Madden Monday: Steelers OC Arthur Smith 'hasn't made the offense better. It's just a different kind of bad'

For as critical as I was of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defensive performance against the Dallas Cowboys during Sunday night’s 20-17 loss, Mark Madden of TribLive and 105.9 The X is every bit as critical of quarterback Justin Fields and the offense.

“The offense isn’t good enough, and the quarterback is not good enough. The Steelers had every chance to win,” Madden said during this week’s “Madden Monday” podcast. “They won the turnover battle. They blocked the field goal. They had every chance to win, and the offense couldn’t cash it in enough to make it work. So I lay this loss totally at the feet of the offense, totally at the feet of Justin Fields.”

While shining a light on Fields’ play Sunday (15 of 27, 131 yards) Madden refuses to let offensive coordinator Arthur Smith off the hook.

“(Smith) hasn’t made the offense better. It’s just a different kind of bad,” Madden continued. “Fields is just another in a long line of retread quarterbacks that aren’t good enough to beat good teams and to get the Steelers back to the playoffs this year, let alone to their first playoff win in eight years.”

If it was Madden’s call, he’d bench Fields for Russell Wilson when the Steelers visit the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday.

“No matter who the quarterback is, it’s not going to be good enough. So who cares? But I play Wilson if he’s available,” Madden stated. “I thought Fields was awful (Sunday), and his stats were piddly.”

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Madden’s bigger problem with the Steelers’ quarterback depth chart is that he thinks the choice between Fields and Wilson is so poor to begin with that it’s indicative of how little the Steelers understand about the position.

“They don’t take the position seriously,” Madden said. “They think defense is more important than quarterback. We’ve gone through (Mitch) Trubisky. We’ve gone through (Kenny) Pickett. We’ve gone through Russell Wilson — who hasn’t yet played. Now Justin Fields. They don’t take the position seriously.”

Throw Mason Rudolph and Devlin “Duck” Hodges into that mix too if you like.

Yet, as Madden pointed out, they do take defense seriously and the performance on that side of the ball was bad enough to allow the Cowboys to rack up 445 total net yards.

That said, Madden can’t get away from the twitches he is getting from watching the offense try to perform.

“I don’t think the defense was great, but the offense just stinks,” Madden concluded. “It has George Pickens not at all involved. He (doesn’t have) a touchdown yet. Najee Harris doesn’t have a touchdown yet. He’s not running the ball effectively. The run blocking isn’t effective. They piece together some odds and ends due to Fields’ ability to carry the ball. But, it’s just a terrible offense. I can’t lay this on the feet of the defense. They weren’t perfect, but they have to be, and it’s not fair.”

Also, during the podcast, we discuss some poor coaching decisions by Tomlin, how the Steelers-Cowboys game compared to Ravens-Bengals, and the start of the Penguins’ season.