Ten games deep in a turbulent NFL season, your leading Steelernomic indicators persist in framing a team with muscular promise amid a backdrop of recurrent turmoil.
Broad indicators such as Pittsburgh’s 8-2 record reflect the best autumn ever in a Mike Tomlin era that’s beginning to look more like a Mike Tomlin epoch. Only eight Steelers teams in history have bolted to 8-2 records or better, six of which advanced at least to the conference title game, four of which won Super Bowls. If 8-2 isn’t all that satisfying on your success-hardened Steelers palate, remind yourself that this is a franchise that in 43 of its 84 seasons did not win eight games all season.
Within those decidedly macro measurements, of course, are micro indicators that may or may not portend much of anything, such as this business about no Steelers opponent scoring a touchdown on its opening possession since late 2015. That’s 27 regular season games, the longest active streak in the NFL, and the last team with a longer one (29) was called the Legion of Boom, which romped through Super Bowl XLVIII dressed as the Seattle Seahawks.
Still, is it meaningful?
“I imagine it’s noteworthy in the way that something interesting from a trivia standpoint is,” Tomlin told me after practice this week, trying hard not to roll his eyes. “But I don’t know that when we step in a stadium it’s in the front of our mind. I think we’re trying to keep the score down for the length of the day.”
Without hesitation, this column pleads guilty to multiple counts of trafficking in trivia, but the fact that no Steelers defense in almost 20 years has put together a string of such great first impressions can’t be insignificant.
“It’s a huge statement,” said Darren Perry, the former Steelers safety who’ll be on the Green Bay sideline Sunday night in his ninth season on Mike McCarthy’s coaching staff. “There’s no question it takes something out of the offense because so many teams operate under scripted plays, the first 15. That first drive, they put so much into it; those are the plays they like against you. They work on it all week and they settle on the plays they feel really good about.”
So when they don’t get a touchdown after a week in the lab, it’s deflating, something people start to notice when a defense prevails week after week. The defense on which Perry and Carnell Lake and Levon Kirkland operated beginning in 1997 strung together 34 games in which they kept opponents out of the end zone on that important first possession.
“We had some really good defenses,” Perry said from his home in Wisconsin this week. “Bill Cowher always talked about setting the tone, and our mindset was a big part of that.”
Historically though, many football facts aren’t necessarily what they seem. It’s one thing to say that Green Bay hasn’t won in Pittsburgh in nearly 47 years, a stone cold fact, but it’s another if you augment that by saying they’ve only visited the city four times since 1970.
So it is with this current 27-game streak by these Steelers. The streak has wrinkles, some pretty significant.
“I think Kansas City went down the field on us in the playoffs last year, on the first drive,” Tomlin pointed out correctly, meaning the streak is really 11 rather than 27 by his standard, which is, of course, the standard. “You don’t think about it; you probably think about the moments that you do (allow a touchdown). That’s what I remember. That probably reflects our mentality more than anything else.”
And here’s another little wrinkle. In Chicago this September, the case could be made that the Bears scored on their first possession even though it included a punt that resulted in a Steelers possession of less than a second, the time it took the football to go in and out of the hands of Eli Rogers. The Bears recovered Rogers’ fumble and scored six plays later. Without that, the Steelers might have won in regulation rather than losing in overtime.
So there are mitigating factors in what’s presented as a 27-game streak, which might explain why many of the men who’ve cobbled it together are either unaware of it or loathe to discuss it.
“I know of it,” said linebacker Ryan Shazier, “I just don’t like to talk about stuff like that. It’s good because I think it gives our offense a chance to start fast, get a lead, but I don’t want to think about it.”
This 2017 Steelers defense has yet to allow a first-possession TD by the opponent. That’s no accident, but it didn’t hurt that the season started in Cleveland, where, after the opening touchback, the Browns went 25 yards.
Backwards.
First-and-10 became third-and-23, and the punt one play later was blocked by Tyler Matakevich and flopped on by Anthony Chickillo in the endzone. Without that, the Browns might have won.
A week later, the highlight of Minnesota’s first possession at Heinz Field was that Steelers linebacker Bud Dupree played all of it without realizing projected Vikings starter Sam Bradford was not even in the game.
“If it happens that they score, it doesn’t go in the back of our minds, ‘Oh no, we gave up a play,” said defensive end Cam Heyward. “And I don’t think it really takes that much out of an offense. It might set a tone, and it’s important to get off the field on the first possession, but you gotta do it after that. I’m just trying to win games.”
The Steelers have won 20 of the 27 games in this streak, but if you’re thinking they might have done that anyway, it’s worth pointing out that if you start in December of 2015 and go backwards to find 27 games in which they did allow a first-possession touchdown (because you have absolutely positively nothing to do), they were 11-16 on those days.
Six teams made field goals in these past 27 games, but among the quarterbacks who failed to find the endzone was one Tom Brady, who was foiled at Heinz Field last in October of 2016 by the famous Jarvis Jones, who tackled Patriots receiver Chris Hogan, forced a Hogan fumble, and recovered the Hogan fumble, matching just about the entire defensive production of his Steelers career. The Bengals probably came closest to ending it last December in Cincinnati when they ran four plays from inside the Steelers’ 9 but got no closer than the 5 and settled for a field goal.
The Baltimore Ravens were the last team to score a touchdown against Keith Butler’s unit the first time it had the ball. The quarterback that day in December of 2015, for those who like their trivia sliced extra thin, was Ryan Mallett.
“There’s so much energy and emotion and adrenalin going into that first possession,” said Steelers nickel back Mike Hilton, who ended Tennessee’s initial gambit last week with an interception of Marcus Mariota on the third play. “The first possession is the tone setter for the rest of the game. If you can get a three-and-out or even if they drive the field and get three points, you know seven points there is a big momentum builder. So it’s absolutely significant when we prevent that.”
The Packers on Sunday night will drag onto the North Shore lawn an offense that’s failed to score a point in the last 70 minutes, 39 seconds of NFL play, and yet five times in Green Bay’s 10 games came a touchdown on its first possession, one even after the season-ending injury to quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Don’t be surprised if the Pack does that again Sunday night, snapping the Steelers’ streak, such as it is. After 1,300 fate-seducing words on the topic, what else would you expect?
You’re welcome.
First Published: November 26, 2017, 12:00 p.m.
