Labriola on the victory against the Chargers

Arthur Smith came to Pittsburgh because he was offered a job he wanted, with a franchise he respected and a head coach who shared his ideas. In the first two weeks of the regular season, he was part of a team that opened with back-to-back road games and went 2-0. But the offense, his offense, had scored only one touchdown in 21 possessions, and numbers like that don’t look good. The kicker had gone 8 of 8, giving the excellent defense enough cushion, but the results didn’t match the work they’d put in every day since training camp began on July 23.

But as final preparations were underway for their home opener — Sept. 22 against the also-undefeated Los Angeles Chargers — Smith still believed in the plan and the players who were on the roster to execute it, and those players still believed in the way he came up with a plan and then called the plays to implement it during the game.

You want to know how you can tell the players bought into this idea? Because they started repeating his words when asked to talk about the attack in public.

“The dam is about to burst.” That was Smith’s message to them, and that was the choice the players made when facing live microphones when they answered questions about it.

In the home opener, the dam did not completely collapse, but it did leak a few times. Then, late in the second half, the constant pounding created cracks and the dam began to lose its structural integrity.

“Sometimes it’s easy to get frustrated, but you have to look at the process, what’s actually happening on the field, and not talk about hypotheticals,” Smith said Sept. 19. “You know, the most encouraging thing is if they understood the intent that we started with when Mike brought me here. You know, you go back and you constantly look at what you’re doing, how defenses are attacking you, how they’re playing you. And there were some impressive things from us, especially in the run game, with our intent. Wearing people down, and it wasn’t perfect by any means, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve been through that enough times, where you felt like you were getting closer.”

The Chargers’ defense would be the best the Steelers have faced in 2024, in fact the second-best unit in the NFL (Tennessee was first and the Steelers came in fifth, for comparison). And the Steelers’ offense not only posted representative numbers against that defense, it also outperformed the Chargers’ offense in the areas that unit did best.

The Steelers completed 50 percent of their third downs (7 of 14), ran 20 more plays than the Chargers (65-45), ran more times (31-20) for more yards (114-61) and posted a higher passing average (3.7-3.1). In his third straight start, Justin Fields had season-best completion percentage (78.1), yards per attempt (7.66) and yards per completion (9.8). Fields also completed 6 of 10 passes for 68 yards on third down, and those completions converted 5 of 6 third-down situations when Smith elected to throw.

And the unit’s improvement was evident in areas other than quarterback.

The offensive line was still without its best player (backup Isaac Seumalo) and first-round pick Troy Fautanu had been placed on injured reserve on the eve of the game against the Chargers. But on a day when temperatures reached 80 degrees in the sun (and it’s not like there was much shade on the Acrisure Stadium floor), the Steelers’ offense waged a war of attrition and won.

The most dynamic plays in their passing attack came from Calvin Austin III and Scotty Miller, who came in Sunday and were seen as secondary players on the weekly George Pickens Show. We’ve been told for months that the Steelers are incapable of winning in the passing game with those receivers, but on a day when the opponent downplayed Pickens’ chances of influencing the outcome, Austin and Miller made plays.

Among Austin’s team-leading 95 receiving yards was a 55-yard slant-and-goodbye for a touchdown, and on a drive that ended in a 38-yard field goal that tied the score in the third quarter, he had a 25-yard catch-and-run on a third-and-14 that put the ball on the Chargers’ 17-yard line, which came after Miller’s 11-yard catch-and-run that ended up being a 26-yard gain because of a 15-yard facemask penalty on the tackle. And on the Steelers’ first-half touchdown drive, Miller had a 20-yard catch-and-broken-tackle-run that converted a third-and-4.

As for the running game, when the Steelers got the ball back at their 32-yard line with 4:59 left in the fourth quarter and needed to protect a 20-10 lead, they only had 45 yards on 24 attempts. Along the way, Smith had plenty of logical opportunities to give it up and try something else, anything, but he declined. Rookie Mason McCormick came in as the sixth offensive lineman, and the Steelers started trying to work through that barrage again. Najee Harris (242 pounds) and Cordarrelle Patterson (232 pounds) continued to slam behind those six offensive linemen often joined by 264-pound tight end Darnell Washington, and the result was 69 yards on 7 attempts that moved the ball to a first-and-goal at the 1-yard line where coach Mike Tomlin called the game with 3 snaps in victory formation as time expired.

There is no better feeling for an offense than to be able to do that, and there is no more helpless feeling for an opposing defense than to be the victim of it.

“We knew we were going to fight,” Tomlin said. “They’re in a team like we are, so we knew it was going to be a great game. They play great defense. We play great defense. We had to challenge our defense to outplay theirs. I think they did. We were determined to play the run game. Obviously, they came in with the best rusher in the league and the best rushing attack. Our offense had to outplay theirs, and we did, and that’s why the game went the way it went.”

It should be noted that the Steelers’ version of playing great defense against the Chargers included a second half where they gave up minus 5 yards of total offense over 4 possessions that included a total of 15 plays and ended with: punt, punt, punt, punt. But great defense, dynamic defense, team-carrying defense is nothing new to these Steelers. We’ve been there, we’ve seen it. What the team got from the offense was something different.

Getting the win was the most important thing to come out of Week 3 of this regular season, but what the Steelers could also take away from the afternoon’s drill is that their offense offered hope that it can be more than just going through the motions.

“I think we knew that,” Fields said. “We knew what kind of game we were going to play in, and we knew we didn’t play well enough in the first half. We made some mistakes in the first half, and we knew we were better than that. Coach Tomlin challenged us at halftime to play better and be better, and we came back in the second half and did just that. It was good.”

It was actually really good, because it was progress.