Steelers Win Sloppy Game At KC

Following the bye week the Steelers had to go into Arrowhead stadium and play in one of the more hostile environments in the league. Forget that the Chiefs were 4-6 for the season or that they were without their starting QB, RB and SS. This game had danger written all over it. That word couldn’t have been closer to the truth, the Steelers escaped the game with a narrow 13-9 margin of victory. 

Overall we expected the Steelers to come fresh and crips after having the prior week off and quite frankly they didn’t. The game featured 10 accepted penalties overall, 6 of those were on the Steelers. The offensive line, especially Max Starks were getting drilled on holding calls all night long.  They were just sloppy.  One man who wasn’t sloppy who you might have expected to be was Big Ben Roethlisberger. Playing with a fractured thumb on his throwing hand and having to wear a splint and a glove; all he did was go 21 of 31 for 193 yards and added a TD, he did have one pick too.  But the TD he had was a thing of beauty. He side stepped the defender, put a soft touch on the ball and perfectly placed it in the back of the end zone for Wesley Saunders to haul in. As it turns out that was the only TD of the game for either team.  The rest of the scoring was done by the kickers. 

Defensively the team stepped up holding the Chiefs to the aforementioned field goals only and causing four Tyler Palko turnovers. Turnovers have been hard to come by for the Steelers this year so it was nice to see them get their hands on the ball for a change.  Ryan Mundy led the team in tackles with 10 after Troy Polamalu had to come out after the opening series of the game due to a blow to the head. No word yet on how long he’ll be out but we suspect you’ll see him next week.  Lawrence Timmons was 2nd on the team with 7 tackles-the exact amount we projected he’d have in our Game Day section. Hey, we have to give ourselves some credit here, we’re the best in the business when it comes to knowing the Steelers and when we hit our projections on the nose, well, we toot our own horn. 

Now, back to the regularly scheduled article.

The linebackers were all over the field today as they totaled 22 tackles between the four of them. Jason Woirlds who was playing for Woodley had 6 of those and he showed up on a lot of plays. It’s great to see the backup guys step up when called upon. We even saw Cam Heyward make a few plays this year, which is nice to see, as he was this year’s first round pick as you know. 

Overall it was a sloppy, penalty filled game that had our hearts racing until the final snap but the results were right and it’s on to next week.

Time for this week’s Superlatives and notes:

Star of the Game-Ben Roethlisberger-This seems to be a weekly thing but he is and was the man, playing with a broken thumb he led the team to victory with impressive stats and easily the play of the game (read above)

Number 1 receiver-Antonio Brown-It looks like he may be the best WR on this team, just edging out our boy Wallace. Granted teams are doubling Wallace but Brown makes them pay, he’s a really good WR and very well may be the best the Steelers have right now.

Number 4 receiver-Hines Ward-There was a lot of talk this week that he was falling to 5th on the depth chart, from what we could tell tonight, he was 4th. We were happy to see him get 4 grabs to get him to within 15 of 1,000 for his hall of fame career. With 5 games left if he can average 3 catches a game he’ll get there. We hope he does because we suspect this is his final run with the black and gold.

8-3, up next: Vs. Cincinnati, 7-4 (Steel Nation Association Staff in attendance)