Steelers Now
CHICAGO — Pittsburgh Steelers defensive back Jalen Ramsey didn’t use many words to get his point across. Twenty, to be exact.
His displeased demeanor said more about his thoughts on the team’s latest setback. Maybe, more accurately, his annoyance with being asked to express them and just how heated he was with the result.
Understandably, the human response to losing is to be irritated. Pissed, even. Ramsey was asked near the tail end of his availability what upsets him most about the team’s recent trend, most recently represented by a 31-28 road loss to the Chicago Bears.
“I would probably say losing,” Ramsey said, the rising pitch of his answer and batting of his eyelashes indicating that he felt it should be obvious.
Ramsey’s not alone in his thinking.
“That we’re losing,” said fellow veteran and de facto team spokesperson Cam Heyward. “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.’ But the hourglass is going, and the sand is falling through. There’s not a lot of time for mistakes.”
With the Steelers’ latest setback — marking four in six tries — they tumbled out of the current playoff picture, replaced by the bitter AFC North rival Baltimore Ravens. Now, the 6-5 Steelers are precariously tied with the Ravens for the division lead. They were once 4-1 with a stranglehold on it.
The Steelers own 30% odds to even reach the postseason, according to NFL.com, the lowest figure of any team in the conference with at least six wins.
Ramsey was one of the last players to leave the visitors’ locker room at Soldier Field. Not that he was waiting with an invitation to reporters.
Still, Ramsey wasn’t surprised, but rather unenthused. But was the Steelers defense, which watched a halftime lead go up in smoke, taken aback by how Caleb Williams attacked it?
“Uh uh,” Ramsey said, his lips sealed.
He, in not as much detail, said the answers to the defense’s shortcomings lay trapped in fresh, unwatched film. Ramsey normally subjects himself to professional question-askers on Fridays. By then, later in the week, those explanations are essentially old hat.
“Don’t know,” he reiterated when questioned again on what led to the scoreboard being flipped on its head in the second half.
Alright, well, now that we’ve gotten the not-at-all-distant past out of the way, what’s needed to right the sails going forward?
“Obviously more,” Ramsey said, then paused for a split second. “Of everything.”
The two words weren’t particularly necessary. What about the mindset the Steelers must have with a razor-thin margin for error going forward?
“Win,” Ramsey said.
Yeah, that’s about as straightforward — and correct — as you can put it. That one, we can all likely admit, is fair enough.
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now: Frustration Mounting for Struggling Steelers Defense
