The Pittsburgh Steelers powered past their old school\u00a0rival Cleveland Browns, with a 27-11 victory. The defense\u00a0had a lights-out performance\u00a0and forced the Browns into four turnovers. The offensive line had a breakout performance against a formidable Cleveland front and provided excellent protection. “Big” Ben Roethlisberger has been sacked just once in the Steelers\u2019 past two games and never hit the ground yesterday.\u00a0Roethlisberger completed 22 of 34 passes, and he finished with a passer rating of 102.2. The Steelers have now won three in a row and are\u00a0back in postseason contention.<\/p>\n
The defense held the Browns offense in check despite a historic performance by Josh Gordon, who caught 14 passes for 237 yards. That would be the lone bright spot for Cleveland,\u00a0they forced four Cleveland turnovers, three fumbles and William Gay\u2019s\u00a021-yard interception return for a touchdown with 4:27 to go in the game, his\u00a0first career score on a pickoff, Gay also forced a fumble.\u00a0 Troy Polamalu\u00a0forced two fumbles. Will Allen returned\u00a0the\u00a0Gay fumble\u00a0fumble 49 yards and crushed the Browns comeback chances.<\/p>\n
Cleveland quarterback Jason Campbell lost the ball when Gay blitzed and\u00a0sacked him on a third-down play at the Steelers\u2019 39 and sent him from the game. Cam Heyward also recovered a fumbled as the defense was in control the entire day.\u00a0 Jason Worilds had a team-high six quarterback hurries and\u00a0 forced quarterbacks Jason Campbell and Brandon Weeden into several bad throws, including chasing down Campbell and sending him to the bench. The Browns had no running room all day as the Steelers clogged all the lanes and held the Browns to under 60 yards.<\/p>\n
The offense looked good and moved the ball especially in the first half. Seven different players caught passes\u00a0with Manny\u00a0Sanders and Antonio Brown catching 12 passes between them with two touchdowns. Heath Miller chipped in with\u00a0five catches and the Steelers made every play they needed to. The offense was committed to the run and they pounded it 34 times, but they still didn’t break 100 yards. Le’Veon Bell\u00a0played okay but the Browns made the adjustments in the second half, Jon Dwyer had a tough day\u00a0and didn’t convert\u00a0on a 3rd and 4th down, although the\u00a04th down was very questionable.<\/p>\n
The Steelers are now on the move\u00a0after the worst start in 45 years. They have won three in a row, five of their past seven and are starting to make plays and\u00a0one could only wonder what the talk would be right now\u00a0if they could have beaten either the\u00a0Vikings or the Raiders. This is a short turnaround as the Rat birds loom on Thanksgiving night.<\/p>\n
BEER WE GO STEELERS, BEER WE GO!<\/p>\n
My \u201cGAME BEER\u201d goes to<\/strong>:\u00a0The offensive line, all of them, NO Sacks for the first time this year.\u00a0Also Considered, I have been typing Cam Heywood and Antonio Brown almost weekly in this spot.<\/p>\n Where I watched the game: <\/strong>Buckley’s Irish Pub, in my home town, Went with KGB and my buddy Matt and we had wings and Irish Spring Rolls.\u00a0Seamus the bartender took good care of us and we were able to\u00a0crank out a great win. The Beer of\u00a0choice was Rebel IPA!\u00a0This time of year is usually my\u00a0Rochester trip, my man Jim “Lock it\u00a0Down” Lochrie took my spot and\u00a0went to Nathaniel’s\u00a0in Rochester. He hung out with the local Beer We Go guys.<\/p>\n My Stat of the week: <\/strong>ZERO Sacks! The first time this year, the O Line had great protection.<\/p>\n My thoughts on Next Week: <\/strong>It will be a short week and a short turn around as the Steelers will be playing the Ravens on Thanksgiving night. This will be the first time in a VERY long time that Ben will be playing the Ravens twice in a season. Look for the usual formula of the Steelers and Ravens playing each other close and look for the Steelers to pull it out. This could put us right back in this thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Pittsburgh Steelers powered past their old school\u00a0rival Cleveland Browns, with a 27-11 victory. The defense\u00a0had a lights-out performance\u00a0and forced the Browns into four turnovers. The offensive line had a breakout performance against a formidable Cleveland front and provided excellent protection. “Big” Ben Roethlisberger has been sacked just once in the Steelers\u2019 past two games […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bwg-gr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1341"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1343,"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions\/1343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}