Sometimes when you watch the Pittsburgh Steelers play, they will go long stretches when their plan of attack is impossible to decipher. This is especially true on offense. Up is down, inside is outside and nothing else makes sense.
You can attribute this squarely to offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner. He became the Steelers OC in part because of his relationship with Ben Roethlisberger as the Steelers’ quarterbacks coach. But as we saw last week against the Buffalo Bills, managing the gameplan is still a work in progress.
But Fichtner tried to justify the missteps by the offense last week and honestly made himself sound foolish. Fichtner spoke to the media on Thursday and tried to rationalize why in a game where the score was close from start to finish, the run game was completely abandoned.
But Fichtner wasn’t ready to admit that.
“I don’t know about that,” Fichtner said. “A little situation in the second half may have dictated a little bit more. At halftime, it was close to 50-50. I don’t know if it’s always about the number. You like to kick yourself sometimes and say maybe we should have run it more here, maybe we should have passed it a little bit more on first down — things like that.
Uhm, what? The game was 10-7 Pittsburgh in the third quarter when Fichtner misplaced the run plays in the playbook. Out of the Steelers last 30 plays, only 4 of them were runs. While we concede down the stretch the Steelers did have to throw a bit more in order to try to move the ball down the field, but there was plenty of time prior to this when the Steelers forced the passing attack despite all the struggles by Devin Hodges.
Let’s hope this week with James Conner and Jaylen Samuels healthy and in the mix at practice all week, Fichtner won’t have to make any excuses as to why he abandoned the run game when the Steelers needed it most.
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