Steelers Kick Ravens Out of Playoffs

It didn’t start off pretty but in the end history proved to repeat itself once more as the Steelers beat the Ravens in the playoffs 31-24. This is now the 3rd time in 3 tries that the Steelers have knocked the Ravens from the postseason.  It’s also the 6th time in 6 tries that Ben Roethlisberger has beaten Joe Flacco.  However, to get the desired end result the Steelers had to climb up hill in the second half.  The first half started ok with a 7-0 Steeler lead but they subsequently gave up 21 consecutive points, largely due to penalties, sacks, poor special teams play and turnovers and they found themselves down 21-7 at the half. 

The second half saw the roles reversed as the Steelers came out and caused all the turnovers, sacks and miscues and took full advantage of it. Thanks in part to two TD passes by Big Ben, the black and gold tied the game at 21 and a field goal by Suisham gave the Men of Steel a 3 point lead in the 4th.  It appeared that if the Steelers played solid D the rest of the way, as the had done all game, the game was won. The forgotten part, special teams. The Steelers punted late in the 4th and it was returned for a TD, if not for a holding call on the Ravens it would have given them the lead. Instead they found themselves out of the end zone but in great field position at the Steeler 29.  They got the ball within the Steeler 10 before the D held and forced a FG and the game was tied at 24 at that point. Just minutes later the Steelers had the ball in their own territory with a 3rd and 19 and looking at punting the ball to the Ravens with plenty of time to go.  That’s when Big Ben delivered a perfect ball downfield to Antonio Brown that put the ball inside the Raven 5. It was a great catch and couldn’t have come at a more clutch time of the game.  See video here:

From there the Steelers ran a little more time off the clock and Mendenhall put in his 2nd TD of the game to ice it.

It was a huge win, obviously, but Big Ben proved again that he’s a big game, elite QB. He was 19 of 32 for 226 yards 2TD and no interceptions.  It’s not like they were playing the Panthers, this was against a good Raven D.  The thing we like the most abou Roethlisberger’s passing exhibition yesterday was his confidence in the two rookies, Antonio Brown and Emmanuel Sanders. Brown led the team with 75 receiving yards and combined the two had 7 catches for 129 yards. The Big Dogs that are Ward and Wallace had 6 catches for 45 yards. That should serve notice to the rest of the league that even if you shut down the top two, you better worry about numbers 3 and 4 on the depth chart as well.  The Defense was stellar as usual only allowing 126 total yards. James Harrison led the way with 3 sacks and Timmons led the team in tackles as usual with 9.  We had mentioned in our pregame to watch the linebackers, we hope you did as they combined for 24 tackles 4 sacks!

The assumption here and around most of the league is the Steelers will face the Pats next week for the AFC title. While this was a great win, they must come out of the gates faster, limit the stupid penalties, turnovers an dumb challenges by Tomlin. Yes, Tomlin made a very dumb challenge on the Big Ben fumble.  Bottom line, they will need to play a full 60 minutes. 

Big win, even better when they beat the Baltimore Ravens, enjoy it and let’s wait til next week to see if the road to 7 can live on!