The Pittsburgh Steelers managed just three points in the Patriots’ 20-3 victory on Sunday.
The lone field goal came, in part, due to a coaching mistake by Mike Vrabel.
Near the end of the first half, Patriots cornerback Marcus Jones stayed down with an injury, which triggered an automatic timeout for New England. Before the following snap, Vrabel called a consecutive timeout, resulting in a delay of game penalty.
Jones was injured on a play that Steelers tight end Pat Freiermuth appeared to be tackled
inbounds at the Patriots’ 47-yard line. However, Freiermuth was ruled out of bounds. The penalty then moved the Steelers to the 42-yard line, where a four-yard pass with 12 seconds left in the half set up a 56-yard field goal by Chris Boswell.
“I blew it,” Vrabel said Monday morning. “Injury timeout. I was all caught up on the fact that they should’ve been winding that play, which again, I don’t understand. Clearly his shin came down in bounds, and so in my haste to try to correct the officials, the injury timeout under two goes on us, and then we were going to see what they ran and I called timeout.
“So yep, I blew it, and I was hoping to try to convince the official to run the clock, and then the injury stopped the clock. So, that went in as a team timeout under two minutes.”
While a similar penalty could hurt the Patriots in a more competitive game moving forward, all it did on Sunday was cost the defense a chance at a shutout.
It was otherwise a dominant showing from New England’s defense, which blitzed Aaron Rodgers at nearly a 50% rate to help generate four sacks and a pair of turnovers.
“Our identity needs to be about affecting the quarterback. It needs to be about creating turnovers and being able to force teams into longer yardage situations,” Vrabel said. “If that, each week, requires us to pressure, then I think that’s what we’ll try to do. If we feel like it doesn’t, I think we’re multiple enough to be able to do that based on what we feel like it is each week. So, we know that you have to affect the quarterback, you have to be great in the red zone, and you have to be able to create some turnovers.”
