For the second time in four games, the Pittsburgh Steelers allowed a team with a losing record to come into Heinz Field and put up a season-high rushing yards.

For the second time in four games, an opposing running back had a career-high (or close to it) rushing effort. And for the second time in four games, a middling opponent came out after halftime and imposed its will on the Steelers over a long touchdown drive that almost exclusively featured running plays.

After an Oct. 17 win against the Seattle Seahawks, the Steelers vowed to fix their issues in stopping the run and missing too many tackles. The issues, though, reared their ugly heads again during Sunday’s 16-16 tie against the Detroit Lions.

“We didn’t tackle well enough throughout the game defensively,” coach Mike Tomlin said, offering that deficiency first when listing reasons the Steelers failed to beat their winless opponent.

“There’s a guy out of place or two there initially, but if you had to wrap it in a bow and talk about it globally or largely, we had to tackle better.”

During no point in the game was the poor tackling more apparent than during Detroit’s 85-yard drive that took less than 3 minutes after receiving the second-half kickoff. All 85 yards were gained on running plays; the only snap of the six during that possession that was not a run was a Jared Goff incompletion.

Lions starting running back DeAndre Swift had runs of 16 and 12 yards, and Godwin Igwebuike finished off the quick possession on consecutive rushes that gained 14 and 42 yards.

“That first drive of third quarter there were missed tackles,” Steelers linebacker Joe Schobert said. “I don’t have an answer (as to why) — I wish I did.”

Swift ended up with 130 rushing yards, 14 more than he’d previously had in 21 career games. The Seahawks’ Alex Collins had 101 rushing yards against the Steelers, the third-most he’d had in 43 NFL games.

Like the Lions, Collins did a good bulk of his damage during a drive after his team received the second-half kickoff: Collins had eight carries for 58 yards, and DeeJay Dallas added a 5-yard carry during a 75-yard drive in which Seattle completed just one pass and in which Steelers defenders appeared feeble and incapable of tackling Collins.

What makes the Steelers’ inability to stop the run in those two games, in particular, so head-scratching is that both offenses lacked a potent passing game and seemed content to be rather one-dimensional — despite ranking among the league’s bottom third in rushing offense.

The Seahawks managed a season-best 144 rushing yards against the Steelers (they averaged 83.0 in their other eight games). The Lions put up 229 rushing yards at Heinz Field (averaging just 93.1 against eight other opponents).

Detroit had its most rushing yards since having 241 in a Thanksgiving Day 2013 win.

“They came out with a good plan, but we have to handle it ourselves,” Steelers linebacker Alex Highsmith said. “We have to come out and ultimately stop the runner. It’s about whipping a man and making a tackle. We know that we have to be a lot better.

“Every one of us, we just have to look at each other in the mirror and just know that we can be better, but today was unacceptable, especially in our run defense.”

Lions coach Dan Campbell said the reliance on running was the gameplan, owed in equal parts to the wet weather conditions, the knowledge the Steelers offense likely would do the same with a backup quarterback and because of an early-game oblique injury to Goff.

Schobert vowed another week of emphasis placed on shutting down the run.

“We have to get off blocks, stay in our gaps, and drive our feet,” defensive captain Cameron Heyward said.

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