Steelers Now
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Aaron Rodgers made it sound straightforward. Yet, despite the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback’s succinct report on where his team stands, it hasn’t been at all simple this season.
“We’re 5-4. We’re leading the division,” Rodgers said after Sunday night’s 25-10 primetime road loss to the Los Angeles Chargers.
It’s hard to get a read on this Steelers team. While its record is what Rodgers said, three of its past four outings have been losses, starting with a maddening Thursday night road setback in Cincinnati midway through last month.
The outlying boom in the series of busts was against the No. 1 seed in the AFC, too, when the Steelers harassed the Indianapolis Colts into six turnovers last week. The same attack that capitalized then was almost absent on the West Coast.
The offense moved the chains just twice on third down against the Chargers and didn’t score a touchdown until late, with the game already in hand.
Meanwhile, the defense, which looked lost in its last Sunday night appearance — a 35-25 loss to Green Bay two weeks ago — dammed Justin Herbert and the Bolts’ attack for as long as it could. The levee broke as attrition set in, and the hosts possessed the ball for over 15 minutes longer than the Steelers did.
“Too much up and down, not enough Steeler football,” star outside linebacker T.J. Watt said. “I mean, we can’t continue to live and die by the turnovers as a defense. We need to get off the field, we need to stop the run. Critical third downs, we need to do a better job of. No excuse for it, we need to play better.”
Inside linebacker Patrick Queen isn’t wasting time trying to make sense of things, either.
“Just keep going to work,” Queen said. “I think, at the end of the day, we’ve gotta make it work. If the offense ain’t scoring, we can’t let the other offense score, that we’re playing against. If we ain’t getting stops, then we need to put up points. I think, when you look at a team, it’s not about one side not doing whatever. I think it’s one side doing what they need to do to help the other side. So it’s always gonna come back to how we complement each other.”
Despite being in the AFC North’s perch, the Steelers must now fend off the suddenly alive Baltimore Ravens, who FanDuel now tabs as being the favorite to win the division.
“We’ve gotta bounce back,” Rodgers said. “We’ve got a division opponent next week. We’re 5-4. We’re ahead by a game in the division. We’ve gotta play better on offense, for sure, but this is part of the season. There’s ebbs and flows. There’s ups and downs, and we can’t ride the wave.
“We’ve got four division games left to play. It’s a long season, and that’s a good opponent — and we didn’t play very good tonight.”
*Alan Saunders and Chris Ward contributed reporting...
