When things go as haywire as they did in Sunday's 30-7 loss to the 49ers, the game plan tends to go out of the window along with them.
Such was the case for Mike Tomlin and his staff, though it flew to the wayside perhaps quicker than normal with respect to the game flow. The Steelers' first five possessions resulted in four punts and a Kenny Pickett interception, while the 49ers scored 20 points to the tune of two touchdowns and two field goals during the same timeframe.
That forced the Steelers out of what they wanted to do in a totality.
"San Fran got their agenda done. We didn't get our agenda done," Tomlin said in his weekly press conference Tuesday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. "That was a gut feeling reaction, and I thought the tape displayed that. There were certain things about how they played that we had a level of anticipation for. I'm sure there's certain things of how we play that people have a certain anticipation for. I think they did their high-volume things better, obviously, than we did ours. You've got to carry that stench for a while when you have a performance like that. ... We're big boys. We can take it. We better roll up our sleeves and shift our focus toward our next opportunity."
When the opposition commands more than 37 minutes of possession time in a game, that is going to force change. Even though the vocalized identity of this offense -- voiced by the front office, Tomlin and Matt Canada -- is to impose their will on the opposition, the Steelers attempted just 10 rushes on 61 plays. A large explainer to that heavy sway is the flow of the game and the Steelers having to throw it often while trailing, but that also came from game planning. The Steelers attempted two Najee Harris rushes hat went for negative-2 yards in the first quarter, and Harris had four runs that went for 2, 4, 2, and 5 yards in the second half.
There was hardly a flow to an offense that didn't want to help itself in what resulted in 239 yards for the day.
"On offense there were a lot of ills, but the chief ill was possession-down football," Tomlin said. "When you're not successful on possession-down football, you don't give yourself a chance to establish rhythm, to establish the run game, to highlight certain matchup components that you might like, to diversify your attack, and all of the above. Volume is king. We didn't have enough volume and it was because of possession-down failure."
The defense, meanwhile, looked out of sync and had problems compounded when Cam Heyward left the game before halftime with a groin injury, which is expected to keep him sidelined for a couple of months. That, combined with the 49ers melting through for 391 yards of total offense, forced personnel adjustments. It's the explanation as to why, for example, Keeanu Benton played plenty while Joey Porter Jr. mustered just seven snaps, all in the dime package.
"Oftentimes you guys are asking about the division of labor, the exposure of talent and so forth," Tomlin said. "Sometimes game circumstances change those agendas. That's why I described the game the way I described it. The 49ers were able to play to their agenda and their plans, and we were not. Obviously we had intentions on playing Joey more than that, but you'd better have him behind the chains and off schedule a little bit more than we had him off schedule. If not then you'll play seven snaps of dime because you don't play dime on third down and 2. Know what I mean? Same thing on offense. You want to run the ball at people, you want to run people down with Najee and Jaylen (Warren) and so forth, but if you take 15 snaps through two quarters of football because you're three and out, you're not winning possession downs, that's not going to transpire. And, so I just wanted to pause and be really transparent about what I'm talking about when I'm talking about agendas and why the division of labor may appear to be what it was."
More coverage from Tomlin's press conference can be found in our Steelers feed.
