Steelers Defeat Ravens 13-10 In Hard Hitting Game

It wasn’t always pretty but it was exactly the kind of game we thought it would be, hard hitting and low scoring. The end result was fantastic, the Steelers came out of the Sunday Night battle in Baltimore with a huge 13-10 win. This win puts the Steelers in sole possesion of first place in the AFC North and in prime positiion to grab one of the top 2 seeds in the AFC. Obviously they have to take care of their business in the last 4 weeks of the season, but tonight they can celebrate the big win and worry about the rest starting tomorrow.

It didn’t start off great as the Steelers offense was pretty anemic in the first half. Big Ben playing on a broken foot looked a little hobbled and off key. He wasn’t getting the ball in to his receivers accurately and when he was, the receivers were dropping the ball.  The first half saw Ben’s nose broken and Dan Sepulveda blow an ACL and lead to the Steelers place kicker Sean Suisham taking over the punting duties the rest of the way. Suisham got the job done. 

At half the black and gold were down 7-0.  They began to climb their way back in led by Big Ben and Troy Polamalu. Roethlisberge made some serious plays and had one play, an incompletion, that was down right amazing.  With the Steelers down 10-6 late in the 4th quarter and the ball on the Raven 10, Terrell Suggs, who had been an animal all game, got to Big Ben, wrapped him up and tried to strip the ball. Ben, somehow, managed to run backwards, stiff arm suggs, twist around and backhand throw the ball out of bounds, saving the team 7 yards.  They scored 2 plays later on a Big Ben pass to Redman and that’s all she wrote. 

A few things to come from this game are glaring. Once again the Steelers committed far too many penalties with 9. They had two pass interference calls on McFadden, they had a 3rd down conversion called back on an illegal formation and they had a punt downed inside the Raven 5 yard line overturned due to a stupid penalty. Those need to stop. They overcame them today, but that’s a big thanks to Troy Polamalu who got to Flacco in the dwindling minutes of the 4th and forced a fumble. 

It’s obvious to us that Mike Wallace is now the team’s top receiver, he pulled in 5 balls for 76 yards while Hines only caught one for 13 yards.

Randle El appears to be a fair catch punt returner only at this point. Look for him to be on another team or out of the league in 2011. 

McFadden looks terrible, he’s this week’s William Gay.  He was burned so many times and he looked bad. He’s better than Gay, but wow, he could have been the reason the Steelers lost, if they had.

James Farrior is a beast as he led the team with 7 tackles.

James Harrison was playing like the Harrison of old and we love that.

Big Ben is a man, playing with a broken foot and nose, he got the job done again and has now won his last 6 starts against Baltimore and 8 of 10 overall.

Overall a tough win, the team lost Heath to a concussion and “Glass” Flozell Adams to an ankle sprain.  They’ll also most likely need to sign a new punter with Sepulveda going down with an ACL. 

The Miller hit was absurd and flagrant, the refs blew it as usual and didn’t call a thing. McLain best be fined but where the hell was the flag? Speaking of fines and flags, where was the flag on Ngata when he broke Ben’s nose? Oh, Baltimore wears purple and black not black and gold.  You know damn well if a Steeler, particularly Harrison was involved in either of those hits there would be a 15 yard penalty and a massive fine. We’ll see on the fines but the penalties never happened.

None the less, the Steelers won and that’s all that matters.

9-3, up next: Cincinnati