In Week 13 at Cincinnati, the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Bengals, 44-38.
Quarterback Russell Wilson scored six more points than Joe Burrow.
Wilson threw for 105 more yards than Burrow.
Wilson threw for three touchdowns, same as Burrow.
That’s rarefied air, a callback to Wilson’s glory days with Seattle. Wilson outdueled one of football’s truly elite quarterbacks.
Wilson achieved such success by calling audibles and making route adjustments at the line of scrimmage.
Offensive coordinator Arthur Smith apparently didn’t like that.
The Steelers posted 520 yards of total offense, their most since 2018.
Smith must not have liked that either.
The reported conflict between Wilson and Smith illuminates clearly how the Steelers are their own worst enemy and, frankly, absolutely insane.
It also illustrates why the Steelers won’t be fixed by those currently in charge.
Wilson deviated from the game plan. It didn’t matter that it worked.
The Steelers prefer to run the ball. Force a low-scoring rock fight. It’s a Mike Tomlin trademark.
After Week 13, Wilson did as he was instructed. It didn’t work. The Steelers lost their last five games, including the first round of the playoffs.
They averaged just 14.2 points per game over that span, never scoring over 17 points. Wilson’s passing stats shrunk by more than 60 yards per game.
The Steelers lost 19-17 to visiting Cincinnati in the regular-season finale. The same team they beat 44-38 five weeks earlier at Cincy.
The Steelers won the shootout.
They lost the rock fight.
It’s stupidity and stubbornness on the part of Smith and Tomlin. (The latter signs off on everything. Nobody working under Tomlin has autonomy.)
It’s the style of football the Steelers want. After the season, owner Art Rooney II bleated about the importance of the running game.
It is important. If you can do it.
The Steelers prefer to run the ball. Control the clock. Play elite defense. Bully the opposition.
But they can’t do any of that.
Never mind that it’s a prehistoric approach. The Steelers aren’t the Philadelphia Eagles. The Steelers aren’t the exception to the NFL’s rule.
Wilson provided a better way, if just for one week.
But the Steelers went right back to what they can’t do and kept not doing it.
The Steelers would rather be right than win. It’s a decades-old tradition.
No worries. The same obstinate nitwits who so cluelessly dug the hole and keep pushing the Steelers deeper in it will doubtless formulate how to climb out of it. We’ve got to trust the Steelers way, whatever that is (or used to be).
The Steelers are a no-hope excrement show.
The alleged conflict between Wilson and Smith, and how it was resolved, is what’s wrong with the Steelers in a nutshell.
Preference over what works.
Ego over what makes sense.
Look at Wilson’s career. Look at Smith’s. Look at the result the Steelers got at Cincinnati. How could Tomlin not trust Wilson? But he didn’t.
We know the symptom. But never look closely enough at the cause.
Perhaps because we know nothing will change.