The Steelers have given up some yards in their first two games, both wins.
They've allowed the Giants' Daniel Jones and the combination of the Broncos' Drew Lock and (mostly) Jeff Driskel on Sunday to have some success throwing the ball.
But when push has come to shove, the defense has stood up when it mattered. After the Steelers held on to beat the Broncos, 26-21, their defense has now given up two touchdowns to opponents in their first seven trips inside the red zone.
More important, they have turned both the Giants and Broncos away without any points once each in those two games, getting an interception against the Giants and turning the Broncos over on downs just after the two-minute warning Sunday when Terrell Edmunds had a fourth-down, gave-saving sack.
"As we got closer, we started feeling like it was 7-shots," Joe Haden said of the drill the Steelers use to typically start the team portion of their practices. "We wanted to get off the field and let the offense go win the game."
They certainly did that. But you can bet a lot of fans would like to see them not allow those kind of drives to begin with.
Here's the thing. This is what the Steelers are built to do.
They rush the passer. They force turnovers. After picking up seven sacks and two more turnovers against the Broncos -- the turnover on downs and safety don't count, though they should -- the Steelers now have 10 sacks and four forced turnovers in their first two games.
"We love to blitz. Week in, week out, year in, year out, we blitz," said T.J. Watt, who had 2.5 sacks against the Broncos to give him 25 in 25 career home games. "One of the aspects of it is that you have no idea who it is. That’s just our team knowing each and every guy’s responsibilities and we can send anybody. That’s the great thing about this defense. We play fast and we play sound, but we definitely want to play better than we did today."
That also will leave you open to some guys running free at times. In 2019, the Steelers didn't do it nearly as much as they have in the past. They played things a little closer to the vest because they knew they couldn't take as many chances with Ben Roethlisberger out for the season.
Yet they still blitzed 36.9 percent of the time -- good for seventh-most in the NFL. They blitzed 57.4 percent of the time last week against the Giants and a similar amount against the Broncos.
"That's just the code that we live by," said Mike Tomlin. "It's just our personality. But there are consequences that come with that. We have to be clean. We got to be clean on the back end in terms of DPI's and so forth. So we suffered from some consequences from not being sharp today in that area. We got to shore those things up because our personality is not going to change."
Tomlin was referring to three pass interference penalties the Steelers had that converted third downs for the Broncos, one each for Haden, Edmunds and Minkah Fitzpatrick.
Perhaps they need to find a little more balance. But it's worked thus far.
At their current pace, the Steelers would have 80 sacks and 32 turnovers. That would be pretty good, especially if they can cut down on the penalties.
But all of those blitzes also expose them a little more on the back end, especially when the blitzers are picked up. And against quarterbacks better than those they have faced thus far, they might not want to make that commitment.
• Offensively, the Steelers are still finding their way. And that's not really a surprise.
In their first two games, they've started an entirely new right side of the line in back-to-back weeks. Roethlisberger also is working his way back up to game speed. And the Steelers are still trying to figure out just what they have offensively in players such as tight end Eric Ebron, rookie wide receiver Chase Claypool and others.
"Offensively, we just have to get it together. That takes time. No preseason and really no nothing, we’re just out there trying to mold it together as we go," Ebron admitted. "We can improve drastically. We kept that game too close for an offense with the firepower we have. We were making too many silly mistakes, beating ourselves."
No arguments here, not when you go 2 for 12 on third downs.
• I get going after a Denver secondary that had a couple of rookie cornerbacks playing a lot of snaps with A.J. Bouye out. And I get not necessarily choosing to bang your head against the wall against a defense that held the Titans' Derrick Henry to 3.7 yards per carry last week on 31 rushing attempts.
Stopping the run is Denver's strength.
But the Steelers entered the fourth quarter with 15 rushing attempts in this game. And perhaps that's putting a little bit too much on Roethlisberger's plate right now.
He is, after all, a 38-year-old quarterback coming back off a major elbow surgery. You can't necessarily expect him to play like it's 2015 again.
That said, the Steelers' strength is their passing attack. They are, after all, 32nd in the NFL in salary paid out to the running back position.
• Kudos to Chuks Okorafor and rookie Kevin Dotson on the right side of that line. I can't really say I noticed either really blowing assignments or being beaten consistently.
Dotson was making his first career start and got a game ball from Roethlisberger.
"We were excited for him. I mean, the young man grew up a Steelers fan," Roethlisberger said. "He told me his dad watches it in his man cave upstairs. I was just so happy that he got out there and got to play. I gave the ball to him afterwards and told him to give it to his old man. I'm just really thankful for him and all those guys, and the whole line altogether."
• When you see Claypool make the play that he did in this game, catching a deep ball and outracing the Denver secondary for an 84-yard touchdown, you see why the Steelers were so excited to get him.
Last week, he went up and caught a 28-yard pass that was a highlight-reel catch. This week, it was a bomb.
There were a lot of people -- including me -- who thought the Steelers should have taken a running back with that second round draft pick. But Claypool is special.
• Claypool also had three special teams tackles. He's a special player in that phase of the game.
But I don't think special teams coordinator Danny Smith should get used to having Claypool out there running down kicks for the long run.
Certainly Claypool will continue to do it throughout his rookie season. But he's going to become too valuable to continue to do that with him.
• Speaking of valuable, Mike Hilton is just plain playing ridiculous football right now.
He followed up a solid start in the opener against the Giants by leading the Steelers with 8 tackles, one sack, two tackles for a loss, a pass defensed and a fumble recovery.
At least twice he defeated blocks by much bigger men to slam the door on plays, including setting the edge on a running play that he stopped for a loss.
I had to do a double take on that one because he was on the left side of the line and I initially thought it was Watt.
• Mike Munchak clearly worked with the Broncos on devising some one-cut zone runs in this game. The Broncos were gashing the Steelers early in this game on the ground with some backside runs, where the line would go one way, Melvin Gordon would initially flow that way and then cut it back.
It's a running scheme the Steelers have long struggled with. But they adjusted, as well. The Broncos had 61 yards on their first 12 carries but finished with 26 attempts for 104 yards.
The Steelers won't be happy about giving up that much on the ground, but after picking up 49 yards on his first 10 carries, Gordon finished with 19 carries for 70 yards. He had 21 yards rushing on nine carries in the second half.
• I don't know what to make of all the pass interference penalties early this season, other than to note they've been happening in all the games I've watched thus far.
The Steelers have now been penalized five times for pass interference in the first two weeks, which was the most in the NFL going into Sunday night's game between the Patriots and Seahawks.
There were 45 pass interference penalties across the league through that time span -- 30 total games. There also have been 19 defensive holding penalties. Meanwhile, there were 40 offensive holding penalties in those 30 games.
You can't tell me that there has been an average of 1.25 offensive holding penalties -- less than one per team -- yet we've seen defensive players called 64 times -- more than two per game -- for pass interference or defensive holding and convince me the league didn't tell its officials to back off on offensive holding penalties early.
I might add that there have been nine offensive pass interference penalties called early, so that's 73 total penalties called with the ball in the air. But only 40 offensive holding penalties.
All of that said, the Steelers definitely need to clean that up.
• Complain about Diontae Johnson being loose with the ball at times. And he definitely is.
But he's a special player with the ball in his hands. We saw it on the punt return touchdown that was called back because of a penalty for a block in the back -- it was credited to Cam Sutton, but the stat people who sit behind me had no idea who had it and just gave it to Sutton.
We saw it again on his 24-yard return on a free kick. And we saw it on his 28-yard touchdown catch, where he had to adjust and catch a ball behind him on the run.
"It actually wasn't a very good throw," Roethlisberger said. "He made a great play on it. It was a little bit behind him. When it came off my hand, I was afraid the guy was going to knock it down, but Diontae did a great job of slowing down and making a body catch. He made it a lot easier than it (was) — it wasn't a good throw, so thankful to him."
Roethlisberger has now targeted Johnson 23 times in the first two games. JuJu Smith-Schuster has been targeted 14 times.
There should be no question about who the Steelers' No. 1 receiver is -- not that it makes any difference.