The Pittsburgh Steelers are now 6-5.

With starting quarterback Aaron Rodgers ruled out due to his wrist injury just hours before kickoff, backup Mason Rudolph led the offense to a 21-point losing effort, with his unit getting help from a TJ Watt strip sack in Chicago’s endzone that led to a defensive score.

But Pittsburgh’s defense couldn’t make enough splash plays, or hold the Bears off long enough for the Steelers to stage a comeback. In the end, all sides of the ball had their problems on Sunday.

With this loss, the Steelers have relinquished control of the AFC North to the Baltimore Ravens, a team they held a 3.5-game lead over just a few weeks ago. There’s a lot to think about in the big picture of the Steelers, but first, here’s some thoughts on the loss.

1: Trust Your Kicker

Let’s start at the end, a very good place to start.

The Steelers had the ball, down three points with around a minute to go. Pittsburgh got the drive going with two first downs, but their progress stalled around midfield.

On 3rd-and-8, Rudolph found DK Metcalf for a short two-yard gain, setting up a game-deciding 4th-and-6 play from Chicago’s 47-yard line. In what felt like a bit of a rushed operation, the offense lined up and ran another play, with Rudolph looking the way of Metcalf again on a pass that went incomplete at the goal line.

In the blink of an eye, Pittsburgh’s chances at a comeback withered away. Chicago had sealed the win.

I don’t know about you, but I think I would have preferred to give Chris Boswell a shot at tying the game with a field goal.

Yes, that kick would have been from around that same distance, but Rudolph and the offense weren’t moving the ball up the field enough during this game to make me feel confident in their ability to get a conversion there.

Boswell, like he is so often is, has been steady and reliable for the Steelers this season. He’s a “serial killer,” to borrow Mike Tomlin’s description of him. The longtime kicker has only had one true miss all season in 22 attempts (one kick was blocked, the other he slipped on poor turf).

He set a new career-long with a 60-yarder to put the Steelers ahead with a minute to go in the season opener vs the New York Jets. Hindsight is perfect; if he misses that kick, maybe we’re talking about it from the other side. But in that moment, I trusted Boswell to drill a field goal from midfield more than I trusted Rudolph to convert a fourth and medium with the game on the line.

2: Rudolph And The Rifle

Rudolph had one of the weirder stat lines you’ll see from a quarterback, going 24-of-31, but for just 171 yards. He had one touchdown pass and one interception.

From a completions standpoint, Rudolph was quite efficient, making nearly 80% of his passes, but so many of those yards lacked any flare or aggression. Seven of his completions were behind the line of scrimmage, and an additional 15 of them were within ten yards of the line.

The offense was so heavily reliant on swing passes and dink-and-dunk plays, trying to piece together enough yardage to win this game. It didn’t work.

One of the benefits of having Rudolph as your backup is his ability to take deep shots down the field. While over his career he has shown flaws that have kept him from being an NFL starter, one of his strengths is usually his talent to rifle the ball down the field for long completions.

But the deep ball just wasn’t working yesterday. Rudolph’s first attempt down the field went for an interception, and the Steelers tried a pass more 20+ yards through the air just twice after that.

I know that in their limited attempts for a splash play down the field, they weren’t able to connect. However, I still would have liked Rudolph and his offensive coordinator Arthur Smith to dial up some more shots farther down the field. That’s still something Rudolph generally excels in.

You can’t just give up after it doesn’t work once or twice. The offense has to at least have the threat of the long ball.

3: This Room Still Belongs To Rodgers

After Pittsburgh’s 34-12 win over the Cincinnati Bengals last week, the Steelers were at an interesting spot with their quarterback room.

Rodgers, who suffered a broken wrist in the win, left at halftime and did not return, pressing Rudolph into action for the rest of the game. By the time it was over, the two passers had remarkably similar stat lines.

Rodgers went 9-of-15 for 116 yards and a touchdown. Rudolph was 12-of-16 for 127 yards and a touchdown pass.

Given how Rodgers struggled the week before that game out west in Los Angeles (where he was under 50% in completions and only had 161 yards), it created a small amount of chatter about who should be the guy moving forward.

Indeed, Rudolph looked efficient and smooth against the Bengals. But like this game, a decent amount of his yards came from receivers moving in space, and Rudolph was more of a game-manager than anything else.

There’s nothing wrong with that, and quarterback discussion is always fun. But this game should really dispel any notions of a quarterback controversy in Pittsburgh. A healthy (or mostly healthy) Rodgers still gives the Steelers the best chance to win.

Rudolph is a backup. He’s perfectly fine as a backup quarterback. Nothing I saw from him today changed my overall opinion on him. But Rodgers is still your starter.

4: Punting Problems

Steelers fans are somewhat scarred from the struggles of the team’s punting staff over the last few years. After former seventh round pick Pressley Harvin III held the job for three years and routinely put up subpar numbers, the Steelers finally parted ways prior to last season.

Their initial fix was Cameron Johnston, a free agent the Steelers signed to a three-year deal ahead of the 2024 season. But he was sidelined by a season-ending knee injury in the team’s opener, forcing the Steelers to call up Corliss Waitman, the man they hired for spot starts back in the 2021 campaign.

Waitman kept the job for the rest of last season, and actually beat a healthy Johnston in a surprising training camp battle upset, resulting in the Steelers cutting Johnston.

Granted, the decision has looked pretty good most of the season. Coming into the weekend, Waitman averaged 47.3 yards per punt, with a net of 42.4 per punt (both within 1.2 yards of the league average).

Punting, however, was a big problem on Sunday.

Waitman’s three punts on Sunday went 34, 39, and 33 yards, for an average of 35.3. His only punt north of 40 yards was a 54-yard boot early in the third quarter, his first of the day. But, it was negated by a penalty, and his re-kick was 20 yards shorter.

Chicago’s Tory Taylor, by comparison, averaged 50.5 yards on four punts for the Bears. He handedly out-dueled Waitman in the special teams department.

Was Waitman the reason the Steelers lost? No. But, in a game where field position was important, Pittsburgh was playing at a disadvantage thanks to short punts.

5: The Road Ahead

Like it or not, the Pittsburgh Steelers will always be considered a 9-8 or 10-7 team, until they can prove they aren’t. In the last four years, they have posted records of 9-7-1, 9-8, 10-7, and 10-7. It’s who they have been for a long, long time.

Bringing in Rodgers, revamping the defense, and swapping out top receivers was supposed to help propel the Steelers into the upper echelon of teams in the AFC. Instead, 11 games in, their prospects of a winning season, let alone a playoff spot, could be in jeopardy.

Here’s the team’s remaining schedule:

• vs Bills
• @ Baltimore
• vs Miami
• @ Detroit
• @ Cleveland
• vs Baltimore

The joke is always about getting to nine wins. Looking at this schedule, and how this team currently looks, I’m genuinely not sure if it’s possible. Miami and Cleveland are the obvious two picks for wins, given how each of their seasons have gone so far. But divisional games in the AFC North are never freebies, no matter how bad the opponent’s record is.

Other than those two, though, where is that ninth win coming from? Baltimore in Week 18, after they already have the division locked up?

This team is in some serious trouble, and unless they start pulling off some upsets, Tomlin’s (in)famous 18-year non-losing seasons streak could finally snap.