An inordinate amount of downtime analysis typically accompanies the Steelers’ bye week, but a useful one-sentence summary of this particular Mike Tomlin edition is that no team ever made 3-2 feel more like 1-4, or worse, than these fellas.
No team by mid-October ever made first place smell more basement-y, particularly those players compensated to provide “offense.”
If it weren’t for the Falcons, the Steelers would be the only NFL team of the eight that are 3-2 with a negative point differential. The 3-2 Falcons are at minus 13, the 3-2 Steelers are minus 31. The 3-2 Bills, by logical contrast, are plus 79.
Still, the darkest moment in the Steelers’ first five games, at least in this accounting, came on defense in the opener, when San Francisco’s Christian McCaffrey skedaddled 65 yards with virtually no resistance to the first of his now league-leading eight touchdowns. With 90 percent of the effort on the play expended by his blockers, McCaffrey looked like a man out for a Sunday jog along the riverfront. In front of him, left tackle Aaron Banks got the initial blast on Montravius Adams, then McCaffrey spun away from Levi Wallace in the hole. Soon enough, Niners wideout Brandon Aiyuk would plant Damontae Kazee in the grass in a sequence that might have been soundtracked by a kazoo, then Ray-Ray McCloud (remember Ray-Ray?) arrived from the opposite sideline to take Patrick Peterson on a ride that would have cost $21.50 in an uber.
Five weeks later, the only ember of hope from all of that is available in what McCaffrey’s done to everyone else since the trade that took him to San Francisco one year ago this week. Carolina sent him out there for a raft of draft picks, two of which they would trade to Pittsburgh to use on Darnell Washington and Nick Herbig. The Niners, 3-3 when McCaffrey arrived, are 17-2 since, and just finished undressing an unbeaten Dallas team on national television.
Dallas had allowed a total of 41 points in its four previous games. Frisco hung 42 on ‘em, principally because the Dallas defense was so preoccupied with the McCaffrey problem that it undersold the Aiyuk problem, the Deebo Samuel problem, the George Kittle problem, and the gathering Brock Purdy problem. (Purdy could today join Ben Roethlisberger as the only quarterbacks since 1970 to start their careers with 11 consecutive wins. Ben stretched it to 15 in 2004).
“Whenever you have a back who’s a threat in the pass game like he is and a tight end, those guys are guarded by linebackers and safeties,” Niners head coach Kyle Shanahan explained this week. “It’s tough to put a safety on both of them, so you usually get linebackers and stuff. When you have guys who are built to stop the run but have to stop a running back who’s like a receiver, they usually need help. And so, when they’re in position to get beat, they get help and that still doesn’t always work but it definitely gives all the other guys no help, which helps the other four eligibles.”
McCaffrey is a unique cat. Though he’s not much bigger than Sidney Crosby at 5-11 and 205, he was runner-up in the 2015 Heisman balloting to current Titans running back Derrick Henry, who is 6-3 and 247. McCaffrey was the eighth pick in the 2016 draft, two before Patrick Mahomes, eight after Mitch Trubisky.
Though he’s leading the league in rush yards today with 510 (152 vs. the Steelers), his value as a receiver is such that in an NFL season that began with an intense discussion of how running backs have been devalued, McCaffrey has attracted MVP buzz as well as his own excruciatingly hip shorthand identifier, CMC.
The 12 times that McCaffrey has scored both a rushing and a receiving touchdown in the same game are second in league history only to Marshall Faulk’s 15, and if he scores a touchdown of any stripe today at Cleveland he’ll have TD’s in 15 consecutive games. Only four others have done that – Lenny Moore, John Riggins, O.J. Simpson and LaDainian Tomlinson. Some betting sites will give you 5/2 that McCaffrey will break the all-time record of 18 owned by Tomlinson.
In the first game after McCaffrey put in a full week of practice with the Niners, Shanahan was thinking about using a play against the Rams that called for a pass by a running back.
“I remember when we were doing the red zone (planning), I yelled out to the rooms to anyone that would answer, ‘Does anyone know if Christian can throw?’” Shanahan said later. “Brian Fleury emailed or sent through text a video of him throwing a 53-yarder a few years ago. We repped it in practice. He threw it well then, and he threw great (in the game).”
So that day, CMC had a rushing TD, a receiving TD, and a passing TD.
There are, on this idle Sunday, plenty of reasons to ponder why the Steelers are averaging exactly one offensive TD per week, just as there are plenty of reasons the Niners have scored 30 or more points every week of this season. But I think I know the No. 1 reason.
Enjoy your Sunday, Cleveland.
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com and Twitter: @genecollier
First Published: October 15, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: October 16, 2023, 12:12 a.m.
