CINCINNATI -- Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator Bill Lazor said he understood why rookie Joe Mixon was frustrated about his lack of carries in the second half of their loss to the Steelers on Sunday.

The Bengals only had 19 yards of offense in the second half, and two drives ended in turnovers. Lazor broke down why Mixon didn't have a second-half carry and why the Bengals stopped running the ball in the 29-14 loss:

"There were a couple reasons I think. If you look at how those series went, first of all, we were three-and-out, interception, interception, three-and-out," he said. "So when you have a 51-play game, no one gets it enough. And there were a couple plays we chose to put someone else in for particular things and it had nothing to do with Joe, it worked out that way.

"And there were some plays where Joe was in the game and the defense they chose to play got us to pass on some run-pass options and that's always part of the game. And then we get to that point in the game where it's a passing game to try to catch up to win the game, because at some point, the key is to win the game, you don't worry about how you do it, it's just win the game ...

"But I think if you look at the last drive of the first half, the first drive of the second half, what they did a little more in the second half -- first of all, they have a great scheme. The coaches and players in Pittsburgh know their scheme very well. I can't think of anything they did in the game that they haven't done at some point. It's their defense, it's what they do. What they did in the second half, they did in the first half ...

"For example, we had a second-and-9 in the first half, we had three wide receivers in the game and they left their base defense in the game. We threw a completion to [Brandon] LaFell. Really that was probably the thing they leaned on more in the second half, so that takes you out of some of your run game when you have three receivers in, so that's a little bit of what got into the run-pass decisions ...

"At the same time, when they left two safeties in the game and base defense, we had three wide receivers, we didn't hurt them. When Cleveland did it, we hurt them. So when you look at the whole thing, the game goes back and forth in matchups and sometimes you say hey, we're going to do this so what's their counter going to be and back-and-forth and when we had some of the situations where we felt we had matchups that OK, let's take advantage of it in our favor, we didn't hurt them. Hey, hats off to them, they were able to do it with their big guys on the field ...

"So yeah when you think five straight series were either three-and-out or an interception. So really that's where I thought offensively we let go of the rope a little bit. We were pulling and tugging in that tug of war in the first half ...

"When we got the ball with 1:50 and three timeouts, I think that's what it was, I said hey we were far back but shoot, we've got three timeouts, we've got a veteran crew, we can move the ball down there. And when we failed on that drive, that just started it...

"And then I think in the second half, the first play was a pass versus their base defense, incomplete, the second play was a run for one, we didn't convert the third down, so it's a three and out. A run with (Giovani Bernard) for eight (yards), an intercept. So that's two drives. The next drive, play-action, play-action, and then I think Joe was in the game and some things got to passes and I think he caught a couple of them, if I remember correctly, intercept. And three and out ...

"So you just hit that part of the game where no one's happy with it. And you know, and you may not be aware of it, but in the last two games that we won somewhere between probably two and five of our skill position players were probably pissed at me after the game. ... If we dress three tight ends, three running backs and five wide receivers ... but it's just the fact. That's NFL football. Not everyone is going to be happy with their touches all the time. And I've done it before, so I understand. Some guys handle it better than others, some of them it shows by the look on their face, some of them by their body language, you can tell. It's not the first time."