I have to admit, when the Colts had a 21-7 lead at half time, I turned off the TV. Of course it was time for my family Zoom call, but still , I turned off the set. I was not going to watch another loss. My wife, urged me not to give up on my team. But I had seen this 4 act play far too often, to watch another trip to the slaughter yards. Still, I checked on my team, once, twice then all the way back to full glimmer.
Here's how it happened.
For the past three and a half weeks, the Steelers looked like a team that had forgotten how to play football, but it seems that something must have changed at halftime on Sunday, because the team that came out for the second half against the Colts looked like the Steelers team that started the season 11-0.
Based on how the Steelers offense had been playing over the past few weeks, the idea of Pittsburgh overcoming a 24-7 deficit in the third quarter seemed improbable, but that's exactly what happened in a wild game that ended with the Steelers clinching the AFC North title in a 28-24 win.
Whatever Ben Roethlisberger said at halftime must have worked, because after a nearly month of struggling, the offense finally played competent football in the second half.
One knock on Big Ben over the past few weeks is that he hasn't been able to throw an accurate deep ball. That was one of the many problems that seemed to fix itself in the second half against the Colts and there's no better evidence than this 39-yard touchdown pass to Diontae Johnson where Roethlisberger threw a perfect ball that traveled 47 yards in the air.
Roethlisberger then one-upped himself with another impressive deep touchdown in the second half. This time, the 25-yard scoring pass went to JuJu Smith-Schuster and the ball traveled roughly 35 yards in the air.
The throw to Smith-Schuster came with just under eight minutes left to play and ended up providing the winning points for Pittsburgh. It was also Roethlisberger's third touchdown pass in a performance where he completed 34 of 49 passes for 342 yards.
When the deep ball is working for Roethlisberger, the offense is nearly impossible to stop. For the past few weeks, all the opposing defense had to do was focus on the short crossing routes. If you could stop those, you could shut down the Steelers offense. However, that's not the case when the deep ball is working. If the Steelers can ride this momentum into the playoffs, they could become the Super Bowl contender that we all thought they were five weeks ago.
Speaking of the playoffs, the Steelers are going to have some interesting decisions to make heading into Week 17, especially with the division already clinched. On one hand, if Mike Tomlin decides to rest his starters, you can't really blame him and that's because this team has a lot of players who could use a week off after a season where the Steelers' bye got interrupted due to COVID. On the other hand, with the offense finally in-sync, it might not be worth the risk to give them the week off and have them come out in the wild-card round looking rusty.
I will watch them play the Browns, win or lose, because I am a Steeler's fan.
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