In the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 20-17 loss to the Dallas Cowboys in Week 5, one major issue was the defense allowing third down conversions. Dallas converted 9 of 15 third downs for a 60 percent rate. For context, the NFL average to date is 37.9, so it was an extremely poor night for Pittsburgh’s defense, which is now allowing 38.7 percent on the season.
Today, I wanted to examine this further, diving deep into the stats to see what I could glean. Game halves appeared to be steady on the surface, but looking at Week 5 compared to the other four games told a different story.