From playing the first NFL game in Ireland, to scrapping with a pair of long-time neighboring rivals, to now playing their most recent Super Bowl opponent, the Steelers prepare for the Green Bay Packers in a Sunday night primetime game at Acrisure Field.
What can be said about a matchup of such historic franchises entering this game atop their respective divisions?
"Man, it's just life in the National Football League," said Coach Mike Tomlin. "It's what I probably enjoy most about it. Each week there's something to get really fired up about."
To Tomlin, though, it won't be about the Super Bowl XLV rematch, or Aaron Rodgers facing his old team, or the uniforms.
Tomlin was asked about those topics and shook off the questions.
"I coach football," he said. "I'm going to stay in my lane."
To him, that means finding a way to stop the Green Bay running game. It was his primary point of emphasis Tuesday at his weekly press conference.
"We've got to stop the run more effectively," Tomlin said five days after the Cincinnati Bengals rushed for 142 yards. "We feel like that's a building block for us, to play good defense, to get offenses in more one-dimensional passing circumstances, to get people in more advantageous possession-down circumstances for us. Our inability to stop the run created that, and that was an issue for us."
Tomlin pointed to a couple of runs by Cincinnati's Chase Brown that opened it all up for the Bengals.
"You can have a couple of plays and create a catastrophic day," Tomlin explained. "They had a 27-yard run and a 37-yard run, but that's all that's required. You get those big runs, they flip the field, they put them in scoring position, they change the trajectory of your strategy, etc. And so it's not 60 snaps we're talking about here. In our business, at this level, one or two plays are the difference between having a good day and a catastrophic day."
One snap following the Chris Boswell field goal that gave the Steelers a 10-0 lead, Brown ripped off a 27-yard run against the Steelers' run-stopping base 3-4 alignment. It set up the Bengals' first touchdown.
On the first snap of the Bengals' next possession, Brown ripped off a 37-yard run up the middle to set up another Bengals touchdown for a 14-10 lead.
"It really started in the second quarter," Tomlin said. "Never felt like we had an opportunity to stabilize that component of the game.
"We had been trending the right way in that space for a number of weeks, but certainly last week was a setback in that area."
In the Steelers' previous two games, the defense allowed season lows of 70 and 65 rushing yards in wins over the Minnesota Vikings and Cleveland Browns, respectively. Last Thursday the Steelers allowed 142 and it opened up the Bengals' passing game. That's why Tomlin opened his analysis of the Packers' offense this way:
"It starts with Josh Jacobs," Tomlin said of their running back. "And not only because of the circumstances that we're in coming off of a subpar performance in terms of stopping a run, but he's just a catalyst for a lot that goes on with them. He's a nuts and bolts player. He's really good. He's got a great run demeanor. His pile almost always falls the right way, from his perspective."
A first-round pick out of Alabama by the Oakland Raiders in 2019, Jacobs led the NFL in rushing in 2022 with 1,653 yards. He signed with the Packers as a free agent in 2024 and rushed for 1,329 yards. After six games this season, Jacobs has 414 yards on 111 carries (3.7 ypc.).
"He has just been a big-time acquisition for them," Tomlin said. "He's got 23 rushing touchdowns since they acquired him last year, and that's just a staggering number, but it speaks to his involvement and what it is that they do. He's obviously the central component of the run game."
Tomlin was asked to explain the Steelers' issues in the run game last week.
"It's really simple when you're not stopping the run," he said. "Usually people are out of their gaps if you're not being schemed, and they won some of those instances. That's just a component of it, though. Somebody can break the line of scrimmage and have an eight or nine-yard run; you live to play another down. They had a 27-yard run, a 37-yard run, and so that speaks to multi-layers of dysfunction – people out of their gap and us not keeping the ball in a confined space once it gets to the second and third level. And so those are two things that have our attention. There's a gap integrity component of it, and that's up front. Oftentimes that's reflected by yards per. But the explosion-play component of it is about netting them and keeping the ball in a constricted space, and we didn't do a good enough job of either."
In a game matching tradition-rich and historic NFL franchises, it's no surprise that the winner will be the team that owns the trenches.
"Got a lot of respect for that organization historically," Tomlin said. "Got a lot of respect for that organization present day, with their collection of leadership and players and so forth. And so we've been in some big games with them. I would imagine this one's not going to be any different.
"It's exciting. It's the NFL."
