Stock up, stock down among Steelers after 2nd preseason game

As Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin put it in reference to Saturday’s preseason game, “They (the Jacksonville Jaguars) controlled the football game, but we won the game.”

In the context that the process is more important than the result during August football, it was a less-than-stellar outing for the Steelers.

It wasn’t all bad, though. A look some positives and negatives from the 16-15 win at TIAA Bank Field.

Stock Up

Kenny Pickett: In some ways, forget not only the final score but everything else in Saturday’s game. If Pickett ends up showing he is worthy of being a first-round pick and franchise quarterback of the future, this training camp can be considered a rousing success.

Pickett played only 10 snaps. Among them, he managed to throw passes that were caught by teammates eight times for 106 yards and two touchdowns. Two of those passes ended up being called back because of a penalty, but that doesn’t erase them from how accurate Pickett has looked during game action in a Steelers uniform — even if it is a small sample size.

Pickett is far from a finished product, but he gradually has gotten better from the start of training camp. While he isn’t pushing the ball too far downfield quite yet, he is executing everything that is asked of him with precision and poise.

Tyler Vaughns: Yes, we know it’s “JV” action, as Tomlin likes to call the fourth quarter of preseason games. But Vaughns keeps balling out in such situations and has been the one non-quarterback most responsible for the Steelers getting two wins in two preseason games.

In the opener Aug, 13, Vaughns had the winning 24-yard touchdown catch with 12 seconds left. Saturday, all of Vaughns’ team-high four catches for a team-best 56 yards came over the final 10 minutes of regulation. With the game on the line when the Steelers took over near midfield down by five points with 3 minutes, 3 seconds left, Mason Rudolph looked to Vaughns on four of the first five plays. Three were completed passes that gained 51 yards and set up the Steelers at the Jaguars’ 1 yard-line.

This isn’t to suggest Vaughns, a former USC receiver, will make the 53-man roster. But he has shown enough in preseason games and in special teams ability that hooking onto the practice squad for a second consecutive season appears likely.

Overall team health: By all indications, the Steelers survived the “dress rehearsal” preseason game unscathed in regards to injury. Emerging from any NFL game without an injury of note is extraordinary. With the vast majority of their starters playing during a preseason contest — even All-Pros T.J. Watt and Minkah Fitzpatrick — to come out of Jacksonville without anything more than (as Tomlin puts it) “bumps and bruises associated with football” is perhaps the best news of all for the Steelers.

Stock down

Offensive line: The pass protection and run blocking could rank Nos. 1, 2 and 3 when it comes to the “down” when taking stock of the Steelers in Jacksonville. The starters played more than half the game, the second team the rest (there was no “third-team” offensive line). Steelers running backs had 10 rushes for 10 yards, the top two quarterbacks were pressured on eight of 15 dropbacks (per Pro Football Focus). There were three holding penalties on the offensive line, four times the quarterback was hit, once he was sacked and another pressure forced a safety.

Offensive coordinator Matt Canada seemed to call plays that required a rollout or movement of the pocket on virtually every pass play. Per PFF, the running backs gained more yards after contact (14) than they did from scrimmage (10) on their 10 collective rushing plays. That means, on average, running backs were being hit almost a half-yard (0.4) behind the line of scrimmage on every rush.

Too many penalized players: The stat book says the Steelers were penalized six times for 48 yards. But that doesn’t tell the full story Saturday. They were flagged 10 times: Two were declined, and two others went offsetting with Jacksonville infractions. One even cost the Steelers two points, albeit Rudolph’s intentional grounding was more of a function of the faltering offensive line.

Four weeks into training camp, Tomlin had to be hoping for (and expecting) a much more crisp performance.

No-shows: Jordan Tucker, Jace Sternberger and Chris Oladokun were the only Steelers players who had no known injury and were not being held out for precautionary reasons who did not play on offense or defense. Aside from Oladokun, for whom this entire training camp has been something of a “redshirt” year, that can’t be a good sign.

For Tucker, in particular, that the coaching staff didn’t give him a chance even with the offensive linemen ahead of him on the depth chart struggling is alarming for an undrafted rookie. Sternberger, a three-year NFL veteran, always faced an uphill battle as the No. 5 in a five-man tight ends position room that seemingly always had three locks to make the roster.

Five cuts are due by 4 p.m. Tuesday. Tucker and Sternberger could be sweating out that deadline.

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