While the Pittsburgh Steelers were ultimately able to come away with a blowout victory against the Cleveland Browns today by a final score of 33-18 that doesn’t actually do justice to how imbalanced it was, there was one worrying trend (two, actually) that they were not able to buck in the impressive effort.
That is, they have continued to look sluggish, if not anemic in the first quarter of games, and that has been a recurring them for a decade now coming out of bye weeks. While the slow first-quarter offense so far this year has been an issue, the fact of the matter is that they have only scored six points in the first quarter in games after the bye week since 2009.