PITTSBURGH — Remember when the Steelers beat up teams in the run game?
Me neither.
But if I squint hard enough, I can still conjure a pleasant sight: Maurkice Pouncey and David DeCastro pulling together on joint seek-and-destroy missions. Man, it was poetry watching those two in motion.
It was so long ago, though, that it might as well be William Shakespeare's poetry.
The Steelers running game, despite periodic promises from team president Art Rooney II to fix it, has devolved into a running joke. It hasn't finished above 29th in the league since 2017 and ranks 27th this season.
The five-year slump has spanned five starting quarterbacks, five offensive line coaches (including an interim after Adrian Klemm quit in the middle of a playoff race), three offensive coordinators, three line transformations, multiple running backs, and the drafting of Kendrick Green, a guard who didn't want to play center but was put there anyway for Ben Roethlisberger's final year and now cannot beat out a human penalty flag named Kevin Dotson.
A franchise that built its reputation on pushing people around now gets bullied every weekend. But I won't bore you with any more stats. I'll simply ask the recurring question: How do they fix it?
Talk about a loaded question.
Does it begin with a new scheme? The Steelers run game moves about quickly as Flash the three-toed sloth in "Zootopia." Compare it to, say, that of the San Francisco 49ers, who use quick-hitting runs off all kinds to great effect (and use a fullback).
The Niners get there fast, even on pitch plays. The Steelers never seem to get there. And as ex-Steelers lineman Trai Essex opined recently, they have no signature run play — except maybe the one where seven tacklers hammer Najee Harris on a 2-yard gain.
So yes, surely it's part scheme. It's part coaching. It's part drafting and signing the wrong linemen (and maybe not picking enough of them early in the draft, although it has been proven that linemen come from everywhere). But it's also the lack of a threatening downfield pass game.
Whether it's late-stage Ben Roethlisberger or Duck Hodges/Mason Rudolph or Mitch Trubisky/Kenny Pickett, defenses simply don't believe the Steelers can beat them consistently over the top. Which means they can sacrifice more bodies to the run game — and that is why Harris often is confronted with 17 people before he reaches the line of scrimmage.
I'm convinced the man has the football version of PTSD — Post Tackle Stress Disorder. Why do you think he caught that pass in the flat against the Eagles and started faking people out even though nobody was within 5 yards of him? He's seeing ghosts.
But back to solutions. I'm with decorated former Giants center Shaun O'Hara, who believes the fix begins with a mindset. This was O'Hara on 93.7 The Fan back in September, when I asked him how to mend a broken run game.
"Either you want to be good at it or you don't," he said "The mindset is just as important as the talent level. ... You have to commit to it. From a coaching standpoint, it's an attitude. If you don't commit and say, 'This is who we're going to be,' it's really easy to get away from it."
The Steelers, despite their lack of a game-changing quarterback, have passed the ball 105 times more than they have run it this season. And it's not like they're always in must-pass mode. They have played six close games. Bill Cowher recently ripped them for putting their rookie quarterback in all-pass mode.
"You have to somehow shorten the game with this quarterback, and it goes back to run the ball and put him back under center," Cowher said. "I understand it's a period of transition. What's in the best interest to develop the quarterback, who's your quarterback of the future without destroying his confidence?"
The easy retort there might be, "Yeah, but they can't run the ball, so what's the point?"
I would answer this way: They can't pass the ball, either — they're 31st-ranked in scoring offense — so why not commit more to the run game? It's not like throwing the ball 40 times is working.
It seemed like the Steelers were changing their mindset when they used a precious first-round pick on Harris. But after a mixed-bag rookie year (nice cumulative numbers but averaged just 3.9 yards per carry), he's been highly ineffective this season, to the point where people believe Jaylen Warren can be a savior.
Is Harris injured? Well, he was wearing a steel plate in his shoe for part of the season, so you can't rule that out. Is he trending toward bust? I'm not ready to go there, but I am ready to say that picking him in the first round was a mistake. You only take a running back there if he's different from other guys. I feel like I could have found a similar back later in the draft.
Maybe this is the week the run game busts out. The Saints have stifled some good runners — Joe Mixon and Josh Jacobs spring to mind — but have allowed big yards in other games. I'm not hopeful of any massive turnaround in the second half of the season, but a one-week reprieve is possible.
The offseason will be the time for Rooney, general manager Omar Khan, assistant GM Andy Weidl and Tomlin to address this mess.
The last time we witnessed a truly dominant Steelers run game was late in the 2016 season. Le'Veon Bell took over behind a quality line, exploding for 1,172 yards over his final eight full games, including a historic playoff stretch in which he ran for 337 yards on 59 carries against Miami and Kansas City.
That seems like a long time ago. Maybe because it was.
