Mike Tomlin calls Steelers failures in short-yardage situations 'catastrophic' to 23-17 loss

Having some time to reflect on his team’s 23-17 loss to Washington a day earlier, Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin came to one conclusion.

“I live by the coaching creed, ‘If you can’t get a yard, you don’t deserve to win,’” Tomlin said Tuesday at his weekly press conference.

The Steelers failed to gain that crucial yard on two drives — one in each half — which Tomlin pinpointed as the issue most responsible for his team losing its first game after 11 successive victories.

Despite having five cracks from the Washington 1 in the second quarter, the Steelers came away with no points.

“That was catastrophic,” Tomlin said.

In the fourth quarter, with the score tied and the Steelers at the Washington 28, the Steelers came up a yard short when Ben Roethlisberger threw incomplete on third and fourth downs.

Washington then moved down the field for a go-ahead field goal with a little over two minutes remaining.

“If you can’t get a yard in our game, you don’t deserve to win,” Tomlin said, emphasizing his point again. “That’s the nuts and bolts element of football, the physicality element of football. We didn’t meet that challenge, so we have some work to do in that area.”

Much of that work will revolve around resuscitating a running game that was held to a season-low 21 yards on 14 attempts. It was the fourth time in six games the Steelers failed to surpass 48 yards rushing and the fifth time in that span they were held to 68 or fewer.

The Steelers haven’t averaged four yards a carry in a game since doing it in each of the first four games of the season.

“We’re not just doing good enough,” Tomlin said. “I could comb through it with a whole bunch of minutiae, but the bottom line is popcorn. If it was one identifying thing, then you would pluck that one thing out and move on with your day.”

The return of starting running back James Conner and center Maurkice Pouncey could help improve the running game. Both players missed the past two games while being confined to the reserve/covid-19 list.

Tomlin didn’t want to use their absence as an excuse for the ineffective running game or an offensive style that he said isn’t “physical enough.”

“We’ve lost fluidity since we missed some of those guys,” Tomlin said. “To be quite honest with you, that (ticks) me off because we have to be the type of group that endures regardless of who is available. That’s how we construct this group not only in terms of our acquisition of players but just development of mentality and personality. We have some work ahead of us.”