SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The Steelers are 0-3. That's terrible. That's certainly not the expectation for this team. But they're hardly buried.
In fact, three weeks into the season, the entire AFC North has three wins. And if you look at who the four teams in the division have beaten, it's not exactly Murderer's Row. The Ravens own victories over the Dolphins and Cardinals. The Browns beat the Jets. Those three teams are a combined 0-8-1.
That's it. Sunday, the division went 0-4, with the Steelers losing to the 49ers, 24-20, the Ravens falling in Kansas City, the Browns losing to the Rams and the Bengals finding a way to fall to the Bills.
The Steelers now have lost in back-to-back weeks by a combined six points and won't have Ben Roethlisberger riding in on a white horse to save this thing.
No, this is Mason Rudolph's team the rest of the way and in the first half Sunday, that was looking like it was going to be very troublesome.
The Steelers forced four first-half turnovers and clung to a 6-3 lead despite all of that, as Rudolph completed just 8 of 15 passes for 40 yards.
"We just kind of stalled out there. A lot of the blame goes to me," Rudolph admitted. "It’s the same story for us that it’s been through the first three weeks. We can’t convert on the possession downs. That’s the same thing coach is going to harp on."
Rudolph only completed 6 of 12 passes in the second half, but they went for 134 yards and two touchdowns with an interception.
Instead of continually checking down, he started going downfield.
"Maybe I’ve got to be more aggressive," Rudolph said. "I thought we had a good plan going in."
Not good enough. And now the Steelers are 0-3 with a huge game coming up next week at Heinz Field against the Bengals. Then, a home game against the Ravens. Win both of those and who knows? Lose them, and you can probably start thinking about 2020.
"The ingredients are in this room. But when you don’t get the win, it’s unacceptable," Cam Heyward said.
It is. And the ingredients might very well be in the Steelers' locker room. But they have to find the right way to mix them in. And allowing Rudolph to be aggressive from the get go -- whether that was a coaching call or his own -- would be a good place to start.
Yes, he threw this interception by being aggressive.
But what's the alternative? Another loss?
The Steelers did that with Roethlisberger in his rookie season. They would often throw early to run late, getting a lead and then allowing their defense to attack quarterbacks in the second half.
They need to take that same tack now.
Their defense is built to rush the passer. But you can't do that when you're on the field for 35 minutes a game.
• The Steelers benched Donte Moncrief for Sunday's game. They even made him inactive. Could a similar move be coming with inside linebacker Mark Barron?
Barron has seemingly been a tad bit off in his coverage time and again this season.
And then there was this massive penalty:
That holding penalty gave the 49ers an automatic first down after Cam Sutton broke up a third-and-11 pass in the end zone with the Steelers leading 20-17.
Two plays later, Jimmy Garoppolo hit Dante Pettis for a five-yard, go-ahead touchdown pass with -- you guessed it -- Barron arriving just a second late.
This is the danger of signing free agents. You're taking on a player another team doesn't feel can play or isn't worth the money they were slated to earn.
Cornerback Steven Nelson has been the opposite of that. He's been good this season.
But at least for now, it appears the Steelers went 1-3 on their big free agent signings in the offseason, though I'm not ready to completely write Moncrief and Barron off just yet.
• Minkah Fitzpatrick's debut would have been the stuff of legend had the Steelers won this game.
Five tackles, an interception, a forced fumble. That's the kind of stuff the Steelers have been missing on the back end of their defense.
But this unit continues to be on the field way too much, adding up to a season-high 73 plays in this game. It doesn't matter what defense it is, if it's on the field for 73 plays in an NFL game, it's going to give up some plays.
And the defense was partly to blame for the issues. The Steelers allowed the 49ers to convert 6 of 11 third downs. That's too many.
• So, can the Steelers win with Rudolph at quarterback? Sure. But they have to start scheming things up better on offense.
For years, the Steelers offense was predicated on isolation routes because their offensive playmakers were that much better than defensive guys they were working against.
That's no longer necessarily the case. And with a young quarterback in Rudolph, he simply doesn't see guys as open as he did in college at Oklahoma State.
In the NFL, good quarterbacks often throw their receivers open or throw it to them even when they're covered, trusting their guy to make a play.
He did it on this touchdown pass to JuJu Smith-Schuster. Smith-Schuster barely had a step on Ahkello Witherspoon. Rudolph threw it anyway, trusting his guy to get the ball.
Rudolph will get there. But he's not there yet.
• The lack of any kind of consistent running game continues to be troubling for the Steelers. The 49ers were loading the box to slow things down, especially in the first half.
And James Conner also can't fumble as he did late in this game.
That's now five fumbles for Conner on 347 career touches, or one every 69.4 touches. By comparison, former Steelers running back Stevan Ridley had 11 career fumbles on 773 career touches, or one every 70.3 touches. And he was considered a fumbler.
This is something Conner can fix. But he'd better get around to doing it.
• The Steelers have run the ball 51 times in their first three games. Their opponents have run the ball 102 times. I'm no mathematician, but even I can figure out that's a 2-1 advantage.
And it's not like they're having that much more success. Their opponents are averaging 4.1 yards per carry. The Steelers are at 3.8. But Conner is averaging 2.9 yards per attempt. And he's got 34 of the team's 51 attempts.
Again, Conner needs to start playing better overall.
It's certainly not only his fault. The line needs to do a better job of blocking for him. And the play calling could be better, too.
Everything is being run out of the shotgun. Part of the reason for that is because Rudolph is more comfortable in that set. But it also allows the defense more time to see what's going on in the backfield.
If Rudolph still isn't comfortable taking snaps under center, he and Maurkice Pouncey should spend a couple of hours each day working on that.
• Vance McDonald going out of this game early with a shoulder injury was a big deal. The Steelers had some very specific plays they wanted to run with McDonald that they had worked on all week. And they couldn't run them with Xavier Grimble.
Then, Grimble went out with an undisclosed injury.
The Steelers haven't made a move to sign another tight end. But that could change this week.
• Looking at the positive side of things, Chris Boswell has made all five of his field goal attempts this season and Jordan Berry is averaging 47.9 yards per punt.
Remember when those two were considered two of this team's biggest issues?
They're both off to good starts, though I'm certain the Steelers would be happier if Berry didn't already have 16 punts in three games under his belt. That pace works out to around 85 punts for the season.
Berry is now in his fifth season as the Steelers' punter. In his first four seasons, he never attempted more than 68 punts. That came in 2016.
He's on pace to blow that number out of the water this season.
• This game really came down one simple thing. The Steelers had two possessions that started in San Francisco territory, getting the ball at the 33 and the 24 following 49ers turnovers.
They turned those two miscues into six points -- a pair of Boswell field goals.
The 49ers had two meaningful possessions -- they had a third on the final series when they took a knee -- in Steelers territory. They got the ball at the 38 and the 24 and turned those into 14 points.
This was a four-point game. That's an eight-point swing right there.
The offense has to score at least one touchdown in those situations. Do that and the game is tied at 24-24.
But the defense is allowed to hold the 49ers to a field goal, as well.
• All of this brings us back around to whether or not this team can turn this season around.
The Steelers have allowed 30 points in the first half thus far this season, an average of 10 points per game. That's good enough to win.
But they've only scored 16 first-half points.
That's led to the team allowing 55 points in the second half while scoring 33 of its own.
The Steelers have to find ways to score early in games. The six points in this game were the first scored by the Steelers in the first quarter this season.
The Steelers, like every other team, run plays off a script early in the game, things the coaching staff feels are going to work. Right now, they aren't working.
It's time to throw out the old scripts and come up with something new.
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