The statistics show the Steelers have the seventh best defense in terms of yards-against in the NFL. Points per game, however, tell a different story.
The Steelers rank 16th in the 32-team NFL in points against, painting a much different picture, especially when you consider the team has allowed more than a third of those points in the fourth quarter of games this season.
The Steelers have given up 113 of their 306 points allowed this season in the final 15 minutes, a number that accounts for nearly 37 percent of the points scored against them.
That also places them 28th in terms of fourth quarter points allowed in the league at 8.7 per game. Only Miami, Oakland, Atlanta and the Giants have been worse.
"This has happened multiple times, and we’re not coming up in clutch moments," defensive end Cam Heyward said following the team's latest loss, 24-21, in Oakland. "We’ve got to get a stop. You have to collect that as a defense. You’ve got to think, ‘If we get a stop, we end the game.’ Our quarterback just gave us the lead, and we’re not getting it. Simple as that. We’re not holding up our end of the deal.”
It's been a season-long issue for the Steelers (7-5-1), and one that has cropped up throughout the season, including in each of the past three games, all losses.
Figuring out how to fix that before Sunday, when the Steelers host the Patriots (9-4) will be critical if they hope to hold off the Ravens (7-6) in the AFC North standings.
Mike Tomlin said the team plans to leave no stone unturned to try to figure out the issue.
"It's all of us," Tomlin said Tuesday. "You don't fail and then conveniently pinpoint one area. This is a complex game. And because it's a complex game, because of the number of people involved and when you're talking about consistent failures, like we've had in recent games, it's usually a multitude of things. You'd better look at the schematics, what crew we're asking to do what, and we'd better look at the detail with which they're doing it. That's our intentions."
What that could mean is anyone's best guess. Eighteen of the 25 defensive players on the team's roster have recorded at least 200 snaps this season.
The Steelers also aren't going to change their 3-4 base defense, though they're unlikely to be in that alignment much against the Patriots.
"We're open to change. We're going to have discussion about change," Tomlin said. "But I don't want to lead you to believe these changes are going to be dramatic and noticeable to the naked in the eye. But in our world, they are very much necessary and very significant. Sometimes, you make very subtle changes and they have very significant outcomes."
Tomlin had better hope that is the case because the Steelers can't continue down the road they have travelled thus far and hope for change.
The Steelers have given up a go-ahead or game-tying score in the fourth quarter five times this season. They are 2-2-1 in those games. And they did so, famously, last year in a meeting with the Patriots last December at Heinz Field, permitting the Patriots to rally from a 24-16 deficit to pull out a 27-24 win.
"One thing we're not going to do is hope and wish," Tomlin said. "We're not going to go through our processes in the manner in which we have and hope the outcome changes. It doesn't necessarily mean we're going to do things dramatically different. We're not going to sit on our hands. We're not going to hope. That's not what professionals do in the position we're in."
Not if they want to remain professionals, at least.
It was a message echoed by some players in the locker room in the aftermath of their collapse against the Raiders, who scored a pair of touchdowns in the final 5:20 after posting 10 points in the first three quarters of Sunday's game. That brought the number of touchdowns scored in the fourth quarter against the Steelers this season to 14 -- 13 against the defense and one on special teams -- just under 40 percent of the touchdowns the team has allowed.
“The NFL is hard,” safety Sean Davis said. “You can’t just show up when you want to on Sunday and make a play. I believe and trust in the process. I believe in the grind, and I believe practice makes perfect. You play how you practice, and I think we need to take a step back.”
The team's lack of turnovers is part of that equation. Though they continue to lead the league with 45 sacks, the Steelers have just six interceptions as a team. Only San Francisco, with two, has fewer.
The Steelers did get a turnover against the Raiders as quarterback Derek Carr lost the football despite being untouched, but it was only their 13th turnover this season.
"We've got to do a better job of finishing things at the point of attack. We were in position on a lot of those plays. They made the combat catches and we didn't," Tomlin said of the Raiders. "There are obviously consequences of that. The consequences were that we lost the game. We've got to look at all reasons, what we're doing as coaches to put those guys in position to take advantage of those opportunities, who we're utilizing and the detail by which they are working. We're open to all possibilities in an effort to change those outcomes."