The Steelers' offense was terrible last week in Cleveland, turning the ball over six times.
In a 42-37 loss Sunday to the Chiefs, the offense played much better and the team put 37 points on the board -- 35 of which came from Ben Roethlisberger and company.
The defense?
After a solid effort against the Browns, it gave up a bunch of plays like this touchdown to Travis Kelce:
That's just too easy and can't happen. But it did -- six times as Patrick Mahomes threw more touchdown passes than incompletions in this game.
The Chiefs present some unique challenges to a defense. They have the NFL's fastest player in Tyreek Hill. They return the NFL's leading rusher from 2017 in Kareem Hunt. And Kelce is one of the top pass-catching threats from the tight end position in the league. That was apparent, especially on two touchdown passes to Kelce.
"They caught us in a two-high look and he split the safeties," nickel corner Mike Hilton said. "That’s an easy catch and throw for the quarterback."
They all were Sunday.
It's one thing if the offense plays great and the defense plays OK or vice versa. You can win like that in this league. Look at the Chiefs, as an example. That's what they're doing right now. But you can't win if one of those two units is just awful. And that's what we've seen out of the Steelers in the first two games.
It's added up to what's been an awful start.
• The Steelers had to respect the outside speed of Hill and Sammy Watkins, a duo that are as fast on the outside as any team they'll face this season. And they had to respect Kelce in the middle of the field. And Hunt, as well, as a runner.
But to stop none of those?
That's inexcusable.
I suppose you could say they kept Hunt in check. He had 15 carries for 60 yards and one catch for another 5 yards -- a touchdown, as it were -- until Kansas City's final possession.
Then, he did this on first-and-10 with 1:59 remaining on the clock and the Steelers holding three timeouts.
That's a 9-yard gain on first down. The Steelers used the first of their timeouts, but Kansas City picked up the first down on another Hunt run on second down and ran the clock out as the Steelers burned their remaining timeouts.
"It’s disappointing," said linebacker Vince Williams, who made the tackle on Hunt, but way too late. "You know what you have to do in those situations and we gave up the big run."
Cam Heyward and Bud Dupree get penetration on the initial snap. But Williams doesn't fill the hole because Daniel McCullers, who played way too much in this game for my taste, not only gets driven back at that snap, he allows the center Mitch Morse to get off his double-team and get a piece of Williams.
• Nobody misses Le'Veon Bell quite like Antonio Brown.
Without Bell coming out of the backfield, Brown was the focal point for the Cleveland and Kansas City defenses. As a result, he's caught 18 passes but for just 160 yards and a touchdown in the first two weeks. That's 8.9 yards per catch, and he's done that on 33 targets.
That means when targeting Brown, Ben Roethlisberger is 18 of 33 for 160 yards, one touchdown and one interception. That's a passer rating of 65.2 when targeting Brown with a completion percentage of 54.5 and 4.8 yards per attempt.
Brown was visibly upset on a couple of occasions in this game. The Chiefs seemed to be getting away with quite a bit of contact with him down the field. He was especially upset when Roethlisberger targeted Ryan Switzer, instead of him, on a third-down play in the third quarter and had to punt.
I would have loved to ask him about that. But he left the locker room without speaking to reporters.
• The Steelers and Chiefs were both penalized 12 times each in this game.
Obviously, I didn't see every NFL game on Sunday to know how they were officiated, but if the league is going to be calling this many penalties all season, the games are going to be downright unwatchable.
There was over 900 yards of offense and 79 points scored in this game. That is supposed to be what the league wants.
Nobody wants games to be officiated like this, where it seems they essentially are looking for things to call. That's an average of six penalties per quarter. That's way too many.
Some will try to point to this and say the Steelers are undisciplined. But that means the Browns and Chiefs are, as well, since they have had 23 penalties assessed to them, one fewer than the Steelers.
Some crews just call more penalties and it seems the Steelers have had two flag-happy crews in the first two weeks.
• The book on Andy Reid's teams in the past -- at least with Kansas City -- was that they didn't handle zone defenses well. But that was with Alex Smith at quarterback.
They obviously don't bother Mahomes, who has a big arm and isn't afraid to let it fly.
Smith is well known as a player who doesn't take chances and will go to his checkdowns quickly. That doesn't appear to interest Mahomes. The tough thing, however, is that the Chiefs have a lot of special athletes on the offensive side of the ball, perhaps too many, to line up and play man-to-man on them.
The Steelers came away thoroughly impressed with Mahomes' arm strength.
"I think he has a top-5 arm talent in the NFL," Williams said. "He was able to figure some things out. We run a complex defense and move a lot of people around. He was able to figure it out and get the ball out super-quick. They did a good job of spreading it out schematically. They have some playmakers. I think they did a good job of identifying those. There were some mismatches in coverage — I hate to use the word mismatches because I like the guys we play man-to-man — but he made some good throws. Kudos to the young guy."
• Mike Tomlin got criticized last year when he went for an onside kick instead of kicking the ball deep late in the team's 45-42 playoff loss to the Jaguars.
Sunday, he kicked the ball deep against the Chiefs down less than a score with two minutes remaining and all three timeouts.
Given how easily the Chiefs moved the ball against the Steelers, I would have gone for the onside kick there. But I didn't have an issue with the Steelers doing it last season against the Jaguars, either.
• I didn't have a problem with Tomlin punting from his own 44 on fourth-and-7 with 9:24 remaining and trailing 42-30.
If the Steelers go for it there and don't make it, the game's over. Maybe you don't count on getting the ball back with 5:03 remaining, as the Steelers did. But that's a much better way to give your team a chance to win than trying to convert a fourth-and-7.
Had it been fourth-and-short, that's different. But fourth-and-seven is no gimme.
• I did, however, think Roethlisberger was a little too cavalier on the drive when the Steelers did get the ball back.
He hit Jesse James for a 46-yard gain to the Kansas City 20 with 4:52 remaining. The Steelers then ran eight plays inside the 20 before scoring on fourth down on a 3-yard run by Roethlisberger with 1:58 remaining. Most of that was out of the no-huddle, so that's on Roethlisberger, not the coaching staff. He's calling the plays in that situation with Randy Fichtner making suggestions through the headset. But that shuts off with 15 seconds left on the play clock.
Nothing was worse than when Roethlisberger completed a 5-yard pass to James Conner to the Kansas City 1. That play was run with 3:24 remaining. The Steelers didn't run another play until 2:46 remained. Then, when JuJu Smith-Schuster was stopped on a shovel pass for a loss of two yards, the Steelers didn't snap the ball again until 2:08 remained.
That's just too much time wasted. It was important for the Steelers to get the ball into the end zone. But a little more urgency would have been prudent.
• So are the Steelers in trouble? We'll find out more next Monday night in Tampa, when the Steelers face the Bucs, who have beaten the Saints and Eagles in the first two weeks.
I do know this: Getting off to an 0-2-1 start would be a tough hole from which to dig out. But I have seen the Steelers start 0-4 in 2013 and rebound to nearly make the playoffs. And that team wasn't as talented as this one.
The tie in Cleveland can be attributed, at least in part, to a poor offensive game in bad conditions. Sunday, they ran into a red-hot quarterback. Despite that, the Steelers did fight back from a 21-0 deficit.
This team won't quit. It just won't.
• Hidden stat of the day? The Steelers' average drive started at their own 22. And their best starting position was their own 34 -- on their final possession following a fumble.
Outside of that, their starting field position went like this: 21, 25, 11, 19, 15, 10, 25, 25, 25, 30.
Ironically, they had their most sustained success when they started inside the 20, scoring three touchdowns and missing a field goal on those possessions.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY