This past weekend, the Pittsburgh Steelers decided to remain in the locker room for the national anthem. Offensive lineman Alejandro Villanueva, who is a Bronze Star Army Ranger, stood just outside the tunnel, which kind of negated Tomlin’s reasoning of staying in the locker room.
In that game, against the Chicago Bears, the Super Bowl contender struggled and with two turnovers and a blocked field goal that was hilariously returned to the half yard line, the struggling Bears would defeat the Steelers in overtime in a huge upset.
Now, after the loss, everyone seems to have to have a reason why the Steelers lost in such an embarrassing fashion and some are pointing to the national anthem. On Tuesday’s 93.7 The Fan Morning Show in Pittsburgh, linebacker Arthur Moats said that deciding what to do for the national anthem caused some players to be distracted.
“We truly lacked the focus that we needed to. Man, we spent a lot of time going from Saturday, Sunday morning to even today discussing the anthem issue and how we were going to handle it and things like that, and I thought that guys just lacked a little bit of focus when it came to playing in the game.”
“It showed,” Moats said. “We lacked a lot of detail from missed tackles to missed assignments to drops to messed-up special teams, stuff like that as well. So for us we know that we have to focus on football. For us to be the team we’re capable of being, week-in and week-out, we have to focus 100 percent. This isn’t like high school where you can just show up in a stadium and guys are going to be scared of you.”
Ben Roethlisberger, who didn’t want to use the anthem as an excuse, agreed with Moats (try to figure that logic out) that it “was definitely on [their] minds” but added that they needed to play better.
Okay, first off, do not use anything that happened regarding the racial inequality protest and the national anthem and view that as a distraction and was why the Steelers lost. For one thing, they’re grown adults and should be able to multitask. And the other is that every NFL team had to have that same discussion about what they were going to do, including the Bears. So even if that was a “distraction,” everyone had that “distraction,” so it all cancels out. And this isn’t going away anytime soon so if they think it’s a “distraction,” they need to figure out how to play with it.
But the more important thing about why the Steelers lost is because the Steelers seem to underperform against weaker teams. When they are in the playoffs, the Steelers can be lights out and have proven that by making the Super Bowl three times since the 2005 season, winning twice. They have also been to the AFC Championship Game five times since 2001. As long as they avoid the Patriots in the playoffs, the Steelers have a pretty good chance at beating top teams.
You can usually pinpoint a few games a year every year the Steelers have been to the playoffs where they underperform against a bad team and either lose or barely win. And while winning by one point or by 30 points is the same and as long as you win is what matters, it doesn’t inspire confidence that the team is any good to get to the Super Bowl.
For instance, in 2007, the Steelers started well but had some pitfalls in the middle of the season. The most damning one was, as a 7-2 team, a 19-16 OT loss to the 1-8 Jets at MetLife Stadium. The Steelers, 9.5 point favorites, really should have closed this out early but two fumbles and an interception, as well as eight penalties for 100 yards and Roethlisberger getting sacked seven times, got the Jets the edge in a kicking duel.
In 2008, the Steelers struggled to defeat the Browns. It seems that the Steelers tend to find themselves struggling against the Browns. I get that they’re rivals and all but honestly, they’re the freaking Browns! In this Super Bowl winning season, the Steelers found themselves struggling against the Browns in Week 2 and squeaked out to a 10-6 win. The stats would tell you the Steelers should have dominated but the Browns held on and almost got the upset. While the Steelers finished 12-4 that year, the Browns would wind up being one of the worst teams, finishing 4-12. Those struggles reared its ugly head in 2014 where the Steelers went 11-5, beat the Browns on a game ending field goal in Week 1 and lost to the Browns 31-10 in Week 6.
For 2010, the Steelers’ bogey team was the Bills and in Week 12, the 7-3 Steelers had to go to overtime to beat the 2-8 Bills 19-16 in OT. The Steelers’ struggles against the Browns reared its ugly head in 2014 where the Steelers went 11-5, beat the Browns on a game ending field goal in Week 1 and lost to the Browns 31-10 in Week 6. In that same year, the Steelers lost to the 1-8 Jets 20-13 while the Steelers were going for the AFC North.
This isn’t to bury the Steelers, as even the best teams in the NFL has their random week where they just seem to lose to an opponent they should easily defeat and can’t figure out why. It’s probably frustrating to come off a week like that but look at what you did or didn’t do while on the field and what the other team did that caused you to lose, not what happened for the national anthem.
Head coach Mike Tomlin didn’t want to use what happened pregame as an excuse for losing to the Bears and he’s right. Staying in the locker room didn’t cause those fumbles or that blocked field goal, and if a player actually thinks that’s the case, he’s got more issues he needs to take care of than a racial inequality protest somehow causing them to lose.
Instead of being in bed the night before the game, the members of the team were roused out of their beds at 10:30pm and had a two hour meeting to discuss how they were going to handle the anthem thing. There is no way that this didn’t affect their play the next day. The focus should have been on football, not this idiotic anthem garbage.