Russell Wilson has not fixed all of Steelers' offensive problems

The Pittsburgh Steelers' decision to switch to Russell Wilson as their starting quarterback has mostly been considered a success. They won their first four games with Wilson as the starter, while the offense as a whole had started to show some more big-play potential in the passing game.

It has not fixed all of the problems, however, and Wilson might even be contributing to some of them. 

All of that was on display in Thursday’s 24-19 loss to the Cleveland Browns.

For the most part, the overall numbers for Wilson and the Steelers are solid. Even with Thursday's loss, they are still 4-1 in Wilson's five starts, while they have averaged 25.6 points per game, a significant increase over what the offense was averaging in recent seasons with Kenny Pickett and Mitch Trubisky at quarterback.

It is also more than the 20.8 points they were averaging over the first six games with Justin Fields at quarterback.

But there needs to be some context with those numbers. The Steelers scored 37 points against the New York Jets in Wilson's first start. That is still their high point of the season. But in the games that followed, they scored 26 against the Giants, 28 against the Commanders, 18 against the Ravens and 19 against the Browns.

In the Giants game, seven of those points were the result of a special teams touchdown.

Against the Ravens and Browns, they went seven consecutive quarters without scoring a single touchdown until they scored two touchdowns in the fourth quarter against Cleveland. On one of those scoring drives Fields played the bulk of the snaps and was the quarterback on the play where they scored. On the second, the Steelers capitalized on a short field following a defensive turnover.

While they have moved the ball effectively at times and hit some big plays, there is not much consistency to the offense and their red zone struggles have actually been worse under Wilson than they were with Fields.

Wilson is not without blame. 

Along with his propensity to hold onto the ball too long and take too many sacks, he has also missed some big opportunities for plays. In Thursday's game, he took a bad sack on a third-down play that helped push them out of makable field goal range and then fumbled away the ball to help set up a Browns field. That was at least a six-point swing in a game the Steelers lost by five points. 

He also had a glaring miss on a third-down play that resulted in a failed conversion and a punt.