The Pittsburgh Steelers are coming off one of their worst offensive performances on the season. They held the ball for just 20 minutes and totaled 163 yards to 401 for the Eagles. Pittsburgh also only had 56 yards on the ground, one of their worst outings of the season when it comes to running the ball. Offensive coordinator Arthur Smith was asked about the struggling run game.

“I wouldn’t call it struggles,” Smith said. “If I look at it objectively, it’s all really people’s perception. We’re towards the top of the league in rushing. Sometimes it’s not as efficient as you want… we’re like an old pickup truck. We’ll run well. We’re pretty damn good, and the longer you get the thing in drive [the better we get]. Sometimes it just take a little while to crank the engine.”

While the Steelers rank 10th in rushing yards per game, they are 30th in yards per attempt. So I’ll disagree with Smith when he says they aren’t struggling. If it takes 33 carries to get 100 yards, that’s not a good run game, that’s just a team that runs the ball a lot. Efficiency is far more important than raw yard totals, and the Steelers need to get better at getting bigger chunks on the ground.