SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Maurkice Pouncey, seated at his locker stall and staring straight ahead, wasn't just peeling the protective tape from his fingers. He was flinging it off with a purpose, one after the next. Animatedly. Angrily.
His head was shaking. And this is a man whose head is never allowed to shake.
"If we convert easy third downs, move the chains, we can run the ball ... the game goes better," he began, and he was spot-on, even though I'm pretty sure he didn't hear the question. Not that he needed to. The Steelers are 0-3. And within that, their offense has withered away beyond recognition, maybe never more in recent memory than in their 24-20 loss to the 49ers on this summery Sunday at Levi's Stadium.
"You have three-and-outs ... how the hell you gonna run the ball?" Pouncey kept going. "I mean, come on, everyone knows that."
Is the offense making it harder for the defense?
"Man," Pouncey came back with a sort-of snarl, "that's obvious."
So, I asked, what's the answer?
"We just gotta start movin' the chains. That's it. It's aggravating, man. Just aggravating. I'm so frustrated."
Pressing on, I felt compelled to ask: How much is on the offensive line? Are they getting the push they need?
"The push? What do you mean by the push? I just told you, if we don't convert third downs, we can't run the ball. It's common sense."
So, he's frustrated more with the offense or just being 0-3?
"Just frustration all over. I hate losing, man. I hate losing football games. But we'll get in the lab. We'll get better. Trust me."
Is the material here to make that happen?
"Man, we're just facing adversity. We just lost our franchise quarterback. Not that that's an excuse, but at the end of the day, it's adversity, right?"
I nodded. He laughed slightly.
"I mean, you know this. You know all of this. You've been watching football too long. You know it's all about one thing: If you don't convert third downs, how the hell you gonna stay on the field and run other plays?"
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Everyone's fuse seemed short. Not just Pouncey's.
Good. That's as it should be. Without Ben Roethlisberger, this team's no longer got the talent of a contender, but neither does it have any business being winless.
Losing the opener to the defending champs in Foxborough was one thing. Throwing away multiple opportunities to put away the Seahawks was another. And now this ... yeah, the 49ers are 3-0, and yeah, they've got a defensive front that'll be among the most fearsome they'll face, but when a defense forces one, two, three, four, five turnovers -- five! -- and they still can't win, there's ample cause for agitation beyond the norm.
There's blame to lay all over the place.
James Conner's fumbled before in can't-fumble moments, and a potential final possession when holding a three-point lead ranks right up there:
He was agitated afterward, to the extreme of condensing every response to every question within a syllable or two:
Doesn't matter. He's supposed to be the feature back. He isn't breaking tackles, isn't making people miss, isn't gaining yards -- 97 on 34 carries for a paltry 2.9 average -- and now he isn't even protecting the ball.
Just after that, when it appeared the Steelers would hold the 49ers to a tying field goal and force overtime, Mark Barron took a defensive holding penalty:
He was agitated afterward, too, not with my questioning but with the flag:
Doesn't matter. He's the free-agent veteran brought in fresh off a Super Bowl run with the Rams. He should be able to navigate a tight end that far downfield -- coming right at him, no less -- without having his arms out like that.
Both of those plays, with a slight swing in the other direction, tilt the outcome, and then we're all having a completely different conversation. But they didn't. They happened. And, so go ahead and blame them. Blame Mike Tomlin, too. Blame the coordinators. Blame the wide receivers for continuing to fail to separate themselves, literally and figuratively. Heck, blame Mason Rudolph in his first NFL start. Blame everyone in sight, as I'm becoming fond of saying, except T.J. Watt.
But do, please, save a special blame for the offensive line.
No facet of this football team, not even Ben himself, was expected to be more predictably solid than the one built on Pouncey, David DeCastro, Ramon Foster and Alejandro Villanueva. Sure, Matt Feiler was taking over at right tackle, but concerns were limited. Sure, Mike Munchak left for the Broncos to be closer to family in Denver, but concerns were limited with longtime assistant Shaun Sarrett taking over amid resounding endorsements.
Well, take it from someone who thinks the world of these big guys, on and off the field: They've stunk.
Sifting through Pouncey's complaints: The Steelers had 11 first downs to show for 13 offensive possessions Sunday, including five three-and-outs. They also were 3 of 12 on third-down conversions, essentially extending their season rate of 25.7 percent, since they're now a cumulative 9 for 35. They also were on the field for only 51 plays to the 49ers' 73. A week ago, they ran 51 plays to the Seahawks' 72.
This is pathetic. All of it.
And that last stat, for me, is the killer. The San Francisco offense, which had nearly an entire quarter of additional possession -- 36:17 to 23:43 -- had no answer for what the Steelers' defense was bringing ... other than to wait for them to get gassed.
"Obviously, they gave us a chance," David DeCastro observed of the Steelers' defense. "It sucks, in a game like that where they play so well, get the ball to us so many times ... and then we get the chance at the end to seal it off ... that's tough. Having that many turnovers and not finishing is the hard part. We could've put up points earlier in the game, too."
Yep. Two early interceptions in San Francisco territory, and each reaped only a field goal. Total yards gained on those two drives: 21.
Again, others are involved, but the line's the most common denominator, as well as the only one without an excuse in reach. They're among the NFL's highest-paid at the collective position, they've got three perennial Pro Bowl performers in Pouncey, DeCastro and Villanueva, and another who's been deserving of that designation in Foster.
But they can't run. At all. No matter who's carrying.
This game saw the Steelers carry 22 times for 81 yards, a 3.7 average. And even that isn't what it appears, since Rudolph scrambled for seven of those, and end-arounds by Johnny Holton and Diontae Johnson accounted for 15. Subtract those, and the average is 3.1. For the season, it's no better: The average is 3.9 yards per carry, 56.5 yards per game, the latter ranked 29th of the NFL's 32 teams. Only the Dolphins, Bengals and Redskins are worse.
Why?
"Just consistency, more than anything," Foster told me. "We've just got to be better at executing what we do, I don't care if it's a 3-yard pass for a first down or a 3-yard run for a first down. We've just got to be efficient with it, find a rhythm with it."
He really emphasized those words, because the Steelers got both of their offensive touchdowns on mega-splash, a 76-yard catch-and-run to JuJu Smith-Schuster and a 39-yard heave to Johnson.
"Those kinds of plays are great, but we need to do the little ones, too. That's where you get that consistency."
But talking about consistency feels crazy when it comes to the line. They've been together, it feels, forever.
I asked a few of them if, without citing it as an excuse, the change in quarterback's affected them. Only a couple acknowledged it, and even then tepidly.
"Up front, we're dealing with a situation where everyone's going to stack the box because they feel like, with Mason here, we're going to run," Foster replied, and he was right. The 49ers occasionally had eight, even nine wide. "That's just where we are. We're learning him. He's learning us. We're reading off how he reacts to pocket pressure, all that kind of stuff."
OK, but the run?
"We just have to crack a hole. We have to find a way. It doesn't matter. It can't matter. It can't. If they want to stop the run, we've got to embarrass them. That's on us."
Meaning the line.
I went to Villanueva next. He was, maybe biokinetically, sharing Pouncey's mood.
"I don't know. I have no idea," he came back to my question about run-blocking. "I have to go look at the film."
What will it take to get back to the norm?
"I have no idea. I'll have to look at film. I'm sorry, I'm just at a loss."
Me, too, dude.
Because I haven't even touched on the pass-blocking, which candidly wasn't much better. Rudolph was sacked twice, though one of those should have been a throwaway to preserve field-goal position, and hit four other times. More ominous, he was routinely rushed and run out of the pocket.
Here, for example, was his lone interception:
That's a bad decision to throw, and it's an even worse throw, easily picked by K'Waun Williams.
But now watch it again, just for the line. Foster gets bull-rushed for several yards right back into Rudolph by Arik Armstead. And on the right edge, Feiler gets scorched by Dee Ford. That leaves Rudolph abandoning all previous plans and running for daylight, praying for an alternative. That's not a blitz by the 49ers. It's a boring four-man rush. It's got nothing to do with anything other than execution up front.
Now, for the other extreme:
Armstead comes at Foster again, but Foster holds his ground. So does Feiler on his side and, most important, Villanueva on the blind side. Rudolph looks calmly toward Johnson, finds the right timing and puts up a beauty for six.
Imagine if he'd had that protection -- or anything close to it -- all day.
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This isn't a sexy subject. I get that.
But just as offensive linemen often don't get enough credit, they also don't get enough blame. Their importance, in general, isn't acknowledged nearly enough.
So I'll lay this out plainly: If they keep playing like this, these five guys, this edition of the Steelers is toast, assuming it isn't already. They've already been, from this perspective, the principal reason the record isn't 2-1 rather than 0-3. Had they just been the 2018 version of themselves against both Seattle and San Francisco, they'd have won.
Are they toast anyway?
I lost faith in the playoffs after 0-2, and I'm not about to alter that after 0-3. But here's the thing: All four AFC North teams lost Sunday. The division-leading Ravens are 2-1, mostly because they got to beat up on the Dolphins and Cardinals, both winless opponents who'll line up on everyone's schedule down the road, as well. The Browns, for all the fuss, are 1-2. The Bengals are the Bengals.
And the Bengals, by the way, are next.
And the Bengals, by the way, are second-worst in the NFL at defending the run, with only the Dolphins being worse.
It's tough to know what to expect from this season. It really is. It's tough, even, to know what to want from it. It's been such a long time -- the loss in London to go 0-4 six years ago, actually -- since a season felt so lost so soon. And I've got to tell you, walking into a Pittsburgh locker room after a game and not seeing Roethlisberger anywhere was the first water to my face for the feeling that he's really gone for the year.
At the same time, seeing the defense swarm to the ball, seeing Minkah Fitzpatrick look every bit the star he's expected to become, seeing Rudolph whip up those late scores, there's something to be spoken for just getting better.
That's got to start up front.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers vs. 49ers, Santa Clara, Calif., Sept. 22, 2019 -- MATT SUNDAY / DKPS
