The Steelers’ debacle at the city on Lake Erie: A wake-up call, or are the chickens coming home to roost?

… Le'Veon who?

[I apologize for being late with posts this week. Had eye surgery on Monday, just getting back into the groove.]

Many Pittsburgh Steeler fans believed at the start of the season that the team could win 12 to 14 games. I was not one of them. I was saying 11. I will hold to my prediction, but I am relatively certain that they will win 13 again.

When I asked last week on this blog if the Cleveland Browns could win the opening season game against the Steelers last Sunday, I was being only facetious. Not completely, because last week was horrible with the Bell fiasco while the Browns were improving.

Overall reaction to the Steelers’ woeful performance:

Remember: This was a team that was 0-16 last year.

Le’Veon who? James Conner is a beast who will do great because he has an outstanding offensive line in front of him, just like Bell did. And, he is very talented with a much better team attitude than Bell has.

Whenever the Steelers’ franchise QB has a rating of 60, throws three picks, and has two fumbles, the team will struggle.

The team showed signs that it had a horrible week after realizing that Bell would be a no-show. That is called by coaches “distractions.”

The Steelers will struggle whenever they allow their opponents to rush for 177 yards — though that includes an OT period. They were out rushed 177-159.

Penalties were a problem — again. Twelve for 116 yards. These often reflect a lack of focus or a lack of discipline. The Browns had six of their 22 first downs because of penalties.

The defense did, however, have seven sacks. That is great!

T.J. Watt has to continue with his sack attack, something that gave him the honor of Defensive Player of the Week in the NFL with three.

Conner had 135 yards rushing and 57 passing for 192 yards. If he does that again, it will truly be a "Le’Veon who" moment, time to write off Bell for the rest of the season.

Steelers pass defense gave up too many big plays. Jarvis Landry averaged 15.1 yards per catch, seven for 106 yards. Too much. Rashard Higgins had a catch for 38 yards and Josh Gordon for 17. They have to limit the big plays.

JuJu Smith-Schuster averaged 23.8 yards per catch (5 for 119 yards) and Jesse James 20 (3 for 60 yards) and Antonio Brown 10.3 (9 for 93), so they were spreading the ball around. They have to continue this, and they should.

Inside LB Vince Williams had solid game with 12 tackles, Watt 10. That was positive.

No NFL team is going to win many games when they have six turnovers.

Overall positive

The good news from this is that it was not a loss.

Three second-year players had great games: Conner, Schuster, and Watt. Now, if we can have some rookies step up to make us feel better about this year’s draft.

Conner is such a great role model for young kids — and for us adults. You enjoy rooting for him.

The Steelers do not need Le’Veon Bell to reach the playoffs. They have enough weapons without him. The sooner they put Le’Veon behind them, the better they will be.

The OL is outstanding.

Concerns

The bad news is that this was not a win.

The Steelers desperately need a win this week, preferably a big win. A loss to the Chiefs at Heinz will mean that we have more problems than we thought.

Some NFL commentators — and Steeler fans — are saying that they need to see James Conner do well against a good defense. Another good game will shut them up.

Certainly, the fumble by Conner that the Browns turned into a TD is a concern. He did not have the ball tucked away securely. It was, however, also lucky as the ball bounced right up to a defender without anyone in front of him.

The Chiefs shipped Alex Smith to the Redskins for a reason. Patrick Mahomes is their QB of the future. He completed 15 of 27 passes for 255 yards and four touchdowns against the Chargers. Most important, he had a 127.5 QB rating, more than double Roethlisberger’s. He is projected to throw for more than 4,000 yards this season.

If outstanding guard David DeCastro does not play this week, then the Steelers will be in trouble. Not sure they have a viable backup.

Lack of discipline on one drive led to a Browns TD. Tomlin has to do a better job here.

Lack of leadership: I hope that this performance was just a wake-up call, but I still have concerns about leadership on that team. They need one of their veterans to take that role, something like Cameron Heyward. This has been lacking the last few years.

Conclusion

Chickens coming home to roost? Once a great supporter of Mike Tomlin, I have expressed concern the past four or five years about the lack of discipline exerted by Mike Tomlin. [Refer to previous posts.] My major concern right now is that with all of the criticism last week by the linemen of Bell, the Steelers lost their focus. Tomlin has to reassert that discipline because he may face the toughest year of his coaching career if he does not. The Ravens are obviously improved, as are the Bengals -- we will find out more tonight about them. So, this could turn out to be a 10 win season if he does not do so.

I still like Tomlin and think that he is a good coach, but he is not the great coach that he was in the early years. He needs to return to that level. They have a tough end of season schedule with the Pats and Saints back-to-back. Now is the time to right the ship.

My final question about Tomlin is this: Will he suspend Bell for two games when he returns because he missed two preseason camps? If he does that, he is back in my graces.