From the cheap seats to the luxury suites and down to the Great Hall, there was one unmistakable sound emanating throughout Heinz Field on Sunday afternoon: 'Booooooooooo!'
Sure, those jeers might have been better directed toward Le'Veon Bell for not showing up to work (again) as the Steelers put up a paltry 33 rushing yards or maybe at a defense that gave up 42 points and a franchise record-tying six touchdown passes to a quarterback making his third career start.
Instead the loudest and most hearty jeers were reserved for Jordan Berry. That's right, yinzers booed the punter on Sunday.
Not that the boobirds were unwarranted, but they were perhaps a little misguided in light of all of the aforementioned.
And that's not to excuse the Australian's performance against the Chiefs. It was pretty much an extension of Week 1 in Cleveland and, in all honesty, the four preseason games. It was, as Mike Tomlin deemed it, not "varsity-like consistency."
Berry would agree with that.
"It definitely hasn't been great," he said.
Much the same could be said for a lot of Steelers, who saw their record fall to 0-1-1 after their 42-37 debacle in Week 2.
Special teams figured to play a large role in Sunday's game and, indeed they did. Just not in the way the Steelers or most anyone saw coming.
If you had told the Steelers at 12:59 p.m. on Sunday that Kansas City return-specialist extraordinaire Tyreek Hill would be limited to a measly six yards on both punts and kickoffs combined, surely they would have taken it. Probably would have thought they'd have won, too.
If you had said before the season that Chris Boswell would be 0-for-2 on field goals this season, who would have guessed that? And yet the $20 million kicker who converted 92 percent of his field goals last season hooked another FG attempt, this one a 49-yarder with 5:09 left in the first quarter:
And then he pushed a point-after attempt with 6:31 left in the second quarter:
He called it "definitely frustrating," but did last week's miss on a 42-yard try in overtime against the Browns weigh on him mentally and carry over?
"No, it's a new kick, new game, new week," Boswell told DKPittsburghSports.com. "Just got to keep kicking and kick my way through this."
So what exactly is going on with the Steelers specialists? I asked the guy who works with both and he had plenty to say.
"It's always frustrating when you lose," said long snapper Kameron Canaday. "Everybody needs to play better. We just have to stick together as a group. We're good. Boz is a Pro Bowler. Berry's awesome too. We've proven that we can do it. We just have to get out there and get after it and show how good we really are on the field on Sundays."
To their credit, both Berry and Boswell owned up to their performances in speaking afterward. That's more than Antonio Brown did. The exceptional wide receiver whisked his way past the incoming media within seconds of the locker room door being opened.
Neither specialist pointed a finger at anyone but themselves. But both could have.
For the second straight week, Boswell may have been dealing with less than ideal playing conditions. Last week it was rain and wind in Cleveland. On Sunday it was Heinz Field itself.
New sod was laid down this week at Heinz Field in time for Saturday's Pitt game but, according to Kanaday, it didn't take root. Just one game in and it's already noticeably chewed up between the hash marks, where Boswell makes his living.
"Boz probably wouldn't say it, but the field was terrible," Kanaday said. "His plant foot, I mean, he was going six inches in the ground. You could pull the 20-whatever yard line up off the field."
Clearly Berry could have pointed fingers, particularly after his first punt of the game.
His 39-yarder, kicked to within a foot or two of the left sideline, set an ominous tone for the game. The thing is, technically, it was exactly what the Steelers were looking for.
DeAnthony Thomas fielded it at his 42 and somehow streaked down the sideline with little resistance from the kicking team:
He fumbled the ball briefly but recovered it and was finally brought down at the Pittsburgh 10-yard line. Three plays later, Patrick Mahomes made it 7-0 on the first of his six TDs.
"Our goal was to make sure they didn't catch the ball and try and draw them out of bounds and not give them a chance," Berry was telling me. "As you can see there, you keep it a yard in and that return team is phenomenal and able to take advantage of it."
Due to Hill and the threat that he represents, the Steelers kicked away from him all day. All six of Boswell's kickoffs were kicked into or out of the end zone for touchbacks.
Berry had to punt with a heavy angle to get the ball in the corners or out of bounds. That relegated Hill to a non-factor -- at least on special teams -- but it also resulted in the punter having a 31.6 net average, the third-lowest of his four-year career.
"Those (mid-30's punts) don't look pretty, but they're not going to kill you. But we definitely could have got more out of them," Berry said.
And actually that average was inflated by his two fourth-quarter punts.
The first was a 59-yarder with 12:23 left remaining. Berry let fly a low line drive spiral that landed at the seven and took a fortunate curl out of bounds at the 1:
That punt drew mock cheers from the crowd of 63,956, but the boos returned a short time later after the Steelers pulled to within 42-30 on a safety. Standing at his 44 with a chance to pin the Chiefs deep, Berry unloaded a 56-yarder that nearly went through the end zone.
Whatever Berry did on Sunday, it didn't seem to appease the home crowd.
"Sometimes they'll boo when I felt pretty good with it and other times, like the one which went out at the 1, which I felt was probably the worst punt I had all day, the result was good and they cheer for that," Berry said. "You just got to do what you do and not really focus on what other people think."
The question moving forward is whether the Steelers can make do with a punter who is averaging 37.1 per punt, 25th in the NFL. Berry seemed to be outplayed in the preseason by Matt Wile, who signed with Minnesota after being among the Steelers' final cuts. Besides being the incumbent, Berry had the advantage of being the only holder Boswell has worked with.
But now with Boswell struggling too, the Steelers find themselves in a bit of a predicament with their specialists.
Tomlin has traditionally shown little or no patience for struggling specialists, punters in particular.
A roster move might score some cheap points with a few vocal fans, but Kanaday says that some perspective and understanding of the game is needed.
"I don't really care what the crowd thinks," he said. "We had a game plan going into it. Tyreek Hill didn't do anything. We know what we're trying to get out of our guys. We don't really care what the peanut gallery, I guess, has to say."
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers vs. Chiefs, Heinz Field, Sept. 16, 2018. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS