Sports blog information from USA TODAY.
The distribution of labor by the Steelers still makes very little sense.
On Sunday night the Pittsburgh Steelers did all it could to mount a comeback against the Miami Dolphins but fell just short. We’ve had a chance to pour over the snap counts from the game and here are five things that stood out.
Chase Claypool wants to see the Steelers take more deep shots on offense.
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Sunday marked one of the better passing games by the Pittsburgh Steelers this season. And it still wasn’t great. This feels like a broken record but despite a few shots downfield, the Steelers were largely relegated to short passing again against the Miami Dolphins on Sunday night.
A fact that wasn’t missed on wide receiver Chase Claypool. After catching five passes for 41 yards, Claypool stayed after everyone left in the Steelers locker room and talked candidly about the problem with the passing offense.
“We need more go balls. Like, damn,” Claypool said. “Not enough go balls. We’ve got playmakers. I haven’t had a go ball all year. George needs more, Tae needs more. I’m not saying that’s on the play calling. I’m just saying we need to find a way to scheme it up.”
Yes. Scheme it up. No one is advocating nothing but go routes but with Claypool, Diontae Johnson and George Pickens on the team, there’s no reason to keep this passing game on such a short leash. All it does is allow safeties to play up, which in turn limits the passing game. None of this is new. It’s been happening to the Pittsburgh offense for years, going back to offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner.
Pittsburgh has one more game until the bye week and currently sits at 2-5. If Pittsburgh wants to salvage the season on any level, OC Matt Canada needs to heed the words of Claypool and do a better job scheming up all this talent.
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Chase Claypool doesn’t give off a lot of confidence about the Steelers offense.
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Seven games into the season, it is pretty clear the Pittsburgh Steelers still do not have a clear identity on offense and continuity is still a problem. Every week the team is forced to talk about where the offense is and why Pittsburgh isn’t where they want to be. This includes wide receiver Chase Claypool.
After the team’s Sunday loss to the Miami Dolphins, Claypool was asked by ESPN reporter Brooke Pryor if the offense is close to putting it all together and Claypool just put it all out there.
“I mean, I feel like I’ve heard that every week, you know,” Claypool asked. “How close are we? I think it’s too late in the season to be close to anything. I think if we’re close, we have to get there next week.”
Claypool was pretty insightful there when he said it is too late to be close. The Steelers travel to Philadelphia to take on the Eagles next week and head into the bye week at nearly midseason. If the Steelers don’t show some distinct improvement on offense next week, look for some big changes during the bye to attempt to salvage the season.
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Will the real Steelers team please stand up?
On Sunday night, the Pittsburgh Steelers lost a heartbreaker to the Miami Dolphins 16-10 and fell to 2-5 on the season. It was tough to watch a game come down to the final moments and fail to make enough plays. Here are our big takeaways from the loss.
The Steelers fell to 2-5 after the loss on Sunday.
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It is rare to have a single facet of a game be the absolute deciding factor but this was the case on Sunday night. The Pittsburgh Steelers lost 16-10 to the Miami Dolphins to fall to 2-5 on the season and the entire game can be summed up in one word.
Interceptions.
For the Steelers they had every opportunity to win this game. The defense pitched a shutout in the second half and only allowed three points in the final three quarters. But it will be the four dropped interceptions that will haunt them.
On the other side of the ball, it was three interceptions by Pittsburgh quarterback Kenny Pickett that ultimately doomed the offense. While one of them wasn’t on Pickett, the other two, late in the game were horrible decisions by the rookie which killed huge momentum on those drives.
Pittsburgh now has to come back home and attempt to regroup before taking on the Philadelphia Eagles on the road. This is followed by the bye week and the team is going to have some serious decisions to make about the rest of this season depending on the outcome.
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The Steelers are keeping it close.
Despite a horribly slow start and some serious miscues, the Pittsburgh Steelers only trail the Miami Dolphins 16-10 at halftime. Here are our first-half takeaways.
George Pickens scores his first NFL touchdown.
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I think we have established that Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver George Pickens is pretty good at football.
With 1:55 to go in the first half of Sunday night’s game, Pickens gets his first NFL touchdown and does it in exactly the fashion you would expect from the dynamic rookie. Pickens hauled in the seven-yard pass from rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett and tapped both toes in before hitting the ground. We’d love to say it is the best catch Pickens has had this season but he has quickly shown these sorts of catches are routine for the former Georgia star.
George Pickens… WOW.
📺: #PITvsMIA on NBC
📱: Stream on NFL+ https://t.co/vDQGJ9SfCd pic.twitter.com/EU7DUGP9cT— NFL (@NFL) October 24, 2022
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Here are the Steelers inactives for this week’s game.
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The Pittsburgh Steelers head into Sunday’s prime-time game with the Miami Dolphins reasonably healthy for the first time in two weeks. Here is a full rundown of the Steelers inactive for tonight’s game.
Steelers Inactives
No. 2 QB Mason Rudolph
No. 25 CB Ahkello Witherspoon
No. 53 G Kendrick Green
No. 82 WR Steven Sims
No. 93 LB Mark Robinson
Dolphins Inactives
No. 3 RB Myles Gaskin
No. 18 WR Erik Ezukanma
No. 19 QB Skylar Thompson
No. 27 CB Keion Crossen
No. 28 CB Kader Kohou
No. 91 DE Emmanuel Ogbah
This will be the third straight game Witherspoon has missed with a hamstring injury. Levi Wallace will start in his place across from Cameron Sutton. Sims absence means wide receiver Gunner Olszewski will be active and resume return duties.
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Will these four Steelers be the difference this week against the Dolphins?
Last week’s upset win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers rekindled the optimism within the Pittsburgh Steelers that this team can be a viable AFC north contender. But if the Steelers want to beat the Miami Dolphins, guys who haven’t had big seasons to this point need to step up and make some plays. Here are our four breakout candidates for this week’s game.
Only a few brave pundits are calling for the Steelers upset this week.
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This season hasn’t gone according to plan for the Pittsburgh Steelers or Miami Dolphins. The Steelers are in the midst of a huge rebuild after the retirement of Ben Roethlisberger and the Dolphins are a team on the rise, eyeing an AFC title.
But through six games, the Steelers are 2-4 and the Dolphins are 3-3 and both teams can’t quite make sense of what they have. Miami started off hot in 2022 but when quarterback Tua Tagovailoa went down with a concussion, the team unraveled and lost three straight.
Tagovailoa is back this week and this is largely why the Steelers are 7.5-point underdogs despite being healthy and coming off of a huge win. But what do NFL pundits think? We looked to the folks at NFL Pick Watch for the answer. They aggregate NFL picks from all over the internet and put them all in one place. Their numbers have 89 percent of experts going with Miami at home with only 11 percent calling for the upset.
We have already called for the upset here and we invite everyone to cast your vote for who wins this week.
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