Tim Benz: If Steelers 'ills' are fixable, prove it this week — or start planning for 2024

There are two constants in Pittsburgh. The first is citywide angst whenever the Steelers go into a slump.

The second is road construction.

Let’s bring those two unavoidable eventualities together. Let’s say the Hot Metal Bridge near the Steelers’ facility needs repairs — again.

Construction crews can make the decision to fix the problem on the fly while keeping the bridge open. Or they might have to shut it down for a while and force traffic around the closure.

That’s where Steelers coach Mike Tomlin appears to be with his football team. And, as is the case with any Hot Metal Bridge construction, a lot of congestion and snarls are backing up on South Water Street.

Tomlin opened his weekly press conference Monday, acknowledging that some repetitive issues are taking place on the field that are proving to be detrimental.

“We’ve had some ills that have been kind of consistent throughout the year,” Tomlin said. “Particularly in the last couple of weeks, I thought our situational defense was significant. Our inability to hold people to field goals in the red area. We’ve talked a lot about the attrition component in the interior portions of our defense at linebacker and subpackage and what that has done to us in terms of some schematics. Some tight ends have made some significant plays in recent weeks.”

I’d also say shoddy game-planning and attention to detail, poor quarterback play, wide receivers that act out more than they produce, a defense that’s totally reliant on pass rush and turnovers, offensive line blocking that may be regressing and inconsistent punting.

That may be more “ills” than Tomlin’s healthcare coverage can handle.

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So the question becomes, can those ills be cured? Can they fix the bridge on the fly, or are they just going to have to wait to shut it down at the end of the season before they can address the issues?

“I think they’re all fixable in that spirit,” Tomlin said of his team’s issues. “Minimizing a negative is fixing it to a degree. Minimizing its impact on the outcome of plays or games. We’ll never throw our hands up. We always view ourselves as capable in terms of getting better at addressing things that need to be addressed. Sometimes, it might not just be improving that one specific thing but just moving away from it, highlighting something that we’re better at.”

Well, they haven’t been good at anything these last two games, losing to two of the worst teams in the NFL, Arizona and New England.

The truth is, if these problems were fixable, they would’ve been fixed by now. Just about every depth player who could’ve been deemed an upgrade is getting as many — or more — snaps than those who had been playing in front of them — specifically rookies Broderick Jones, Joey Porter Jr. and Keeanu Benton. Even Jaylen Warren and Najee Harris are getting relatively even snap distributions.

They’ve run out of active inside linebackers to acquire. So they are signing guys out of retirement like Blake Martinez and Myles Jack. There’s no one left on the depth chart to tap on the shoulder and say, “Get in there!”

Unless you believe Mason Rudolph is going to jump off the bench and be better at quarterback than Mitch Trubisky after two years of not throwing a pass of consequence.

And if interim coordinators Mike Sullivan and Eddie Faulkner are going to weave anything new and different into the offense, coming off a long weekend would be a good time to do it.

Otherwise, you might just want to hop on the 10th Street bridge and take the long way down Carson Street until the offseason.

Listen: Tim Benz and Joe Rutter discuss the Steelers recent struggles and their game against the Colts Saturday.