The Pittsburgh Steelers had a premium chance to complete a comeback against the Indianapolis Colts and steal the game away in Week 4. They were originally down 17-0, but roared back to make it a one-possession game at 27-24. They had the ball with 2:39 on the clock and one timeout. After some solid chunk plays, the drive stalled after a botched snap set the Steelers up with a 2nd and 22. They could not recover from that and lost the game.
During his postgame press conference, Justin Fields took full responsibility for the busted play. He talked about how the early mistakes, including his own, led to the loss. That last bad play was just another issue that they have to figure out quickly. He seemed a bit perplexed about the inability of the unit to perform better throughout the contest.
"It's kind of like I said, we knew the whole game they weren't stopping us; we were stopping ourselves. It's kind of crazy that we stopped ourselves on the last drive too. Like I said, it's nothing mysterious. It's nothing. It's just us at the end of the day. We have to execute, and I have to be better. We have to be better as a whole."
It was at least nice to hear Fields take responsibility and speak about those issues like a leader would, but the issues with the snap are getting tiresome. The center/quarterback exchanges have been a problem since the preseason. While the duo of Fields and Zach Frazier have been dominant in their own right, they have had way too many miscommunications and botched plays together. If the Steelers want to be productive this season, they have to clean that up now.
Steelers' Offense Kept Hurting Themselves Throughout The Game
As Fields mentioned, that one bad snap is not even an issue if the Steelers' offense played cleaner football before that. Fields himself had a terrible play to ruin the Steelers' chances of winning. While in field goal range, he ran backwards to avoid a sack, stumbled, and fumbled the ball. If he just throws it away as opposed to trying to make something out of nothing, Chris Boswell would get the chance to hit a 51-yard field goal, which he would most likely make.
In the second quarter, the Steelers had exactly the drive they needed. After starting at their own four-yard line, they marched down the field and got the ball into the other red zone. However, George Pickens fumbled the ball at the five-yard line. A 91-yard drive resulted in no points. They were down 17-0, and that kind of drive would have been exactly what the Steelers needed to truly take momentum away before halftime, but it ended too soon.
Even then, not everything was the players' fault. On a fourth and one, Mike Tomlin opted to run a quarterback keeper out of shotgun, and the play went nowhere. The ball was turned over on downs, and the Colts immediately scored a field goal off of it. It's nice to see the Steelers get aggressive in that situation, but they have to have better awareness of the situation. A sneak would have been a perfectly fine play in that scenario.
Fields said it perfectly throughout his press conference: the Steelers were not defeated by the Colts. They were beaten by themselves with repeated mistakes that should never happen. The fact that it was even close just shows how far he has come as a leader and as a quarterback. If Fields can learn from this game and keep improving, the Steelers' may have the captain of their offense for the next decade.
