Recapping Steelers Win vs. Browns
We’ve got a date against an NFC powerhouse in Philadelphia this week, so let’s go ahead and put these Cleveland Browns games behind us.
The Browns traveled to Pittsburgh yesterday for a rematch against the Pittsburgh Steelers; this time a blow out win for the Steelers, 27-14. Yesterday’s game went how I expected the first game against the Browns to go a couple weeks ago. Nonetheless, the Browns are a division rival, so it’s unreasonable to expect blowouts every time we play them, even when it seems as likely as it did.
The game started out pretty rough for the Steelers on offense. The Browns won the toss, deferred to the second half, and forced the Steelers into a 3-and-out on their first drive of the game. Najee Harris was able to get going on the Steelers second drive, but the drive stalled near the red zone, resulting in a FG for Chris Boswell. Right after that happened, the defense fell apart a bit, and allowed a 35 yard touchdown to Jerry Jeudy. Similar to the Jeudy catch near the end of the game against the Browns a couple weeks ago, Minkah Fitzpatrick was again to blame, in my opinion, for this touchdown, leading to more speculation on social media that he has taken a step back as a player. We’re going to need him to be at his best over the next few weeks as we entered the toughest portion of any schedule in the NFL this year. Immediately after that touchdown, with the Browns leading 7-3, the Steelers went 3-and-out once again. Follow that up with a short Browns drive, and then ANOTHER 3-and-out for the Steelers despite the fact that they had the ball in a 2nd & 1 situation, and STILL couldn’t get a first down. Needless to say, at that point in the game I had resigned to my fate and I was fully prepared to watch another embarrassing loss to the Cleveland Browns. Finally, the Steelers were given a defensive pass interference on a deep shot to Calvin Austin III in the 2nd quarter, that gave the Steelers the ball in the red zone, which resulted in a Najee Harris touchdown run. From that point on, the Steelers were able to take off and secure a pretty convincing win in spite of the super slow start.
The defense is what it is, and that is absolutely ELITE. The defense was able to force two turnovers, INTs by both James Pierre and Keeanu Benton, and their pass rush was able to make life uncomfortable for Jameis Winston all game long. Cam Heyward came away with 2 sacks in this game, and was BLOWING UP the interior of the Browns o-line all game long. The Steelers special teams unit, which has been rock solid all season long, was also able to come away with a fumble recovery on a muffed punt near the end of the game, which certainly helped with our margin of victory. All three units on the Steelers…offense, defense, and special teams, are all capable of making game-winning plays when called upon, and that’s a luxury that most teams don’t have, so we oughta be grateful for that.
There’s not much else I want to say in this game, other than the team, eventually, did a good job of executing the game plan and beating an inferior team, convincingly. Everything that went wrong in our first meeting in Cleveland was fixed in this game, whether it be our struggles in short yardage, the poor field conditions, or the lack of pressure on Jameis Winston. The offense was CLEARLY struggling, especially early on in the game, without George Pickens, who missed the game with a hamstring injury. There’s conflicting reports on the severity of the injury, so I’m going to wait until Mike Tomlin speaks to the media before I expand on how that affects the team moving forward. I will say, though, it would be a damn shame if he had to miss the upcoming game against the Philadelphia Eagles. If he doesn’t appear on track to play against the Eagles, I may go back and watch the all-22 of this Browns game for some more insight on what to expect from us, offensively, without him on the field, but until that happens I don’t have anything else to say about this game. We should have won, and we did. Now shit gets real.
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