ARLINGTON, Texas -- "It takes an effort from everyone. Everyone has to be accountable, including myself."
Cam Heyward and I were conversing here, a safe enough distance from each other -- via text -- and a safe enough distance from the Steelers' 24-19 victory over the Cowboys on this Sunday night at AT&T Stadium that I thought, maybe, I'd get some clarity on what's really going awry with the NFL's most imperfectly perfect team.
To glance at Cam's above sentiment from afar, it could mean anything.
Praise for the first 8-0 team in the franchise's 88-year history?
Sure, absolutely ... but no.
The rally from 13 points down in the second quarter, 10 points entering the fourth?
Reasonable ... but also no.
What we were discussing, believe it or not, was a guy who didn't even suit up.
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With all due respect to Ben Roethlisberger roaring back from a brief absence to a knee injury to engineer the rally, to JuJu Smith-Schuster for dragging Dallas defenders across the goal line, to Eric Ebron for the aerial, athletic winning score, to Minkah Fitzpatrick for what really ought to be called a Minkah hat trick -- interception, fumble recovery and batting away the game's final pass -- and to Joe Haden for the sharpest shoestring tackle since Ben took down that dude a decade and a half ago in Indianapolis ... the Steelers' first-half MVP unquestionably would be Tyson Alualu.
I mean, how couldn't he be?
The man leaves the lineup, and the Jenga effect reduces the league's No. 1 defense into one that's now softly conceded 409 combined rushing yards the past two weeks. That's 265 in Baltimore despite the Ravens missing their top running back and two starting offensive linemen, and now another 144 here despite Ezekiel Elliott's wonky hamstring and his backup, Tony Pollard, doing all the damage.
"Tyson's no slouch," Cam replied when I broached his neighbor at nose tackle. "He provides a veteran presence that we all benefit from. The rest of us now ... we can’t try to do too much. It puts the defense at risk."
That's become painfully obvious. Run after run after run. No longer matters who or how. Only that they'll blow right through the middle. Right where Alualu was rated through six games among the league's very best defensive players at any position, not just his own.
Now, it's Isaiah Buggs being served up pancakes like he's at the local IHOP:
While so many were singing about Buggs' showing in Baltimore last week, I blistered him for precisely this reason. He's not out there for the splash he whipped up late in that game. He's out there to hold his bleeping ground, to not get flattened on routine runs.
If it's not Buggs, it's been Henry Mondeaux, excitable and fun in a role that, as Cam laid out, benefits from neither.
The nose tackle in a 3-4, including the Steelers', needs to manage his own space. Fill a lane. Own that lane. Do that one job and ensure that Heyward, Stephon Tuitt and the edge rushers, T.J. Watt and Bud Dupree, can do theirs.
Instead of this:
That's not Buggs' fault. He's not even on the field. But it's third-and-2, Keith Butler sends a four-man rush, no one can buy an inch -- seriously, watch each of the four individually and see the lack of oomph -- and a long completion results.
Or, maybe it is Buggs' fault. Because with Alualu, they stopped the run and got off the field. Now, they're out there forever, they're gassed and, in some cases, compensating for the new mess on the inside.
Make sense?
Whatever the case, it's not happening, my friends. None of it.
Oh, Cam and T.J. did eventually get to Dallas' surprisingly dogged fourth-string quarterback, Garrett Gilbert, and it was timely in bringing an 8-yard loss late in the fourth quarter, but it also was one of two sacks for the defense. For the most part, there wasn't much more of anything else going right for the defense, either. Because the Steelers couldn't stop the run, the Steelers had to stack more bodies in the middle. Because they couldn't stop the run, Gilbert grew more confident, strayed smoothly from the pocket, and "brought it," as his coach, Mike McCarthy aptly put it. And yet again, because they couldn't stop the run, they kept getting exposed downfield, this time by ... I already forgot his name since the last sentence.
This isn't the Steelers' defense of the first six weeks. It isn't close.
Alualu’s sprained MCL was expected to take roughly a month to heal. He didn't practice last week, and it's not known when he'll be able to do so.
Can't come soon enough. Buggs and Mondeaux sure aren't the answer. Wearing out Heyward and Tuitt with 70-plus snaps isn't it, either. The NFL's trade deadline has come and gone.
Until this is fixed, don't expect meaningful change in this area.
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Easy as that felt to explain, that's exactly how confounding the other side's become.
The Cowboys ranked 32nd in the 32-team NFL in run defense, and they weren't all that awesome at anything else defensively, either. But they dominated the Steelers' running game to such a ridiculous degree that, by the second half, Randy Fichtner and/or Mike Tomlin ... um, stopped deploying running backs. Just empty set after empty set.
If James Conner hadn't reemerged for the final series of the fourth quarter, in the most excruciatingly obvious running situation, everyone would be wondering if he got hurt again.
He wasn't hurt. He just wasn't getting anywhere: 22 yards on nine carries.
Neither was Benny Snell. Nor Anthony McFarland. And before long, it doesn't take Don Coryell to decipher that the common denominator's up front. Which it was:
Don't watch Conner. We're all guilty of that, and it can make for lazy analysis.
Watch the line. Watch David DeCastro largely whiff on his pull. Watch Alejandro Villanueva glance off his guy and abandon him. Watch Maurkice Pouncey and Matt Feiler not bump their guys backward by a solitary millimeter. (Chuks Okorafor is off the hook on this one, as all he does is pick up a blitzing corner half his size.)
And it's not as if they were acing the pass protection, by the way:
That innocent spin move by Dallas' Randy Gregory scorched Villanueva -- never, ever get beat to the inside, all tackles are taught -- and got Ben slammed to the turf hard onto his throwing shoulder. And this on Ben's first snap after returning from a knee injury.
Anyway, after a single three-and-out to open the second half, all the running backs just went poof. Six carries for 15 yards. Most often, not even on the field.
It was a striking -- no, stunning -- sight, but one that both Tomlin and Roethlisberger downplayed.
"We were just looking at some of their defensive personnel groups, and we found that they didn't have a lot of defense when we spread them out," Tomlin tried to explain. "So it produced a lot of things that we would do, and we were comfortable working in that space. So that's why we did it."
Uh, OK.
"You know, there were some situations there," Roethlisberger said. "We went to that same kind of package last week, four wides and a tight end, and just kind of said, 'Listen, let's go to work.' And the line blocked. And I can't say enough about the skill guys, to do things on the fly the way they've been doing them."
Uh, no.
Ben's the last one to criticize his line under any circumstance, and I'm certain he wasn't doing so there. But I can and will: They aren't run-blocking. They haven't been run-blocking well all season, but for those occasions -- coincidence or not -- that rookie Kevin Dotson's taken DeCastro's place. There might not be anything to that, given DeCastro's pedigree, but I'd rather figure that out before erasing all the running backs from the roster.
Nowhere to run means nowhere to run. And from this particular problem, there's nowhere to run.
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Look, I'm not here to dump on 8-0. There are always duds, and there are always down days against down opponents. The very reason that 8-0 is such rare air is that it's remarkable for any team to avoid losing for this long -- only 27 NFL teams since 1970. All of them made the playoffs, and eight of them won the Super Bowl.
I loved it when Tomlin, rather than airing all his grievances in opening his postgame press conference, instead started on this route: "We’re 8-0 for the first time in franchise history. We're humbled and honored to be that group. We've got a group that sticks together, a group that's mentally tough. I'm very proud of our football team."
He should be. They all should be. There's also a reason the Steelers hadn't made 10-point second-half comebacks on back-to-back weekends like these since 1953. For all that didn't go well, they ensured these games finished well. They've got every right to enjoy that unapologetically.
And yet, it's telling that Tomlin's next breath brought, "But it was not without its problems. One of these weeks we’ll be doing it with an ‘L’ if we’re not careful.”
You bet.
I can live with Ben missing on all five deep balls again, four of them overthrows. He's the franchise quarterback. All he did was win the game.
I can live with Chase Claypool having three passes slip through his fingers. He's the youngster with the highest ceiling. He's also a rookie.
I can live with the out-of-nowhere special teams wreckage. It came without precedent in 2020.
I can live with two missed extra points by Chris Boswell. He's been awesome.
I can live with Tomlin's weird decision to not try a 19-yard field goal that came way too close to costing his team the game. I didn't agree with it, but his judgment's been heavy to the plus side this fall.
I can certainly live with T.J. and Bud looking less than superhuman for the first time in forever. That'll never happen two weeks in a row.
And yet, this stuff that bugged me the most about this game, the trenches, the lines ... those are at the very least a short-term worry, at the most a fatal flaw. One could blame this performance on this being the game following Baltimore week, or on the Steelers having been robbed of their bye. But I wouldn't buy either. They've both been bad, there's scant indication the former will improve, and there's zero indication the latter will until Alualu returns. And perish the thought if anyone else on the defensive line went down because we've now seen there's no depth at all.
That's not a great place for a Super Bowl contender to be. Not now, and not with a half-season to go.
Before flying down here, I wrote that the Steelers should've hoped for three modest outcomes from this trip:
• Win
• Stay healthy
• Get better
That's two for three, obviously, but that ratio needs to match the record sooner rather than later.