Kaboly: Steelers’ ‘horrible’ performance exposes biggest problem — mental weakness (original) (raw)

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PITTSBURGH — We all know how the Pittsburgh Steelers lost to the two-win Arizona Cardinals, one of the NFL’s worst teams, on Sunday: sloppy pre-snap penalties, turnovers, bad snaps, a missed field goal, injuries, red zone woes, lack of offense, poor defense, etc.

That’s how all teams lose, so who cares about the how? We all should be more intrigued with the why … as in why did the Steelers once again play their worst football of the season against a team that, frankly, stinks?

I am not interested in Mason Cole saying the Cardinals are a “good football team” regardless of what their record says.

No, Mason, they stink … stank … stunk.

Tight end Zach Ertz wanted out so badly that he asked to be cut earlier in the week, and the Cardinals immediately obliged. I dare you to name more than one player on their defense. Hell, I dare you to tell me who their head coach is, and as a bonus, where did he coach last year?

You don’t know. Not many do, so don’t feel too bad about it.

That’s what makes Sunday’s 24-10 whipping by the Cardinals — likely one of the three worst home losses of Mike Tomlin’s tenure (along with Tampa Bay in 2014 and Oakland in 2009) — so troublesome. The Steelers had everything to play for, and the Cardinals had nothing to lose, perhaps except for a chance at a potential franchise quarterback in Caleb Williams or Drake Maye come the end of April.

Cam Heyward strongly disagreed with the notion that the Steelers may have overlooked the two-win Cardinals pic.twitter.com/jsuBlRC2ej

— Mike DeFabo (@MikeDeFabo) December 3, 2023

“That was a horrible day at the office,” Tomlin said. “We didn’t do much right in that game, to be quite honest with you, so we’ve got to own that. … We just weren’t good enough throughout the game. It was JV football in a lot of ways.”

If I played JV football, I’d be offended by that statement from Tomlin.

Which brings me back to the why: being mentally weak and lacking the talent to overcome weak opponents.

“You name it, we did it wrong,” Cameron Heyward said. “We have to make our momentum, and we didn’t do that.”

The Steelers had everything in front of them, including a chance to still win the division and a favorable schedule over the next four weeks. To come out and put on a performance like they did is embarrassing and unacceptable.

We’ve seen it a lot over the years under Tomlin. So much so that it’s now referred to as a “Tomlin game” when the Steelers lose to an opponent they have no business losing to. There is some truth to that, but it has been more overblown than anything else, or at least until recently.

With this team, we shouldn’t be shocked.

They are young and, to be truthful, not overly talented at the positions where you need to be talented.

But what this team lacks the most, and it was on full display Sunday, is mental toughness. There is none. When something goes wrong, they tend to let it fester to the point of no return. Mistake after mistake after mistake happens.

“Inconsistency, man,” outside linebacker Alex Highsmith said. “In December, you have to be playing your best ball to make that Super Bowl run, so you can’t have games like this. We just aren’t mentally tough right now.”

Bingo.

Mentally tough teams overcome getting stopped at the 1-yard line on fourth down, and they don’t allow an ensuing 99-yard touchdown drive. Mentally tough teams take a 25-minute lightning delay and a 50-minute lightning delay and use it to their advantage over a lesser opponent.

Didn’t happen. I can argue that the Steelers played worse after the two lengthy weather delays than they did before.

“It was unacceptable,” Cole said about the loss. “We can hate our game, but we can’t hate ourselves.”

The Steelers were non-competitive after the first drive of the game, and that has to come from somewhere. I am not a huge fan of the “coach didn’t have them ready” narrative, which inevitably will be thrown around. But if you have a better explanation than that for this stinker, feel free to reach out and let me know because that’s where I am at right now.

“We need to look no further than the mirror,” Tomlin said. “We didn’t do it today.”

Steelers running back Jaylen Warren said the Steelers took the 2-win Cardinals "lightly."

Asked if this team has a problem handling success, he agreed: "(We) let the highs get too high."

— Mike DeFabo (@MikeDeFabo) December 3, 2023

Surely, it is not as simple as that. The injuries to Kenny Pickett, Elandon Roberts, Isaac Seumalo, Minkah Fitzpatrick and T.J. Watt — along with the opponent having tape on the new offense run by Eddie Faulkner and Mike Sullivan — didn’t help. But this wasn’t the 49ers they were playing.

This was a team the Rams devoured last week. This was a defense that had given up at least 31 points in five games this year.

“It wasn’t our day, and there is no excuse for that … we let one get away,” Cole said.

Or just maybe the Steelers showed us once again who they are — a young team that isn’t that good but has found ways to win. You would think the fourth-quarter comebacks and being able to pull out tight wins every week would harden them for these types of games.

It hasn’t.

The Steelers are a legitimate seven- or eight-win team whose record suggests they are better than that. They aren’t yet. They might be next year, but they aren’t now. Until then, you can’t be shocked by games like this because there will be more.

Not long before the game, a veteran scribe in the city asked me: “There is no way they can lose this one, right?”

My response: “Absolutely, they can.”

Mentally weak teams can lose to the 2-10 Cardinals just as easily as the 10-2 Eagles.

“We just beat ourselves, and this late in the season, you can’t do that and expect to win games,” receiver Allen Robinson said. “It was unacceptable, especially what our expectations are. We can’t play a game like we did today and expect to play into January.”

Surely, now nobody expects them to play anything but one game in January — the regular-season finale in Baltimore.

(Photo of Minkah Fitzpatrick, 39, and Trey McBride: Philip G. Pavely / USA Today)

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