DETROIT -- Everyone's a bit better now, I'm trusting?
Yeah?
OK, cool, because I can attest beyond a doubt that those directly involved in the Steelers' beleaguered offense were feeling big-time better, this after the first team put together two beautiful drives in the 24-17 loss to the Lions in the preseason finale Saturday at Ford Field.
And not without cause:
โ DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) August 24, 2024
Oh, my.
I asked Russell Wilson afterward if he'd seen Cordarrelle Patterson's 31-yard, opening-drive touchdown on film yet, to which he laughed and replied, "No, but I had a pretty good view."
Arguably the best view.
"Amazing, wasn't it?" he'd ask back. "Everybody. Every player."
Mm-hm. All the way across. The thing played out like a Renaissance painting, left to right, though I'd posit that the pivotal blocks were the hard inside seal from Zach Frazier and the next-level chip/shove from Isaac Seumalo.
Field-level view of the latter:
.@ceeflashpee84 getting shifty ๐ฎโ๐จ
โ Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) August 24, 2024
๐ฒ Stream on NFL+: https://t.co/COxKRnr6Mc pic.twitter.com/PTmqBiIEtb
Love it.
"So nice when that happens," Frazier would tell me.
"Everybody did what they were supposed to," Seumalo would essentially echo from a nearby stall. "But you know, that's how it's supposed to work."
Now add this 32-yard connection earlier on the drive between Wilson and George Pickens ...
โ DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) August 24, 2024
... and we're talking, what, pretty much everything this offense would want to be about?
All right, so sprinkle in a slew of 5-yard bursts out of Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren, a few flicks over the middle to Pat Freiermuth and ...
"It's all good," Pickens would say when I asked about that drive, which brought the preseason's first touchdown for the first team. "It's always good to score. Felt awesome. ... My confidence was always super-super-high with this offense, and the guys raised it even more."
Look, I won't go overboard here.
In fact, I'm done. It's preseason, the Lions' Dan Campbell didn't dress anywhere near as many first-teamers as Mike Tomlin did, and the sample size was thinner than a slice at Little Caesars.
But it also feels fair to acknowledge, in light of a lot else, the following:
โบ THIS WAS 'INDICATIVE'
Tomlin was asked afterward why Wilson was removed after one series in favor of Justin Fields, and his answer was telling, I thought: โWe just needed results that were indicative of how we worked. They were able to put together a scoring drive and really just provided opportunity to get Justin in there sooner.โ
Indicative, indeed. If this were the outlier and the rest of preseason was the norm, there'd be legit cause to worry. But as anyone who attended even a single day of camp at Saint Vincent College could attest, the offense has been set up by Arthur Smith and company to be infinitely more imaginative, more diverse and more powerful than anything that'd been shown against either the Texans or Bills.
This was who they are. Or a lot closer to it. The opening-snap Harris 5-yarder. The Fields laser across the middle on the second drive. The deft misdirection on La'Mical Perine's 1-yard stroll across the goal line.
"I thought our guys did a really good job of getting up and down the field, which is what we wanted," Wilson would say. "We knew that we were able to do that. Weโve had a really good training camp, OTAs and all that. We finally put it on the field under the lights."
โบ THEY 'EXECUTED'
That was Freiermuth, and he was really right.
Execution's helped, obviously, by the opponents lining up a potential practice squad, and I'm not pretending otherwise. But I'm also not pretending the Steelers' offensive execution in the first two games would've clicked against a college defense, much less the fringe of the NFL. Everything had been off. The communication. The routes. Even the readiness to play.
Check this out ...
โ DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) August 24, 2024
Over. The. Middle.
Can we finally excise Matt Canada from the public discourse now?
"We went out there, and we executed," Freiermuth would tell me. "That's all we need to do. We believe in who we have, and we believe in what we're doing."
I'll state that another way: That Patterson touchdown surprised not a soul on the visiting sideline. And there's more in that playbook for the first real game Sept. 8 in Atlanta, so much that I wouldn't fret over the Falcons having seen this one.
โบ THEY FOUND AN 'EDGE'
And nowhere had an edge, not to mention execution, been lacking more than the line. In particular with Broderick Jones.
Big man was in a much better mood after this one:
"Yeah, I feel like we came out with an edge," he'd say. "We have great things to build off as an offense. We're starting to get rolling, just coming in sync with one another and finishing plays to the fullest."
I asked if beginning with Harris' 5-yarder helped.
"We wanted to come out and be physical in the run game and just continue to show our dominance up front. It felt great. That's a big thing for me, just starting fast."
No way they'd start out the regular season fast without this. Think about it like that.
โข Chris Halicke was here, too, and offers up a Chalk Talk on the quarterbacks and a Spotlight on Herbig.
โข Tons more in our Steelers Feed.
โข Thanks for reading my football coverage.
โข And for listening:
