In their final home game of the season, with everything on the line, the Pittsburgh Steelers were dominated by the Buffalo Bills. Don’t look at the score because that doesn’t tell the whole story. It was a 17-10 loss but this was one of the worst performances by the Steelers offense all season and that’s really saying something.
Here are our three big takeaways from the loss.
This is Devlin Hodges
Don’t kid yourselves, Steeler Nation. The game Devlin Hodges had Sunday night could have happened in any of his starts this season. Buffalo has a tremendous defense and Hodges had no answers for what they did. The Bills pinched Hodges with controlled pressure resulting in a panicked rookie quarterback who either took a big hit or threw it to the wrong team. The defense and wide receivers have shielded fans from this up until tonight but everyone saw what Hodges does when he faces a bigtime defense.
Don’t blame the defense…much
For a time, the Steelers defense came out and did exactly what they have done for the past two months. Stuffed the run, pressured the quarterback, even got a turnover. But in the final analysis, this defense wore down, and a lack of depth in the front seven was exposed by the run offense of the Bills. When the offseason rolls around, Pittsburgh has to look at ways to bolster the strength and physicality up front and give them team some depth at edge rusher.
Where’s the run game?
Despite the fact this game was within a touchdown from start to finish, Pittsburgh took a page from 2018 and abandoned the run game. This is made more surprising when you consider running back James Conner was back and running well. Buffalo had 38 rushers and the Steelers had only 15. This is all you need to know as far as which coaching staff understood what needed to be done.
