Penalities may be not quite the disaster zone that is generally believed.
1. 2018 Pittsburgh Steelers were esssentially penalized at the same rate per play as the rest of the NFL (basically every team is flagged at roughly the same rate) --
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/sta...lties-per-play
2. Steelers were square in the middle of the pack in per game calls. Almost the same amount of flags (1.8/game from the most as the least) --
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/sta...lties-per-game
3. The problem was, the yards per game. Almost last --
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/sta...yards-per-game
4. HOWEVER -- this appears to be off-set by a league leading opponnent penalty yards per game --
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/sta...yards-per-game
So, for me, we are back to starting field position and turnovers. As far as I can tell, the Steelers ranked 31st in average starting field position (their own 26) and ranked 2nd to last in takeaways per game (
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/sta...aways-per-game) and 28th in turnover margin per game (
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/sta...argin-per-game). You can look at it almost anyway you want, and the offense gave the ball up too much and the defense was atrocious at taking it away. Combine that with needing to go 70-90 yards every time you touched the ball and it isn't hard to see why every game was a nailbiter and the margin for error was basically zero.
Also, the lack of short fields, may explain why Steelers were near the top of the league in plays run per game (
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/plays-per-game) which could also explain why the offense often stagnated. Perhaps Fichtner repeated himself a bit too much allowing defenses to start to get patterns and keys locked in as the game wore on. Again, hopefully the Steelers are self-scouting this and the addition of new assistant coaches needs to have some time devoted to this concept.