The Steelers racked up five more sacks on Sunday in their 38-29 win over the Eagles, giving them 20 in their first four games and keeping them on pace for 80 for the season.
But it's coming at a cost.
The Steelers had a ton of confidence in their secondary coming out of last season. Steven Nelson and Joe Haden were considered one of the best cornerback duos in the NFL. And safeties Terrell Edmunds and Minkah Fitzpatrick are a young, up-and-coming duo. Add in sub-package corners Mike Hilton and Cam Sutton, and you've got the makings of a very good group again.
But that secondary has been less than a shutdown unit thus far this season. It entered the game against the Eagles allowing 12.8 yards per catch, which was 31st in the NFL. And they had allowed six touchdown passes, an average of two per game.
Sunday's game did little to change those numbers, as Eagles averaged 13.1 yards per catch on their 21 receptions in this game and added two more receiving scores to that total.
That's the bad news. The good?
It's not costing the Steelers -- at least not yet.
Despite the yardage on the completions the Steelers are giving up, they're still allowing opponents to complete 59.4 percent of their passes, which is well above average in today's NFL, where 10 quarterbacks entered Sunday's games completing 70 percent or more of their passes.
In fact, their completion percentage allowed is in line with what Mitch Trubisky was doing for the Bears this season before getting benched.
And opponent's quarterback passer rating against the Steelers actually went down after Sunday's game in which Eagles QBs posted a 78.0 rating. It's now at 83.7 for the season.
If a team's starting quarterback had a passer rating of 83.7, in today's NFL, fans would be clamoring for him to be replaced. Only six NFL quarterbacks entered this weekend's games with a passer rating below that.
So, those numbers tell us a story that this secondary is still well above average.
Why then, are they allowing so many big plays, at least more than they did a year ago when they allowed 9.9 yards per catch with the same group?
The coaching staff just might be putting too much on the plate of the secondary at times.
Most of this season, the Steelers have been blitz crazy. And typically when they've blitzed, they've played man coverage a lot behind it.
When you're rushing five or six players at the quarterback and you don't get there, you're going to give up some plays in today's NFL, even with solid coverage guys. That's just the reality. You can't cover guys long term in this game, even if they're journeymen named Travis Fulgham.
There also were times Sunday when the Steelers rushed just two or three players and dropped eight or nine into coverage. But one of those players in coverage was typically shadowing Carson Wentz, who has been dangerous as a runner this season.
And Wentz was still finding open receivers, making some high-level throws to anyone not named Zach Ertz. The Steelers completely shut Ertz, the Eagles' obvious biggest weapon, completely down, holding him to one catch for 6 yards on 6 targets. Credit Edmunds, Devin Bush and even Fitzpatrick, for that.
That's part of the cat-and-mouse game in the NFL.
This is not to excuse the play of the secondary this season at all. It's giving up too much and seemingly at inopportune times. The Eagles were 10 of 14 on third downs in this game. Missing on their first two and their last two. In between, they converted 10 in a row, several of the long variety.
That can't happen.
Some of those were on breakdowns. Some came on plays the Eagles just made that were better than those the Steelers made. But it's something this team had better figure out as it heads into this next stretch, where it faces the Browns, Titans, Ravens and Cowboys -- the final three on the road -- in their toughest stretch of this season.
Part of the way to solve it could be trusting the front four to rush the passer more and relying on the blitz a little less. It's why those guys are getting paid the money they are -- or in the case of T.J. Watt will be soon. If they're not being held all the time.
• One reason why you never look too far ahead when it comes to the schedule is what happened to Dallas on Sunday.
With that defense, are they still a contender without Dak Prescott?
Prescott suffered a fractured and dislocated ankle in the Cowboys' win over the Giants. Andy Dalton came in and helped hold off the Giants, but that game now looks far less daunting than it did last week at this time.
At the same time, the game against the Browns now also looks more difficult after they beat the Cowboys -- with Prescott -- and Colts in back-to-back weeks.
That game will be a third consecutive road game for the Steelers. And team's winning percentage typically go down each week when you play three in a row on the road.
But if the Steelers can get through this stretch no worse than 2-2, they'll be in good shape in terms of getting a playoff berth. Win three, and they'll be sitting pretty.
• One reason to come out of this game feeling pretty good about the Steelers is because Ben Roethlisberger looked as good in this game as he has all season.
Roethlisberger was 27 of 34 for 239 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. He was sacked just once by a team that came into the game with a league-high 17 sacks.
The Steelers weren't exactly aggressive all the time on offense in an effort to slow down Philadelphia's front 4, but they took some shots downfield.
His decision making and mental game was as good as it's ever been, if not better.
Early in the third quarter, he recognized the Eagles didn't have enough players to his left when Claypool motioned out of the backfield to form a four-man bunch at the 5-yard line. He made a quick toss to Chase Claypool and Vance McDonald, James Conner and Trey Edmunds got enough blocking to allow the rookie to get into the end zone.
That was how that play was drawn up, even though Roethlisberger had typically gone the other way to Eric Ebron in a one-on-one situation when that play was repped in practice.
But later in the game, it was Roethlisberger who recognized that the Eagles had no answer for Claypool's size and speed, and he go the rookie matched up on a linebacker for his final touchdown throw. Claypool hadn't run that play from that spot, but Roethlisberger saw an opportunity and lined the rookie up there.
"I feel good doing it," Roethlisberger said. "That might be better for one of the coaches to evaluate if I'm making the proper checks or looks. I feel comfortable. I feel like we definitely have some new things in this offense that I'm not as familiar with in terms of having plays for a long period of time and things like that. But I feel like I get us in the right play most of the time."
That, my friends, is what the Steelers were missing last season on offense more than anything else.
• Claypool's 11 targets were two more than he had gotten in the first three games. Heck, he played the most snaps of any receiver two weeks ago against the Texans, but still got just four targets, as he was mostly used as a blocker.
But Roethlisberger was looking his way early and often in this game with Diontae Johnson out with a back injury after the first quarter. And his trust continued to grow, even when the Eagles had top corner Darius Slay on the rookie.
That, to me, was why Claypool's most impressive catch of the game came in the fourth quarter on third-and-4 from the Pittsburgh 49. Roethlisberger didn't look to the other side, where the oft-targeted Jalen Mills was covering, well, nobody all that well.
He went right to Claypool, even with Slay in tight coverage:
That is a rookie facing an All-Pro cornerback and his quarterback trusting him to win that matchup.
"He works," Roethlisberger said. "He works hard. He doesn't make a lot of mistakes. If he does make a mistake, he won't make the same one twice. I think that says a lot about a young guy."
• A lot of the things his teammates say about Claypool, they used to -- and still say -- about T.J. Watt.
This is not to say that Claypool is going to be the offensive version of Watt, but he's ridiculously talented.
Like many others, I felt the Steelers should take a running back with their second-round draft pick. In fact, I might have been leading that push.
But if the Steelers had selected JK Dobbins or Cam Akers or Zack Moss in the second round, you can bet the Ravens would have loved to have taken Claypool.
He's exactly what Baltimore's offense is missing. He's a future No. 1 receiver. And the future might be happening right before our eyes.
• About that run that Miles Sanders had, that's what happens when you've got your secondary playing man coverage behind a blitz and the running back actually gets out of the backfield.
Once Hilton misses the tackle on Sanders on the third-and-9 draw at the line of scrimmage, he's off to the races because the receivers on that side had taken the defenders covering them, Nelson and Edmunds, 30 yards downfield. And they were, uh, blocking them aggressively.
Sanders had a head of steam when he finally got to Edmunds and Nelson. And they were held up -- literally -- just enough to get him by.
On his other 10 rushes in the game, Sanders had 6 yards.
• The Steelers could still use a feature runner, though.
People want to blame Randy Fichtner when the Steelers' conventional running game is stifled as it was for much of this game. The running backs had 69 yards on 25 rushing attempts in this game, with James Conner producing 44 yards on 15 carries. Take away a 25-yard run by Conner -- you can't because it counts -- and they had 24 attempts for 44 yards. That's 1.8 yards per rushing attempt.
And Conner is the main culprit with that. For some reason, he's looking for big plays all the time instead of just putting his foot in the ground and cutting upfield. He might only get a three-yard gain on some of those runs, but it sure beats the continued runs for no gain or a loss he's been getting. Eight of Conner's 15 rushing attempts in this game went for 1 yard or less. And that's not all on the line. He's to blame for some of that, as well.
Rookie Anthony McFarland got the team's first carry in this game and picked up 4 yards, but then got just two carries for 2 yards the rest of the way.
That might have been because he's still lacking in pass protection and because of the way the Eagles attacked the line of scrimmage, but he should have gotten a little more run in this game. We can blame Fichtner for that, but he's not responsible for Conner tiptoeing is way around the line of scrimmage.
• I always hated when the Steelers used Antonio Brown as a punt returner because it opened him up to big collisions. That's exactly what happened to Johnson on Sunday as he suffered a back injury returning a punt in the first quarter.
Johnson is just too valuable in the passing game to give an opponent's 53rd man a free running shot at one of your top receivers.
And Ray-Ray McCloud is certainly a viable option.
• The Steelers' offensive line had its issues early in this game against the Eagles, who have a rugged defensive front. It won't get any better for them if Maurkice Pouncey (foot) and David DeCastro (abdominal) are out moving forward.
Both left this game early, DeCastro early in the second half and Pouncey late.
Pouncey went immediately to the locker room after getting hurt right before the two-minute warning, not stopping to talk to the doctors or anything. And we'll see about DeCastro.
Stefen Wisniewski is eligible to come off short-term injured reserve after suffering a pectoral injury in the regular season opener. His return would be big. But he still might not be quite ready this week.
That could mean the line from center to right tackle against the Browns next week might be J.C. Hassenauer, rookie Kevin Dotson and Chuks Okorafor.
We'll see how this plays out. Pouncey is as tough as anyone, and DeCastro at 80 percent is still better than most. But those are the two injuries that bear watching all this week.
• The special teams coverage units get a gold star for this win. Philadelphia's average starting position when they returned a kickoff or punt -- the Steelers only punted twice -- was the 18-yard line.
Rookie James Pierre and Justin Layne, both cornerbacks, were outstanding as gunners on the two punt returns.
And Jordan Dangerfield had two tackles on kickoffs.