JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - It was just one series in the second of five preseason games and head coach Mike Tomlin maintained afterward that there's much work yet to be done by the Steelers' first-team offense.
"Absolutely," Tomlin said. "They just played a drive or so of football. We gotta play 60 minutes of winning football.
"I like the start but it was just that, a start. It was one drive."
But that said the players comprising the Steelers' first-team offense know who they are and what they're capable of all the same.
"We can only stop ourselves," running back Le'Veon Bell insisted after the first-team offense went 80 yards in six plays and scored a touchdown and a two-point conversion in its only appearance in Friday night's 23-21 loss to the Jaguars.
"If we make mistakes and have penalties, that's the only we we'll be stopped," Bell continued. "We have way too many play-makers on the field.
"As long as we execute the way we can I don't feel like opposing defenses can do anything about stopping us."
What the first-team offense did at EverBank Field was pretty much what it has been doing at St. Vincent College.
"I had the conversation on the sideline with the line, we're as good as our line's gonna be," quarterback Ben Roethlisberger maintained. "(Friday night) they gave me time. They opened up holes for the running game. We had one third down and it was third-and-short (third-and-5) and we converted (on a 44-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Martavis Bryant).
Check out the highlight photos from the Steelers vs Jaguars game.
"The only time I even kind of had to hold the ball was on the two-point play, and that's because they had the perfect defense for our call. I was going to change the play but I hate in the preseason signaling or giving verbal changes because people can pick up on it. So I didn't change the play, I was like 'let's make it work.'"
They have been all along in training camp.
They made it work again against the Jaguars.
"Everything's been going really well," center Maurkice Pouncey said. "We're just trying to build off the things we did last year.
"Just keep scoring touchdowns, man, and lead the team the right way and we'll see how things turn out when the regular season comes."
