The Steelers dropped 25 fourth quarter points on the Bengals\u00a0and kept their division hopes alive! \u00a0It was a back and forth battle for\u00a0the first 3-quarters but in the end the Steelers made the big plays.<\/p>\n
It all starts and begins with Ben Roethlisberger and Sunday the Steelers\u00a0lived by that. When Ben struggled the Steelers offense struggled, but he pulled it together and\u00a0led\u00a0an on the road fourth quarter comeback.\u00a0Which included a huge 96 yard Touchdown Pass to Martavis Bryant. (BTW my son Dante called the play before it happened) On the day Ben finished with\u00a0350 yards and three touchdowns.<\/p>\n
If the offense starts with Ben, Le’Veon Bell is the one who makes it go! He had a monster\u00a0day and was nearly unstoppable in the second half.\u00a0He racked up a mind boggling 110 yards in the fourth quarter behind a great pulling scheme with Dave DeCastro and Heath Miller leading the way.\u00a0 The Steelers chewed up the Bengals on the\u00a0ground and demolished their front seven.\u00a0Miller also caught a Touchdown!<\/p>\n
As great as Bell and Ben were, Antonio Brown is just ridiculous and could be the best player on the Steelers. He\u00a0makes tough catches,\u00a0he gets open and is clearly the Steelers go to guy. He racked up another\u00a0nine catches for the fifth time in seven games. He had well over 100 yards and made the plays that were needed.\u00a0The WRs\u00a0had a great day highlighted by Bryant’s bomb and nice contributions\u00a0by Lance Moore and Markus Wheaton.<\/p>\n
The down side is the secondary is clearly the\u00a0weak link as\u00a0AJ Green torched the Steelers secondary. Mike Mitchell and Ike Taylor had awful performances as did Troy Polamalu who was caught out of position several times on both the run and on deep passes. Once given the lead the defensive backs held on and played much better.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Steelers front seven played well and it was a nice showing for Steelhead Heyward and Stephon Tuitt in his first\u00a0start. Tuitt\u00a0laid out Andy Dalton and sent him to the\u00a0bench for a few series. Arthur Moats had the turning point in the game recovering a Dalton fumble. The Steelers also limited the run significantly. This is where stats need help to tell the Story on a Read Option play Andy Dalton scurried for 20 yards to take the lead, Lawrence Timmons and Troy were caught out of position. If you take that play out the Steelers held the Bengals in check and when they went to the Read Option again Arthur Moats was ready for it and forced the turnover.<\/p>\n
With all that said, the day belonged to the Coaches who had the Steelers fired up and ready to play. If the Jets and Bucs game were letdowns, this was a must win and the Steelers had the right game plan to deliver on it.<\/p>\n
BEER WE GO STEELERS BEER WE GO<\/p>\n
My \u201cGAME BEER\u201d goes to<\/strong>:\u00a0I am going with\u00a0Le’Veon Bell\u00a0who had a big day with 185 yards on the ground and 50 catches in the air. Also Considered:\u00a0Antonio Brown, who caught nine passes, Big Ben who threw for 350 yards and Arthur Moats who had the game changing fumble recovery.<\/p>\n Where I watched the game: <\/strong>At the house, in between decorating!\u00a0Watched with my little guys,\u00a0Luc, Dante and Little Miss Tailgate. They were laughing at me because I kept saying “I love that play” when the Steelers\u00a0were pulling Heath and DeCastro. KGB was in and out and cooked an awesome dinner, Chicken Bruschetta. My\u00a0beer of choice was Guinness Blonde to start and left over IC\u00a0Light from last weeks tailgate.<\/p>\n My Stat of the week:<\/strong>\u00a0110 yards in the fourth quarter for Le’Veon Bell. Bell now has 200 yards from scrimmage for the third game in a row, joining one other player in NFL history, some guy named Walter Payton! When you are mentioned in the same breath as Walter Payton and it is only you and Walter Payton\u00a0that is some accomplishment!<\/p>\n My thoughts on Next Week: <\/strong>The Steelers CAN NOT let down against the Falcons, this is easily the most winnable game of the final three. Which is why I am scared. The Steelers match up very well with the Falcons so I don’t think it will be a repeat of the Bucs and Jets.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Steelers dropped 25 fourth quarter points on the Bengals\u00a0and kept their division hopes alive! \u00a0It was a back and forth battle for\u00a0the first 3-quarters but in the end the Steelers made the big plays. It all starts and begins with Ben Roethlisberger and Sunday the Steelers\u00a0lived by that. When Ben struggled the Steelers offense […]<\/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-1712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bwg-gr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712","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=1712"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1718,"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions\/1718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bwgsteelers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}