than it did in Weeks 1 or 2, but the Steelers were out-gained 362-333 and the 333 yards of offense they amassed is still less than what luminaries such as the Rams (!), Texans (!!), and Broncos (!!!) are averaging for the season. Optimism is the shaky foundation upon which doomed aspirations are constructed! Existence is pain! Stock report! Stock down: Eating your cake Is there peace to be found in the contentment of a budding turnaround? Reader, if you’re here to see flowery words of affirmation about the Pittsburgh Steelers, then you stumbled into the wrong blog.
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This is all pretty outrageous considering their ghoulish showing against the 49ers in Week 1. Moreover, the Steelers are 2-1 and head into their Sunday matchup against the Texans as three-point road favorites. This was, in fact, the first multi-touchdown game of Kenny Pickett’s career, which could be interpreted as an encouraging sign of things to come, a referendum on Pickett’s development to this point, a reflection of the offense’s conservatism, or a combination of all three things. The Steelers needed just under three quarters to double their season offensive touchdown output in a 23-18 win over the Raiders.