Lolley's 10 Thoughts: Oakland suddenly huge

I thought going into this game the Steelers needed to get James Conner involved back in the offense more than they had the previous couple of weeks.

That meant getting him 20 touches, whether it be in the running game or passing game.

They were on their way to doing that when Conner suffered what Mike Tomlin called a "contusion" but looked a lot more like a dreaded high ankle sprain.

Hopefully, we'll find out more about Conner's situation Monday, but let it suffice that this doesn't look good coming out of that 33-30 defeat:

Safety Adrian Phillips landed with his body on the back of Conner's leg and pinned it under him at an awkward angle.

Even with that, Conner got 18 touches and gained 74 yards -- 60 rushing, 13 receiving. There's a good chance had he not gotten hurt, he would have gotten those 20 touches. Backup Jaylen Samuels caught passes on the next two plays, scoring a game-tying touchdown.

But the Steelers need Conner. He's part of their red zone effectiveness. He scored two more short-yardage touchdowns, giving him nine touchdown runs of five or fewer yards this season. He's scored 12 times on the ground.

And neither Samuels or Stevan Ridley, who did not play in this game despite being active, offer that kind of ability.

The Steelers will enter next Sunday's game at their personal house of horrors -- the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum, where they are 3-8 -- in dire need of a victory. Sunday's heartbreaker of a loss leaves them just a half-game ahead of the Ravens in the AFC North.

The Ravens probably don't have the horses to get to 10 wins. That would require them to win games in Kansas City and Los Angeles against these same Chargers. That's just unlikely to happen. But they can get to 9-7.

So the Steelers winning at Oakland next week is now a must. And they also must win their regular season finale against the Bengals, a team that looks like it has quit on this season as much as the Raiders have.

Win those two and you've got at least nine wins. And the Steelers still look like a better team than this current version of the Patriots.

But without Conner, perhaps not so much. After all, he's scored 13 total touchdowns this season.

We've seen the Steelers head into the playoffs without their top running back before. And it never ends well.

• What Sunday's loss did was pretty much relegate the Steelers to the No. 4 seed in the AFC playoffs.

That means a rematch in the opening round against the Chargers, who will likely have leading rusher and second-leading receiver Melvin Gordon back by then.

But, there's still a lot that can happen in the final month of the season.

• I'm not going to comment a lot about the officiating other than to say it was pretty bad -- and lopsided.

Typically when you have a game like this with four or five bad calls, they work out to where they hurt both teams. In this case, that wasn't what happened. But if you're the Steelers, you've got to find a way to put this team away when you're up 23-7 in the third quarter.

However, a questionable holding penalty against Ramon Foster negated a 22-yard run by Conner that would have put the Steelers at the Chargers' 26. The Steelers wound up punting on fourth-and-three from the Chargers' 47.

Then, on a second-and-9 screen on their next possession, Alejandro Villanueva was called for holding, negating an eight-yard pass to Conner. The Steelers ended up punting -- and having that punt returned 73 yards for a touchdown.

Meanwhile, on the possession between those two occurrences, Los Angeles' left tackle, Russell Okung also was called for holding to negate an 18-yard catch by Antonio Gates to the Steelers' 7.

Faced with third-and-14, Phillip Rivers completed an 18-yard pass to the 17. The Chargers scored two plays later on a touchdown pass on which Sean Davis and Joe Haden collided in the end zone. The ball caromed into the air and into the waiting arms of Keenan Allen.

It was a complete fluke.

The calls? They were what they were. But the Chargers also made some of their own good fortune.

• On a positive note, the Steelers got Antonio Brown going early and often in this game. The Chargers were trying to match up on him with top corner Casey Hayward and that just didn't work.

Brown caught 10 passes for 154 yards and a touchdown on 13 targets.

I felt going into this game the Chargers' pass defense numbers were skewed by some of the really bad quarterbacks they had played. They had allowed nine touchdown passes in three games against the Rams, Chiefs and Seahawks and seven in their other eight games against the dregs of the league.

• This game had all of the feel of one of those ones where whichever quarterback had the ball last was going to win -- at least by the time we got to the fourth quarter.

The Chargers really couldn't stop the Steelers -- unless aided by a penalty. And it was likewise for the Steelers.

That's typically what happens when two future hall of fame quarterbacks get together.

• Gotta give Phillip Rivers a lot of credit. He hung in late on some of his throws to complete them despite being under heavy pressure.

While the Steelers only sacked him twice, they hit him nine other times. Ben Roethlisberger, on the other hand, was sacked once and hit twice.

Rivers talks smack on the field, as he did with the Steelers after throwing a touchdown to Travis Benjamin on which the whole world saw right tackle Sam Tevi get a running start, but the guy can play.

• Roethlisberger played well in this one, too. But a ball that slipped out of his hand in the first half ended up being a costly interception by Derwin James.

The Steelers were at least going to get a field goal there.

That doesn't mean the Steelers would have won. Rivers had the ball last and would have been taking some shots at the end zone late. But those are costly points, just like the continued missed PATs by Chris Boswell.

That's five missed PATs by Boswell this season. That's a problem moving forward when every point matters.

Those kind of mistakes will cost you against good teams.

• This was a weird weekend in the NFL.

The high-scoring Colts went to Jacksonville ... and got shut out. The Packers lost at home to the punchless Cardinals ... and fired longtime coach Mike McCarthy right after the game. The Giants stunned the Bears and their defense, scoring 30 points against them in an overtime win.

That's the NFL. Anything can happen and any team can win in a given week.

That's especially true if they get a few helpful calls. OK, I know, I wasn't going to mention the officiating again.

• Are the Steelers a good team?

My eyes tell me yes. I've seen this team pick itself up off the ground too many times to think otherwise, though I hadn't seen it blow a 16-point second half win before.

That's because that had never happened in a home game -- in team history.

It took some truly remarkable things happening -- and some truly remarkable calls/non-calls -- for that to occur.

• File this game away in your memory banks for the next time some Bengals or Ravens fan complains the Steelers get all of the calls.

That's obviously not the case.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY