PITTSBURGH — Back at LSU, coach Nick Saban’s solution for this type of problem would have been to pull one or two of his highly recruited players and plug in a couple of others. In the NFL, it’s not quite that easy.

The Miami Dolphins lost five fumbles in the first half and seven overall in a miserably played game, exhibition or not, and the Pittsburgh Steelers had just enough offense to capitalize in a 17-3 victory Saturday night.

James Harrison, filling in for injured Pro Bowl linebacker Joey Porter, scored on a 69-yard return of quarterback Gus Frerotte’s fumble in the first quarter for Pittsburgh’s fourth return touchdown in two preseason games. But the Steelers’ only touchdown on offense — Ben Roethlisberger and the starters were shut out for a second consecutive game — was Verron Haynes’ 1-yard run in the third quarter set up by, of course, a Dolphins fumble.

“We had too many mistakes. Turnovers killed us,” Frerotte said. “We were trying to do some things and we missed some big plays. We had stuff that didn’t go our way. We just missed some deep throws.”

And missed and missed and ...

Frerotte had moved ahead of A.J. Feeley in the race to be the opening day starter, but it was hard to tell as Miami lost nearly as many fumbles as Frerotte had completed passes. Dolphins general manager Randy Mueller supposedly talked to the agent for unsigned quarterback Tim Couch last week, and the way Frerotte and Feeley played couldn’t have convinced Mueller and Saban the offense is in good hands.

Especially on a night the Dolphins barely kept the ball in their hands for more than a couple of plays without turning it over in their third consecutive exhibition loss.

Maybe a 58-minute weather delay at the start caused by a violent thunderstorm got both teams out of sync, but neither starting offense produced any scoring in a first half that included eight turnovers — including two Steelers fumbles and a Roethlisberger-thrown interception.

“We had a lot of improvement from last week,” said linebacker James Farrior, whose hit on Frerotte led to Harrison’s fumble return score. “We had a lot of guys running around and we had a good amount of turnovers.”

Just as in Monday night’s 38-31 win over the Eagles, the Steelers’ starting offense didn’t get much work. Roethlisberger was 6-of-11 for 51 yards and is 8-of-15 for 64 yards in two games, not playing past the first quarter in either game even though coach Bill Cowher planned to play his starters for the first half Saturday.