By Ray Porter Jr.
PITTSBURGH, PA–After winning their first 3 games of the 2024 season, the Pittsburgh Steelers are now on a losing streak after losing 27-24 to the Indianapolis Colts and losing 20-17 to the Dallas Cowboys in front of a Sunday Night Football National audience and a sold-out crowd of 67,380 at Acrisure Stadium who endured a 1.5-hour rain delay.
At about 12:52am, Cowboys QB Dak Prescott (29/42, 352 yards, 2 TDs, 2INT) found WR Jalen Tolbert for a 4-yard TD with 20 seconds left to erase a 17-13 Steelers lead. Prescott and the Cowboys drove effortlessly down the field while erasing 4>50 seconds off the clock. The Cowboys are now 3-2.
“I just told the team, there’s a fine line between drinking wine and squashing grapes in our business, and that’s an example of it. That ball was on the ground right there in the red area, and that’s the difference. I want to congratulate Dallas, man,” said Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin. “I’m going to complement our guys on their efforts. It was a hard-fought game tonight, but it’s nothing mystical about the outcome. I just thought we didn’t do enough over 60 minutes to position ourselves specifically.”
The Steelers intercepted Prescott twice (Donte Jackson & Joey Porter Jr.), blocked one of K Brandon Aubrey’s kicks (Isaiahh Loudermilk) but still fell short against America’s Team.
Tomlin explains why: “I thought we started slow offensively, and I thought it was self-inflicted wounds, penalties, and things of that nature to get us off schedule. I didn’t think we were as connected as we should have been defensively and some moments in the first half didn’t necessarily manifest itself in terms of points, but it was some field positional, flipping like chunks and things of that nature.”
QB Justin Fields, who started his fourth consecutive game, led the Steelers on their first scoring drive that resulted in a 41 FG by K Chris Boswell. Fields (15/27, 131 yards, 2TDs) wasn’t as effective as he was against the Colts and LA Chargers, but his TDs to Connor Heyward (first half) and Pat Freiermuth (second half) gave the Steelers temporary leads.
But the Steelers had problems holding onto those leads. “You know, some of it was lack of execution by us. Some of it was top-quality execution by them. We own it. We’ve got to be better. You are plus three in some of those instances. Man, it shouldn’t come down to that. We didn’t do a lot of things well enough to secure a victory, no doubt.”
The Steelers defense also had its challenges as they couldn’t stop Prescott and the Cowboys especially on third downs. “I just thought early on I didn’t think that we were connected enough from a communications standpoint. They paced us a little bit, but a lot of that’s got to do with Dak. He’s a veteran guy. He’s good in those moments,” said Tomlin.
The 3-2 Steelers must regroup and get ready to travel to Las Vegas to play the 2-3 Raiders. They know that the must do whatever it takes to finish games with more points than their opponent. “I thought we settled down and cleaned some of that up over the second half, but obviously when you are playing a good team, and particularly a guy like Dak Prescott, man, you are in tight ball games, he ends up with the ball last, you got a chance to lose. That’s really just a synopsis of what transpired.” Said Tomlin.
Notes: TJ Watt finished with 1.5 sacks, good for 101 career sacks, the fastest player in NFL history to eclipse that mark…Fellow LB Nate Herbig (hamstring) and DE DeMarvin Leal (neck) were the ones on the injury list.
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