4-1.
2-2.
Those are the Pittsburgh Steelers respective road/home slipts this year. Unlike last year, when Pittsburgh finished the year 7-1 at home and just 4-4 on the road, this year's Steelers are having a harder time harnessing the energy of the Heinz Field faithful to put away good teams at home late in the game. There are plenty of reasons that we could assign to why this may be the case, but I think the primary one is that we still have a hard time breaking other's teams backs with the running game late in games when we have small leads that we'd ideally protect with time-consuming drives.
It would be interesting to go back and look at the play-by-plays of our 2004 and 2005 seasons when we were fairly successful at doing just that, especially at home. But that sounds like an offseason project to me.
Dating back to last year though, when we dropped back-to-back home games against Jacksonville, including in the Wild Card Round of the playoffs, the Pittsburgh Steelers are an unsightly 2-4 playing at home. Fortunately for us, we have two consecutive home games coming up against SD and CIN. Win those two and we're back in solid shape in the AFC. Lose either one and we're presented with even more evidence that we may just not be ready for the primetime with this particular combination of players and coaches.
On a more positive note, a loss in the next two would almost assuredly mean we'd be hitting the road in the playoffs were we to even get there. So far so good away from Heinz this year and we all know what kind of magical run we were able to go on in 2005.
Anyway, that definitely is a product of missing our top two RBs for most of the year, working in new offensive linemen on the fly under the tutelage of Larry Zeirlein, and above all else, quite simply, ill timed turnovers. We could have won both those Ls.
Nevertheless, it's a discouraging sign. And one I hope leaves my radar over the course of the next two weeks.