There’s plenty of stats to illustrate how tough of a year it’s been for the Pittsburgh Steelers. In very obvious terms, they have the 31st-ranked scoring offense and the 23rd-ranked scoring defense. Doesn’t take a genius to understand you’re not going to have a winning record with numbers like those.
But digging deeper, the numbers that impact those broader figures, the Steelers have been a miserable situational team. On third down, they’re a mess and their offense is a porous as it is in large part due to an ineffective red zone defense. Those are the key three metrics I’m staring at and ones that must improve if Pittsburgh wants to do the same.