In battle of NFL’s top running backs, Cowboys Ezekiel Elliott tops Steelers Le’Veon Bell
Steelers LB Ryan Shazier tackles Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliot in the fourth quarter Sunday at Heinz Field.
Steelers running back Le'Veon Bell lunges for the end zone in the fourth quarter against the Dallas Cowboys Sunday at Heinz Field.
PITTSBURGH — There are losses and then, man, there are losses.
Keep in mind that the Steelers have known nothing but defeat over the past five weeks, but Sunday’s excruciating 35-30 loss to the Dallas Cowboys, a game in which the Steelers somehow snared defeat from the jaws from victory, felt somehow, oddly different.
In the five stages of grief, it’s what’s known as acceptance.
If the Steelers’ loss to Philadelphia was denial, the loss to Miami anger, the loss to New England bargaining, and the loss to Baltimore depression, then surely Sunday’s soul-sucking, kicked-in-the-gut defeat to the Cowboys must be acceptance.
Acceptance that maybe this hard-to-believe 4-5 Steelers team isn’t nearly as good as we all thought.
Acceptance that perhaps this season that 10 weeks ago seemed destined for a seventh Super Bowl, has now careened completely off the rails.
“That’s getting your heart ripped out right there,” said safety Mike Mitchell. “We’re going to have to display a lot of mental toughness to bounce back from that one, which I’m sure we can do.”
Recent evidence, however, suggests otherwise.
The Steelers have said all the right things about being “ticked off” and “follow me” after each of their mounting losses, but they’ve done very little to correct it. The same things that have cost the Steelers during their four-game losing streak, most notably poor tackling and ill-timed penalties, hurt the Steelers again against Dallas. Sunday was merely a new and creative way of doing it or, in their case, not doing it.
Its easy to blame the defense which almost-amazingly, even by their standards, gave up two touchdowns in the final 1:55, including Ezekiel Elliott’s 32-yard game winner with :09 remaining when the Cowboys star went untouched on his way into the end zone.
But everyone knew that this Steelers defense wasn’t good and hasn’t been in a few years. Remember, this is a group that gave up 222 yards to Jay Ajayi in Miami just four weeks ago.
The Steelers had little chance of completely stopping Elliott, the NFL’s leading rusher. But for 58 minutes the Steelers actually did a pretty good job of limiting him, relatively,
save for the 83-yard catch-and-run on the final play of the first quarter.
No, the Steelers best chance at victory — as it’s always been — was with its offense.
If the Cowboys scored 35, the Steelers needed to get 36. They did not.
An optimist might point out that the Steelers put up 30 points on the Cowboys, the most Dallas has allowed this season, and the most the Steelers have scored since Oct. 2. And, factually, that is correct.
But that also obscures the fact that they didn’t get those final points until there were :42 remaining and only then through a gimmick play, the old Dan Marino fake spike.
Sunday’s loss boiled down to this: Le’Veon Bell had to be better than Ezekiel Elliott. He wasn’t. “They made splash plays,” Mike Tomlin said. “We didn’t make enough of them.”
So true.
In a matchup of two of the league’s best running backs, Bell was rather pedestrian. If you’ve been following the Steelers during their current slide, this has become a recurring theme.
Against Dallas’ sixth-ranked run defense, Bell finished with 57 yards on 17 carries, or just 3.4 per carry. That’s only good when you consider the 32 yards he “amassed” last week in Baltimore.
Bell’s two touchdowns on Sunday were his first of the season and first since scoring on a last-second play in San Diego last year. He had nine receptions for 77 yards, which is nice, but was still 18 fewer than Elliott.
There’s good reason why Elliott is the NFL’s leading rusher and the presumptive Offensive Rookie of the Year.
Meanwhile, Bell might be losing his title as the best all-around running back. Coming off a major knee surgery which wiped out most of his 2015 season, the explosiveness in Bell’s legs just hasn’t been there this season. His longest run Sunday was 16 yards, or half of Elliott’s game-winner in the dying seconds. Bell’s patented patient, stutter-step in the backfield, has looked indecisive at times as it did on Sunday.
The splash plays that Tomlin alluded to just haven’t been there for Bell or the Steelers.
The offense only put the Steelers in a position to win Sunday. Sadly, the Steelers offense needs to win outright. Good isn’t good enough. They need to be great to off-set their defense.
Obviously, the Steelers are hoping that Bell’s power will return, and hopefully it does. But you never know with running backs and knee injuries. That, along with a two-game suspension for violating the league’s substance abuse policy, might explain why the Steelers haven’t extended his rookie contract which expires at season’s end.
But those questions will have to be answered down the road.
The question for the Steelers in the here and now is where do they go from here?
The Steelers, whose last win came Oct. 9, now play four of the next five games on the road where they are a dismal 1-3 this season. With a 4-5 record, there is little margin for error from here out.
No matter how weak the AFC North is — and it is — the Steelers will still have to win six of their final seven just to reach 10 victories.
If you think the Steelers are capable of pulling off that, you might still be in denial.