Oct 10, 2017 4 min read

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Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin defending his team’s game plan on Tuesday after the Steelers had a 55-20 run-to-pass ratio in Sunday’s 30-9 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.

As Tomlin correctly pointed out, game situations dictated that the Steelers throw the ball exclusively in the fourth quarter, skewing the numbers greatly. But it doesn’t explain why that ratio was 21-11 in the first half.

“Game plans and things of that nature are often revealed over the second half of football games, the last quarter and a half of football games. So, the bomb went off there on us in the third quarter,” Tomlin said. “We threw a couple pick-6’s so the stats aren’t going to reflect our plan or our intentions. It’s just not. Like I outlined, we threw two pick-6’s in the third quarter. They got the ball the start of the fourth quarter and chewed up five minutes of clock. You’re going to lose any balance over the last quarter, quarter and a half, when those things occur. You’re going to seem one dimensional because you are. Time becomes a factor.”

The Steelers opened the second half trying to change the tempo of the game and went to their no-huddle offense. They ran 14 plays, three of which were Le’Veon Bell runs that gained 23 yards. He also caught two passes during the drive.

Bell got just two more carries after that as the interception train got rolling.

“I know you’re always going to have questions in that area,” said Tomlin. “Feature runners like Le’Veon Bell, you’re always going to have questions in that area. When you’re winning, you run the ball over the last quarter and a half of football games. Le’Veon probably ran the ball 12 or 14 times over the last quarter and a half or so in the Baltimore Raven game. He didn’t because we were down by multiple scores. We got one dimensional. Time was a factor. It happens.

“We were playing to win the football game. We always will but in an effort to do that sometimes, losses are uglier than they could be. We don’t care. We don’t care what we look like, we’re playing and playing to win. If there’s time on that clock we’re going to play.”

@ Tomlin said the calls to challenge two plays unsuccessfully Sunday against Jacksonville came from him and weren’t recommendations from the coaches in the booth.

Tomlin challenged the spot of a catch on the first one with 4:40 remaining in the first half. The second came on an incompletion to Antonio Brown in the fourth quarter.

He said he thought he had a good view of the first.

“Very rarely will a challenge a line to gain, unless there’s visually a line to gain,” Tomlin said. “I was standing on the yard-marker. It was maybe the 40-yard line. There was a white line. When a line to gain is a line, that’s the only time that I’ll consider challenging the spot because now the visual evidence required to flip it, you’ve probably got a better shot in terms of seeing something definitive. I was standing on the line. I didn’t think he got the line to gain. I was extremely confident in it. I challenged it. I didn’t win the challenge. I challenged it again under the same circumstances based on what I saw.”

The second was a case of Tomlin trusting receiver Antonio Brown, who was adamant that he had caught the ball.

@ Slot receiver Eli Rogers has been inactive the past two games but that could change Sunday.

Justin Hunter has provided little in the passing game and the Steelers might be able to use a slot receiver who can get open quickly against Kansas City.

“Like I said when we deactivated him, it wasn’t a death sentence,” Tomlin said. “It was an opportunity for him to re-center and get squared away from a technical standpoint, particularly from a field-the-punt standpoint, which is one of the core jobs that he possesses. He’ll be given an opportunity to prove that and wide receiver play this week, and we’ll see where it leads us.”