Starting quick is the Steelers key of the week

The Pittsburgh Steelers have laid an egg earlier in games this year. This problem has gotten worse in recent weeks. From going down 29 against the Vikings and also falling behind against the Chargers, Ravens, and Bengals. They’ve fallen apart early, and either folded or made a valiant effort to get back into games. Simply playing like how they have late in games for a full 60 minutes is the biggest fix. However, the challenging part is determining if the slow starts are due to mindset or being out coached early on before they have tweaked the schemes.

I hesitate to lump this issue entirely on coaching, but they do deserve some of the blame, watching this team it looks like they are playing with a lack of effort or just going through the motions. They’ve also done something Pittsburgh Steelers teams never do, give up. The Steelers have given up bad plays early in games and then seemingly stopped competing. Somehow they’ve had the resilience to claw back in some of these games, but if they can avoid the early game collapse they will have an easier time winning games.

Ben Roethlisberger is one of the greatest fourth quarter comeback specialists in the history of football, but asking the near 40 year old to work his magic in EVERY game is simply asking too much. The Steelers need to do themselves a favor and compete earlier in games. The effort they’ve been missing could be fixed by making a couple plays early, maybe what they need to do against the Titans is to open the game up with an early trick play or some sort of home run shot they haven’t run this year. A big play touchdown might change everyone’s mindset instead of getting into the “here we go again” mindset that is so easy to fall into when you are consistently losing.

The Titans are one of the better teams in football, but are battling some major injury issues. The Steelers will need to take advantage of a team that’s undermanned, but they won’t be able to do it if they give up an early score and just turn off. This is a great game for the Steelers to flip the script and play good football. But what do you think? Can the Steelers start quick and win this game? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.