Steelers defense questioning its ‘want-to’ after 3rd straight subpar effort in loss to Chiefs

That Pittsburgh Steelers defense that was collecting takeaways and pressuring quarterbacks? The unit that carried the team to two wins this season in which its offense didn’t even score a touchdown?

It has lost its swagger.

“The last three weeks,” defensive co-captain Cameron Heyward said, “we played like (crap).

“Simple as that.”

The latest serving of, well, crap came by way of a sizable lump of coal served up in the stockings left by Steelers defensive players in Wednesday’s 29-10 defeat to the Kansas City Chiefs.

The only reason the Chiefs didn’t make it three opponents in a row who surpassed 400 yards against the Steelers was they didn’t need to. Kansas City was within 25 yards of 400 midway through the fourth quarter of the Christmas Day matchup but with a three-touchdown lead played it conservatively.

But despite being content to punt on each of their final two possessions, the Chiefs ended up with 389 yards. That was enough to push the average allowed by the Steelers over the past three games to 403.3 yards in addition to exactly 30 points per game over that time span. All three were losses.

“We’ve just got to put our head down and work,” outside linebacker Alex Highsmith said. “It’s definitely frustrating putting up a performance like this back-to-back-to-back weeks.”

Counting losses of 27-13 and 34-17 over the prior 10 days in Philadelphia and Baltimore, respectively, the Steelers have had three of their five worst performances of the season both in points and yardage against.

Leading the NFL in takeaways headed into this brutal three-game stretch against three of the best teams in the league, the Steelers have forced just one turnover over their past 11 quarters.

“We’re not being opportunistic on the defense or the special teams side when given an opportunity,” coach Mike Tomlin said.

“You give credit to (the Chiefs) and (quarterback Patrick Mahomes) in terms of diagonals and coverages. We were spinning the dial. We were playing some man, we were playing some zone, we were pressuring some.”

Still, the Steelers found few answers. Mahomes finished with just nine incompletions in 38 pass attempts, throwing three touchdown passes and amassing 320 yards.

Four of the past five starting quarterbacks the Steelers have faced have had a passer rating of 112.0 or better against them.

“We need to continue to work,” outside linebacker T.J. Watt said. “Look ourselves in the mirror and get back to work.”

Particularly disheartening Wednesday was an abundance of apparent blown coverages, most notably on a touchdown catch by tight end Travis Kelce that capped the game’s scoring.

“When you talk about execution, and you talk about communicating,” Heyward said, “(and then) there’s somebody free (wide open) …

“If 10 guys do their job and one guy doesn’t, we’re screwed. … There’s confidence there, there’s a lot. But comes down to communicating. It comes down to execution. It comes down to guys following their assignments.”

The final team on the regular-season schedule, the Cincinnati Bengals, rank sixth in the league in points and put up a season-most against the Steelers (38 points) in the teams’ prior meeting last month. Of course, Baltimore and Kansas City are potential playoff opponents, too.

In other words, there is no layup to get things fixed. And even with a playoff berth clinched, there’s not much time left to right the ship on defense, either.

“There’s got to be a want-to, and there’s not enough of that right now,” Highsmith said. “It’s that time of the year — we have got two guaranteed games left. We’re gonna find out who wants this. Everybody in this room has got to want it. We’ve got to put down our head and work, but you’ve gotta want it.

“We’ve just got to hold each other accountable. If there’s guys that don’t want it, hard lessons need to be learned. But there’s a lot of guys (who) want it, a lot of guys in this locker room who do. Everybody has just got to look themselves in the mirror and see how they can get better.”