In this week’s “3-and-Out” article, we look at how the Steelers bullied their way to victory in Seattle, keeping their playoff hopes alive as we head to the ultimate week of the regular season.

Ground and Pound

The Steelers gained a season high 468 yards on offense and scored at least 30 points for the second straight week. Pittsburgh’s dominance in this contest was greater than the 30-23 final score, as the Steelers had 25 first downs to 17 for Seattle, ran 71 plays to Seattle’s 49, outgained them by 99 yards and held the ball for over 37 of the game’s 60 minutes. The end result was a second consecutive victory that pushed their record to 9-7 and kept their playoff hopes alive as we head into the final week of the regular season.

Quarterback Mason Rudolph was again solid for the Steelers, going 18-24 passing for 274 yards without a turnover. George Pickens had his second straight 100+ yard receiving day, and Diontae Johnson added 76 receiving yards. But the real story of the offense was their domination on the ground. Pittsburgh’s rushing attack exploited Seattle’s 29th-ranked run defense to the tune of 202 yards. Najee Harris led the way with his first 100-yard game of the season, finishing with 122 yards on 27 carries and two touchdowns. Jaylen Warren added 75 yards on 13 carries and a touchdown of his own. The Harris-Warren combination was impressive in its own right, but their success was largely a product of a tremendous effort by the offensive line, which routinely won the battle at the line of scrimmage and pushed Seattle’s defensive front off of the football. Harris and Warren had considerable holes through which to run, and when they didn’t, they simply put their heads down, kept their legs churning and ground their way forward.

On Harris’s third quarter touchdown run, for example, he seemed bottled up around the four-yard line, but with the help of tight ends Darnell Washington and Pat Freiermuth, who continued to block Seattle defenders well past the point of contact, managed to lunge forward into the end zone:

No one gave up on this play!!

Awesome effort #Steelers

pic.twitter.com/XjCPtwjrSr

— The Standard (@TheStandard412) December 31, 2023

Pittsburgh’s tight ends were big contributors on Sunday. While they combined to catch just three passes for 44 yards, all by Freiermuth, they were an integral part of the run game. The Steelers often aligned in 13-personnel, putting Freiermuth, Washington and Connor Heyward on the field together in a three-tight end grouping and running right at Seattle. As Seahawks’ safety Quandre Diggs said after the game, “When teams line up in 13-personnel, they tell you what they’re gonna do. We ain’t get it done.”

Perhaps no play epitomized Pittsburgh’s dominance up front more than their final rush of the game. With the Steelers leading 30-23 and 1:00 to play, they faced 3rd-and-7 at the Seattle 17-yard line. Seattle was out of time outs, and everyone in the building knew Pittsburgh would run the ball in an attempt to ice the game. The Steelers did just that, handing Harris the football on a spilt-zone run that hit right up the gut. Harris blew untouched through the line, and had to slide down inside the five-yard line in order to run out the clock and avoid scoring untouched:

Najee ices it 🧊 #PITvsSEA pic.twitter.com/8qjzjZ3RtX

— NFL (@NFL) January 1, 2024

At that point, Seattle was a broken defense. They’d lost their desire to keep fighting up front. Their lack of effort underscored a simple truth about the nature of football. While throwing the ball is nice, and the best offenses in the NFL do it at a high level, making an opponent quit by pounding the football right at them might be the most satisfying feat an offense can achieve. It’s one thing to beat a team by being better and faster. Being more physical, though, and breaking a team’s will, invokes a level of satisfaction unto itself. When you do that, you take the soul of your opponent. Pittsburgh did so on Sunday. They’re starting to look like a potent team on offense, which is something no one could have predicted just a few weeks ago.

Rudolph Remains The Man

The X-Factor in that unit’s improvement has been Rudolph, who has gone from being an after-thought at the back end of the team’s roster to a player who is now warranting serious consideration as their quarterback of the future. In Rudolph’s two starts since supplanting Mitchell Trubisky in the lineup in relief of previous starter Kenny Pickett, Rudolph has gone 35-51 (69%) for 564 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions. The offense has scored 64 points in those starts after combining to score 67 in its previous five games.

Anyone claiming to have seen this coming under Rudolph is either a fortune teller or a liar.

The reasons for Rudolph’s success are multiple. As I chronicled in the video breakdown below, which posted last week to our SCN YouTube channel, Rudolph is excelling in three areas in particular: coverage recognition, accuracy and pocket presence.

The latter trait was on display on one of Sunday’s biggest plays. With the Steelers facing 3rd-and-7 and clinging to a 24-20 lead in the fourth quarter, Rudolph hung tough in the pocket as bodies closed in around him to deliver an off-platform throw to Pickens for the conversion. The ball wasn’t perfect, and the catch Pickens made was ridiculous. But the strength Rudolph displayed to get it there without being able to step into the throw was impressive. More so, the composure he showed by standing firm and letting Pickens come out of his break rather than bailing from the pocket and disrupting the continuity of the play created its success. After months of watching Pickett and Trubisky turn similar situations into sacks and incompletions, Rudolph’s demeanor has been refreshing.

A look at the extended grab on the deep shot from Mason Rudolph to George Pickens. #Steelers #Herewego https://t.co/CoRadEHEmS

— Rob Gregson (@NFL_Rob) December 31, 2023

In addition to his stellar play, Rudolph has earned the team’s trust at a position they second-guessed for much of the season. His teammates are supportive and are talking openly about their belief in him. That’s a far cry from the passive aggressive (sometimes aggressive-aggressive) tone that players like Pickens and Johnson took towards Pickett and Trubisky. By getting the ball into the hands of his play-making receivers, Rudolph has both jump-started the offense and quieted the dissention. The result is that the Steelers, who just a few weeks ago looked like a sinking ship, are now steaming full speed ahead towards what could ultimately be the most unlikely of playoff berths.

Making It Count

The Steelers had just one sack on Sunday, but boy was it a big one. Rookie Nick Herbig, whose role is limited by the fact he plays behind arguably the best pass rushing duo in the league in T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith, bent the edge for a strip sack of Geno Smith midway through the fourth quarter that set the Steelers up deep in Seattle territory and led to a field goal that pushed their lead to 30-20:

WOW! What a splash play by Nick Herbig!!!#Steelers #HereWeGo pic.twitter.com/SNVSTprfvh

— Obviously (Not) Tomlin (@Tomlin_Sense) December 31, 2023

Herbig did a great job of winning leverage on the play against Seattle’s left tackle, using an effective dip-and-rip move late in the rep to create the momentum he needed to reach Smith. But credit Pittsburgh’s coverage for forcing Smith to hold the ball longer than he wanted to, which allowed Herbig to get home. The Steelers may have crossed Smith up on the play by running a delayed stunt with linebacker Myles Jack while dropping Watt deep into the middle of the field, where he disrupted a crossing route from receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Geno Smith seemed to look for Smith-Njigba early in his progression. Once he located Watt, he attempted to move off of that read to an out-cut from Tyler Lockett. Herbig slapped the ball out before Smith could get it there, and the rookie edge rusher finished the play by pouncing on the fumble to give Pittsburgh possession.

On a day where Watt and Highsmith were uncharacteristically quiet, Herbig reminded Steelers’ fans that the team has other ways of menacing opposing quarterbacks.

And Out…

With Sunday’s win, it’s now 17 years and counting for Mike Tomlin without suffering a losing season. That’s the longest such streak to start a head coaching career in NFL history. More impressive may be the fact that by remaining in the playoff hunt, the number of games the Steelers have played under Tomlin where they were eliminated from playoff contention remains at one. That came in the season finale in 2012, and is the sole contest in the 274 regular season games Tomlin has coached that didn’t have playoff implications. Say what you want about Pittsburgh’s fifteen year streak without a Lombardi trophy, or the fact they haven’t won a playoff game since 2016. But the relevance they’ve achieved under Tomlin has been remarkable. That relevance extends at least one more week this season, and possibly beyond.

Follow me on Twitter @KTSmithFFSN and look for my video breakdowns of the Steelers every Wednesday on our SCN YouTube channel. My NFL podcast, “The Call Sheet,”  runs every Wednesday on the FFSN platform as well.