PITTSBURGH (AP) — Aaron Rodgers knows what a playoff team looks like.
And while the Pittsburgh Steelers are certainly contenders in the standings after a workmanlike 16-10 win over New Orleans on Sunday in Paris kept them tied atop the AFC North as the halfway point nears, the four-time MVP quarterback believes his team is still a work in progress.
"We’re a 5-2 team, but we’re not playing as well as we can at this point,” Rodgers said after Pittsburgh's
third straight win.
Too many field goals. Too few touchdowns. Too many penalties. Too few chunk plays.
There is plenty of time to work on it, to be sure. Yet the 42-year-old Rodgers came back for one reason: to try to end his likely Hall of Fame career with another Super Bowl win.
While the ingredients are there in an AFC that lacks a surefire favorite — Buffalo's defense remains suspect, and Kansas City's hot start was cooled off Sunday night in a dismal loss in Seattle — it's clear to Rodgers that Pittsburgh needs to start looking the part of a postseason threat on the field, not just on paper.
“It was a gutsy effort,” Rodgers said. "But we’ve got to go back, get healthy, play better.”
There were signs of progress against the Saints, particularly from running back Rico Dowdle, who had 86 yards of total offense in his best game of the season.
If Dowdle can build upon it, that should take some of the pressure off starter Jaylen Warren, easily the team's MVP through seven weeks.
“I think any time we can just line up and give you Jaylen and Rico all day, that’s a good day for us,” coach Mike McCarthy said.
Dowdle and Warren weren't the only Steelers making plays with their legs. Yes, that really was Rodgers — two months away from his 43rd birthday — turning back the clock late in the fourth quarter and scrambling for a first down on third-and-8.
“I looked over as I cleared the pocket and knew I had to probably not be able to slide on that one,” Rodgers said. “And sometimes you’ve got to suck it up and make a play for your guys.”
One of those guys, linebacker Payton Wilson, picked off a Tyler Shough pass deep in Steelers territory in the third quarter to end a scoring threat on a day Pittsburgh also forced three New Orleans fumbles (all of which the Saints recovered).
Pittsburgh hosts Cleveland next. All five of its victories came in what were one-score games entering the fourth quarter, and the list of quarterbacks the Steelers have beaten includes relative unknowns in Shough, Cooper Rush and Jalon Daniels, not to mention turnover-prone Daniel Jones.
All four's respective seasons figure to be over by mid-January. While Pittsburgh does have an impressive victory over Joe Burrow and Cincinnati on its resume, Burrow and the Bengals appear to have figured things out ahead of a rematch in a couple of weeks.
What the Steelers have done so far has been enough to win games, but their next complete performance will be their first. There is room for optimism, but it should be tinged by the reality that they remain far from a finished product.
Whatever ball-hawking drills the team is working on in practice. Pittsburgh defenders are getting their hands on the ball with regularity, and the three forced fumbles against the Saints would have ticked up to five if the ball had come out on a couple of plays a split second sooner.
The offense probably can't keep relying on 10-12-14 play drives to score. While lengthy possessions are effective at draining the clock and the opposing defense, they also require the offense to work efficiently while avoiding mistakes like penalties and sacks. Having a big-play threat outside of DK Metcalf would help, but at the moment it looks like none is on the way, while Michael Pittman Jr. and Roman Wilson recuperate on injured reserve.
Linebacker Patrick Queen took exception when a fan suggested online that Queen made a “business decision” by not making a tackle last week against Tampa Bay. Queen responded with one of the best games of his three-year stint in Pittsburgh, collecting 10 tackles to go with a sack.
As Rodgers pointed out, it’s hard to win a game in the NFL, let alone one that’s thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean on what amounts to a short week. He politely criticized the Steelers’ decision to wait until late Thursday to make the trip to Paris (the Saints came over on Monday) and is hopeful the NFL eventually requires teams to arrive on site at international games much earlier. Sunday’s game went ahead despite civil unrest in Paris and other cities in France.
Safety DeShon Elliott played 19 snaps in his return from a knee injury. Barring a setback, expect his playing time to increase going forward.
1.1 — New Orleans' average yards per carry on Sunday, the lowest single-game average allowed by the Steelers since 2015.
Try to give the surprising Browns a reality check after being on the wrong end of a 27-24 thriller in Cleveland earlier this month.
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