The Pittsburgh Steelers defense played pretty well in Week 10 against the Los Angeles Chargers. But one thing T.J. Watt and company didn’t do was create a takeaway.
That’s now happened in four of the past five games. The Steelers lost three of those contests.
It’s a universal narrative for every NFL team — lose the turnover margin, and it’s much harder to win in the league.
But the Steelers losing the turnover battle in recent defeats has become a significant narrative because of how much emphasis Mike Tomlin places on the statistic.
After the 25-10 defeat to the Chargers, though, Watt argued the Steelers defense has to do better in other areas than just taking the ball away.
“We can’t continue to live and die by the turnovers as a defense,” Watt told reporters. “We need to get off the field, we need to stop the run. Critical third downs, we need to do a better job of.
“No excuse for it. We need to play better.”
The Steelers held the Chargers to 4.6 yards per play. Los Angeles also posted just 5.2 yards per pass, and the Steelers sacked quarterback Justin Herbert five times.
But the Chargers were able to run significantly more plays than the Steelers offense. And because Los Angeles played with the lead nearly the entire game, the Chargers stuck to their ground game, which led to lopsided time of possession in Los Angeles’ favor.
T.J. Watt Laments Steelers Defense’s Inability to Get Off Field
The Steelers offense is as much to blame as anything for the Chargers controlling the ball for more than 37 minutes Sunday night. Pittsburgh’s offense went 2-for-12 on third and fourth down combined. With that low of a conversion rate, the Steelers managed just 11 first downs.
However, Watt blamed the defense for being on the field so often versus the Chargers.
“We need to get off the field. Our job is to get on and off the field as quickly as possible,” said Watt. “Good defenses spend a lot of time on the bench, and we haven’t been doing that enough in totality this whole year.”
It’s not super shocking the Steelers had a poor time of possession versus the Chargers. Los Angeles leads in that category while the Steelers are ranked 31st.
Not possessing the ball enough has been an issue for Pittsburgh throughout the entire 2025 season.
Even against the Cincinnati Bengals, which was the start of Pittsburgh’s three losses in four games, the Steelers didn’t win time of possession. Ranked 32nd in time of possession, the Bengals are the only team worse at possessing the ball this season than the Steelers.
The Issue With Steelers’ Takeaways Philosophy
Every NFL defense relies on takeaways to a certain degree. Of the bottom five teams in the league in turnover margin, only one of them has a winning record.
But there’s one potential fatal flaw in needing multiple takeaways every week to be an elite defense. Takeaways seem to come in bunches.
The Steelers went three consecutive games without a takeaway in October. Then during Week 9, the team posted six takeaways. It was the unit’s second game this season where it forced at least five turnovers.
But then Sunday, the Steelers defense had zero takeaways again.
The unit had chances to take the ball away against the Chargers. But a couple dropped interceptions, including one golden one in the hands of Joey Porter Jr., helped lead to the clean sheet for the Chargers.
It’s impossible, though, to expect a defense to recover every fumble and catch every potential interception. It just doesn’t happen.
While Watt didn’t say that, that’s fundamentally why the edge rusher is right — even the most opportunistic defenses won’t cause turnovers every week.
The Steelers defense has to continue to improve in other areas to be an elite unit.
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