The Pittsburgh Steelers completed another fourth quarter comeback in the 20-16 victory against the Tennessee Titans on Thursday Night Football in Week 9. But the game might not have been so close if the Steelers hadn’t committed a season-high 10 penalties for 80 yards.
That was the message in a nutshell from Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin following the contest. The 17-year head coach referenced the penalties in the opening statement of his postgame press conference on November 2.
“Really excited about the win. [But] obviously, it could have been cleaner,” Tomlin told reporters. “First and foremost from a penalty perspective, part of being a tough team to beat first is not kicking your own butt, and we’ve kind of been doing that some. We’ve got to own that.
“We will. We’ll review it, we’ll learn from it, we’ll look at it.”
Tomlin continued, as he explained how the Steelers will specifically address the team’s sudden penalty problem.
“We’ll bring some officials into our practice setting in an effort to be cleaner because that was catastrophic really in a lot of instances to our efforts tonight,” said Tomlin.
On defense alone, the Steelers had 6 accepted penalties for 50 yards in Week 9.
Steelers Win Despite Season-High 10 Penalties
Pittsburgh entered Week 9 with the third-fewest penalties in the NFL. The Steelers had just 36 accepted penalties in their first seven games combined.
But the Steelers had 10 penalties at home versus the Titans on November 2. Five of them were in the first quarter, including four on the defense’s first possession of the night.
