The Jaguars defense held the Steelers offense to just 10 points on Sunday. It was another lackluster performance where the offense fell flat on their faces and failed to produce any consistent points despite three turnovers forced by the defense. It appears like many before them. However, they had a read on what the Steelers were doing before they snapped the ball.
Speaking after the game, linebacker Foye Oluokun talked about the team’s performance, and he called out the Pittsburgh offense for being predictable in how they use their schematics. It is no secret that Pittsburgh has several tells with their under-center and shotgun splits, backed up by data throughout the season.
“I don’t know if they really ran it on us that much. Kinda called out a lot of their plays before it happened,” Oluokun told 1010XL. “We might see them again later. That’s a good team, so hats off to them and be prepared if we see them later.”
Oluokun is not the first in the last three seasons to call this out. Colts linebacker Zaire Franklin and Bengals linebacker Germaine Pratt called it out last year. Pittsburgh has a habit of not working off their tendencies and rocking back into what they do as a comfort mechanism when things are not working.
“Just settling down,” Pratt told CBS Sports last year. “It was us giving them plays. We knew what they were going to do. They like to do the same plays over and over.”
It’s not all Matt Canada’s fault. The Steelers had opportunities but lacked in execution greatly on Sunday. But he is part of the problem, especially when the trend has continued over three seasons. That is no coincidence at that point. Canada becomes a common denominator. The Steelers will have to go back to the drawing board again to figure out what went wrong on offense. There are many things, but most of them will not get fixed until they naturally go into the offseason and have to look at everything all over again.
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