Kovacevic: No, seriously, how in the @#$#*% are these Steelers 4-2?

INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- Larry Ogunjobi lifted his left hand for me, sideways, as if to illustrate a level.

"That's the floor," he'd say. And then he'd lift it a little higher. And higher. And higher, up to about his chest. "And now, that's where we are."

Yeah, that's easy enough to grasp. Most sports conversation is about ceilings, or potential, or how high a team can go. But these Steelers ... these maddening, mind-numbing Steelers ... these stuck-in-the-mud, then suddenly soaring Steelers, who'd again slog through a half-plus on this Sunday afternoon at SoFi Stadium then rally past the Rams, 24-17 ... they're building a foundation, as they see it. A floor upon which to improve. And with every additional week, there's another plank or two pounded into place.

"Getting there," was how Jaylen Warren would word it for me, continuing a theme the two of us have had after every game. "We're getting there. I know we talk about it all the time, but now we're starting to see it, too."

They are. In canvassing this locker room afterward, I can confidently state that they really are. As can the AFC North standings, by the way:

DKPS

Don't dare dismiss it. Not the standings, since they're the only measurement that matters. And not the players' optimism, since their sentiment about themselves is, with all due respect to fans in Pittsburgh and planet-wide, the only one that matters. They've got every right to feel as they do. 

I can see what they see, too. And I'd love to be a buyer. I'd love to believe in the young, fun, arrow-up roster that our city'd already begun to embrace over the summer. I'd love to see some of the more compelling individual storylines in this setting reach further fruition. I'd love to see it all come together.

For now, though, the grumpy guy who flew five hours in a bright yellow bucket of bolts to reach the wrong end of the continent, then has to red-eye it back a few hours later, I'll instead reserve my own right to ask the following: How in the @#$#*% is this team 4-2?

____________________

No, seriously.

I'll get to all the good stuff, I promise, but there's no one anywhere who could -- or should -- shrug off that the first half looked far too much like ... well, the first five games. Kenny Pickett was misjudging, misfiring and making his way out of the pocket for no reason. Najee Harris went nowhere. Warren was given only two carries. The wide receivers totaled four catches. The offensive line looked as lousy as it has all season. And the defense, never to be forgotten amid the more massive mess, was conceding chunks of yardage in all forms to all parts of the field.

• Total yardage: Rams, 226-91
• First downs: Rams, 10-5
• Score: Rams, 9-3

"It didn't all go the way we wanted," Patrick Peterson would tell me of the first half. "We needed to do some things differently, make some adjustments, and we did."

They did. One was to get Levi Wallace off the field and slide Peterson back outside while cementing Joey Porter Jr. in place. That's not a perfect arrangement -- my goodness, the old man needs to teach the kid how to tackle, huh? -- but it beats all the badness that took place on this sickly sequence:

That wasn't even Matthew Stafford's main target, I'd confirm. But when there's confusion at that scale, even a prayer comes down with a positive chance.

"Broken play" was how Peterson described that for me, and he's right. Thing is, too much has been broken in Wallace's world. Omar Khan needs to get busy at outside corner.

And yet, the offense was somehow way worse. Six possessions, four punts, a couple three-and-outs and a field goal. Moving all of the requisite Matt Canada, Kenny, Najee fare again back to the forefront. Burying all the bye-week talk about studying this, altering that, blah, blah. On that count alone, if anyone of the 60% or so of the crowd of 73,471 supporting the Steelers had stormed out, they'd have been as justified in doing so as anyone watching back home on TV.

But this happened:

Shout it from atop the 'H' in the Hollywood sign: The NFL has no player better than T.J. Watt. Not one. Not on either side of the ball.

“Eyes on the quarterback," he'd explain of his read. "I was able to see him work his way back to my side of the field. Just able to jump in front and make a play on the ball.”

“I obviously didn't see him," Stafford would say from his perspective. "I thought I put it into a good spot and then, all of a sudden, he flashed in front and made a great play. He's a big-time player, made a big-time play."

"T.J. changed the game," Ogunjobi would say. "That's what he does."

He's the best. Vote early and often. Not for DPOY. For MVP. Because regardless of how the latter award's adjudicated, T.J. the best player -- eight sacks, seven tackles for loss, three fumble recoveries, a touchdown and now one pick -- and the most valuable to his team.

The defensive line took a step, too, finally getting their gaps filled and shutting down the Rams' curiously strong running game for a team plucking off the practice squad for that role. 

"We settled some things down," Cole Holcomb would tell me. "Plugging holes, for the most part. But I'll also tell you that we're just feeling a lot better about everything that we're doing out there. It's so different than the early part of the year. It's a reaction now."

Know what else was a reaction?

"We had to score when T.J. did his thing," Mason Cole would tell me, referring to T.J. returning his pick 24 yards to the Los Angeles 7. "You have to punch that in."

It wasn't any picnic. Two weird sideways sequences to Harris moved it to the 1, and third down loomed ... before this:

"I'm just glad we got in," Pickett would reply with a smile when asked about the burden there.

From there, coincidence or not, the offense appeared to relax and make actual plays. With actual rhythm. And -- gasp! -- some semblance of actually smart schematics.

This, my friends, is a fully functional offense:

And this right here's outright sublime:

That's an outside zone run. Line up every white jersey, and there'll be a corresponding blue. Each one manned up. Some shoved back.

The beneficiary loved it:

“I mean, they blocked it up perfectly," Warren would tell me, "and I just picked the hole that they gave me.”

By choice or design?

"Design. Just to read whatever they give me. We want to take the outside, but if the inside opens, then we hit it.”

Speaking of design, anyone catch Canada there at the end?

Talk about a relevant reaction:

Oh, they'd go. That drive was five plays for 59 yards, and the next would be 10 plays for 80. Totally foreign territory on every front. The offense that hadn't generated more than two touchdowns all season would wind up with three. The offense that hadn't generated a rushing touchdown all season -- not one -- would wind up with three. The offense that's needed the defense to carry pretty much every victory along the way ... began clicking like this upon taking the ball with a 17-17 tie and 5:28 on the clock:

That was a third-and-3. That was ... my God, it was aggressive. It used the middle of the field. It required the quarterback to hold the pocket. And from there, it'd be a blend of run and pass, short and long, left and right ...

... with Diontae Johnson's welcome return helping to "keep them off George" Pickens, as Pickett pointed out.

All culminating in Harris' 3-yard bound into the end zone:

"Everything went right. Everything," was what I was told by Rodney Williams, whose blocking up there complemented fellow tight end Connor Heyward's 11-yard catch-and-run to the 3 on the two capping plays. "That's such a good feeling."

Five drives in the second half: Touchdown, punt, touchdown, touchdown, victory formation.

Hey, give it up for them. All of that's authentic. It's all on film, as the football people say.

____________________

Look, none of this was a surprise. Not a single sliver. Not even that second half. In my gameday column upon landing here, I wrote the following in looking forward to this game: 'This won't be any Hollywood starlet. Scratch, claw, etc., almost at an AFC North depth of depravity. But it's doable.'

It was doable. And they did it.

“We did it," Okorafor would reply to my posing that as a question. "We’ve just gotta keep on improving. Hopefully, it’s going to carry over into next week. That’s the goal. As long as we score points and win while we're improving, that’s all that matters. We’re gonna get back home, watch the film and then try to improve for next week.”

I posed the same question to Pickett, who still needs as much improvement as anyone in the fold.

“I think so, absolutely," he'd reply. "You're always looking for positives to continue to build on and the way we played in the fourth quarter to win the game, I think that's a huge positive.”

The second half:

• Total yardage: Steelers, 209-128
• First downs: Steelers, 12-9
• Score: Steelers, 21-8

"It's a fight," Mike Tomlin would say in opening his press conference. "It always is a fight. Sometimes it's man vs. himself. Sometimes it's man vs. opponent. I thought we shot ourselves in the foot some on possession-down play on both sides of the ball. You've got to be more successful on possession downs if you want more fluidity in engineering a victory, and there wasn't enough fluidity probably through the first 2 1/2 quarters, really, on either side. ... That's why it was uneven and uncomfortable at times from our perspective. But I appreciate the fight that the guys displayed. They've got a don't-blink mentality."

With lots of warts, not least of which were some silly/stupid penalties. With lots of room to improve. With a minus-24 points differential, for crying out loud. But that floor that Ogunjobi laid out, that's legitimately higher now than it was after beating the Ravens. And higher than the previous week, and so on. More consistency. More rookie involvement. More upward arrows across the board.

Anyone feel compelled to apologize for any of this?

Maybe ask Keeanu Benton if he's sorry about something:

GETTY

Keeanu Benton celebrates a missed field goal by Brett Maher.

Or T.J.:

GETTY

T.J. Watt and his defensive mates celebrate his interception.

Or the quarterbacks on the happy side of this handshake:

GETTY

Kenny Pickett shakes hands with the Rams' Matthew Stafford.

Object of the game, right?

THE ESSENTIALS

• Boxscore
• Live file
• Team feed
• Highlights
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
• Scoreboard

THE IN-GAME INJURIES

• Steelers: ILB Cole Holcomb (ankle) missed a series after 'rolling' his ankle, as he'd describe for me later. He made clear he's completely fine.

• Rams: None.

Full report on our Steelers Feed.

THE INACTIVES

• Steelers: CB Darius Rush, OT Dylan Cook, NT Breiden Fehoko, QB Mason Rudolph (emergency)

• Rams: OLB Nick Hampton, RB Myles Gaskin, DL Larrell Murchison, OL Zach Thomas, OT Warren McClendon

THE MULTIMEDIA

THE SCHEDULE

Next three are all back in the good place, beginning next Sunday, 1:02 p.m., against the Jaguars. They've got the NFL's seventh-best record at 5-2, incidentally, and take a wild guess who's got the eighth.

THE CONTENT

Visit our Steelers Feed for all the latest.