If the Steelers’ plan was to make a statement to the football world that their 1-2-1 start was a fluke, they did one heck of a job relaying that on Thursday night against one the best teams in the NFC.
They overcame a horrible defensive start to put up Nintendo-like numbers on offense and came away with an ever impressive and record-breaking 52-21 shellacking of the Carolina Panthers at Heinz Field.
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The 52 points were the most ever scored at Heinz Field. You have to go all the way back to the Walt Kiesling days and Forbes Field in the mid-1950s to find a Steelers’ team that scored more points in one game (a 55-27 win over the Browns on Oct. 17, 1954) than they did on Thursday night.
“We are probably not that good,” Mike Tomlin said. “You get games like that sometimes. The ball gets rolling downhill …”
It was the sixth time in franchise history the Steelers scored 50 or more points and most since putting up 52 against the Chargers in late November of 1984 under the direction of Mark Malone.
And this was after the Panthers marched down the field at ease on the first possession of the game and scored a touchdown. After that, it was all Steelers. They scored on seven of their next possessions with the only one that didn’t register points was the end-of-the-first half drive.
The Steelers won their fifth straight to improve to 6-2-1 and are now a full game ahead of the Bengals (5-3) for the AFC North lead.
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The game was won when: Antonio Brown caught a 53-yard touchdown pass late in the first half over rookie Donte Jackson two minutes after the Panthers cut the deficit to 10 points. The Steelers took a 31-14 lead into halftime and extended it to 38-14 on the opening drive of the second half.
Brown hasn’t had the volume of numbers that he used to, but the touchdowns keep coming. .He has now scored a touchdown in seven straight games and eight of nine. Against the Panthers, it was vintage Brown.
The Panthers played press man coverage on Brown with no help over the top. Brown, who is one of the best of beating the press, quickly got around the speedy rookie and hauled in the touchdown.
It was a pretty simple pitch-and-catch by Ben Roethlisberger and Brown. When Roethlisberger sees that matchup, even if it is against a 4.3 guy like Jackson, he takes a shot. It turned out to be the game-sealer.
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Roethlisberger said: “It is one of those things I want to get it out there and let A.B. make the play. He got around him, and he was moving fast.”
Jackson said: “He has his little touches that he does at the top of the route, he got me on one. He made a play.”
Ron Rivera said: “He just tripped. He’s running with the guy and falls.”
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Statistically speaking: It’s pretty tricky to come up with a stat that didn’t favor the Steelers. Roethlisberger went 22 of 25 for 328 yards and five touchdowns for his fourth career perfect passer rating (158.3) and the first ever allowed by the Panthers. They converted 8 of 11 third downs (8 of 9 with Roethlisberger in the game), were a perfect 4 of 4 in the red zone and got touchdowns from seven different players — Brown, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Jesse James, James Conner, Vance McDonald, Jaylen Samuels and Vince Williams (interception return). Brown had 96 yards, Smith-Schuster 90, and Conner 65 but only on 15 carries.
On the defensive side of the ball, Cam Heyward had two sacks while T.J. Watt, Williams and Bud Dupree each had one, and Rosie Nix forced a fumble on special teams.
Tomlin said: “It was good execution, but you know to a degree as I said earlier, the ball was rolling downhill tonight. You’d like to think that you are that good, but you aren’t.”
Jarius Wright said: “The way we came out and got smacked today, makes you never want to get smacked like that again.”
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What the offense showed: That Randy Fichtner is a pretty good offensive coordinator. The Steelers have done not much more than run the ball over the past month with great success.
Mind you, in a short week, he was able to turn around a game plan that was not only effective but totally different than what we’ve seen from them during the winning streak. The running game with Conner was secondary. With the Panthers have a suspect secondary compared to their front seven, the Steelers went to the air.
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Typically they would turn the reigns over to Roethlisberger in the no-huddle in short-week games and let Roethlisberger figure it out. Against the Panthers, they used the no-huddle only seven times, albeit two resulted in touchdowns.
Instead, it was a plan to take advantage of Roethlisberger’s skills more than anything else. And what that meant was to open up the offense a little bit.
The big play made a return to the Steelers’ repertoire. Teams have been very concerned with the Roethlisberger taking shots over the top of the defense so much so that offense has been relegated to a lot of short and intermediate routes.
Against the Panthers, that changed. Roethlisberger had throws of 75 yards, 53 and 33 yards. Two resulted in touchdowns in critical parts of the game.
If there was one knock on Fichtner that it was that has never called plays on an NFL level. That doesn’t seem to be an issue halfway through the season and especially against the Panthers.
Even though Roethlisberger will get most of the credit and rightfully so, Fichtner showed a lot with the plan he put together against the Panthers of taking some shots and then letting Roethlisberger do some read-and-react stuff.
Roethlisberger said: “Yeah, he’s been great, I think we’ve worked well together. There will be times when he will yell ‘You got it’ which means I’m calling one or he will call them. There is really good chemistry there we’ve obviously known each other and worked with one another a long time. The biggest thing I tell him is he is a very excitable person, so he gets really loud in the headset sometimes, so I have to tell him to dial it down a little bit; that’s just Randy loving and being passionate about the game.”
Rivera said: “Well, we gave up plays over the top, something we haven’t done in the last few weeks, that’s what happened. Again, you get a lead, things change.”
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What the defense showed: That their inside linebackers can cover if asked to. OK, both Jon Bostic and Williams are always asked to cover some, but it’s not something they want to do a lot even though both have shown that they can do it successfully.
Against the Panthers, Keith Butler’s game plan was very different than last week against the Ravens when they used their sub-package personnel more than 85 percent of the time. With the Panthers being the second-ranked running team in the league coming in, the Steelers knew they wanted to establish the run with their zone reads.
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To try to force the Steelers into a smaller lineup so they can run, they used a lot of three-wide-receiver sets. The Steelers usually counter with their nickel or, if it’s third down, with their quarters defense of six defensive backs and an athletic inside linebacker like L.J. Fort.
On Thursday, it was a lot of base and Williams and Bostic covering tight ends and backs. Even though a couple busted coverage resulted in touchdowns by Christian McCaffrey, the two defended the pass fairly well.
Sure, it may not be something you always want to go to, but it worked well enough against the Panthers.
Bostic said: “We cover pretty much every game, but whatever they call from the sidelines, we play. You have to stop Cam, but you have to stop the running back.”
Mike Hilton said: “They are a run-first football team even with three receivers on the field. It was a big week for those two guys, Bostic and Vince and they played well, and they showed. Even though they were in three wides, they were going to run the ball. That’s their M.O. — run the ball, run the ball and then beat you over the top.”
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Steelers’ winner: It’s pretty difficult to pick anybody except Roethlisberger. He was fantastic from the start and threw just three incompletions all game.
Roethlisberger completed his first eight passes and the offense put up 136 yards in the first nine plays — 15.1 yards per play. He continued his red-zone dominance going a perfect 4 of 4 and converted every third down except one. He scrambled for a big play and made some critical checks at the line early in the game that led to positive plays.
Roethlisberger distributed the ball around to 10 different receivers. This very well could’ve been the best game Roethlisberger has ever played.
Mind you, this came against a pretty stout defense in the Panthers.
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At 36, Roethlisberger has come up with a stinker or two at times, but his play is going to be what wins them games. It won them this game.
Roethlisberger said: “Well it (was) almost perfect. We had some incompletions. I don’t know what our numbers were on third down in the red zone. I don’t know those numbers, so it’s hard for me to speak specifically. When you score points that’s always a good thing. We did punt twice, we never want to punt.”
Jesse James said: “Ben was just on the money. We had a good game plan. We kept things basic. He just put the ball where it needed to be. Even the plays that weren’t to completion like the one with JuJu, he threw a great ball. You can really trust him when you go out there and really dominate the game.”
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Steelers’ loser: Really? I don’t think I can come up with one. This was about as a complete performance as you will get out of a professional football team.
OK, maybe Artie Burns’ pass interference call but that might be a stretch there. Chris Boswell made a 50-yarder and didn’t miss an extra point, and the special team’s coverage units didn’t allow anything.
Bostic said: “We still have a long way to go. There were some plays that we left out there. I know I left some plays out there, so we have to keep playing as a defense and keep getting better.”
Heyward said: “I might just be being a jerk but I always not happy with how we played. There were things we left out there.”
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Moment of the game: Smith-Schuster’s touchdown catch on the Steelers’ first offensive play of scrimmage. Sure, it was the first play, but there was none bigger since the Steelers’ defense was just shredded for 75 yards in nine plays.
The touchdown drive by the Panthers had the Steelers “pissed” as Heyward noted, but that quickly evaporated when Roethlisberger hooked up with Smith-Schuster for 75 yards.
Ben has thrown only one pass tonight…
This 75-yard touchdown to @TeamJuJu. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/8oaOVOm5uY
— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) November 9, 2018
It instantly re-energized the defense, who went on to be pretty dominant the rest of the way. But it did the same for the offense.
Funny thing about the play was that the throw was originally going to go to James Washington on the out cut but Roethlisberger saw James Bradberry jump Washington and allow Smith-Schuster to run free down the left sidelines.
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Smith-Schuster outran safety Eric Reid to the end zone for the score.
The play totally flipped the momentum to the Panthers back to the Steelers.
Tomlin said: “Well it was the first play of the game, so obviously there is going to be some gas when you score in one play, but we’ve seen that so many times. There is too much ball after that to think that is the defining moment. It’s not. It was a great moment, but whether it was positive or negative, the games are never defined by plays that occur that early.”
Roethlisberger said: “It looked like I kind of pumped faked but really, I was going to throw it. The safety that came down was jumping that, and that let JuJu Smith-Schuster go up that seam, so I tried to take as much air off it and put it on a line to get it to him as fast as I could. He just turned on the burners and out ran everybody.”
Rivera said: “Unfortunately, they double moved us on the first one, and because they double moved us, James jumped on the underneath, and the receiver from the inside broke to the sideline to the touchdown. Again, you just have to stay deep and stay in the lead position.”
Hilton said: “That first drive, I am pretty sure they had scripted plays. They drove it on us pretty well, I am not going to deny that. Once the offense came back with the big play, we knew it was time to go, and we locked it down defensively.”
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Play of the game: If Smith-Schuster’s touchdown was the moment of the game, Williams interception return for a touchdown a snap later was definitely the play of the game.
The Steelers came into the game focusing on stopping, and hitting Cam Newton. And that’s exactly what lead to Williams’ 17-yard interception return 13 seconds after Smith-Schuster scored.
With the Panthers taking over at their own 10-yard line, Carolina faked a stretch run to McCaffrey, and Newton rolled to the right looking for D.J. Moore in the flat. The issue was that the Panthers didn’t block Watt assuming that he was going to crash down the line to stop the run. But with Watt’s assignment, for the most part, to just go after Newton and take away one option, it left the Panthers’ quarterback out to dry even though he didn’t run the zone read.
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Watt blitzed and was in Newton’s face as delivered the pass. Instead of taking the sack, Newton flipped it over the middle where Williams intercepted it and returned it for the touchdown.
It was Williams first career touchdown, and it gave the Steelers a 7-point lead and erased any thoughts of that bad start to the game.
Heyward said: “For a short week, we prepared hard. We tried to take advantage of the time as much as possible. We tried to get pressure up the middle. We wanted to eliminate that rushing attack. We started back 0-0. After that, I think we really just dug our heels in, and we aren’t going to surrender points like this.”
Watt said: “I just got wide and was blitzing off the edge and tried to make a play on Cam. I couldn’t get him down before he threw the ball out, but I am glad we got the pick-six and happy we got it.”
Rivera said: “Cam got trapped in the end zone and was just trying to get rid of the ball. He had two guys in line and unfortunately, he threw it over the top of one of them, and it led to an interception.”
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Tomlin’s opening statement: “Really big performance against a really good team on a short week so there is a lot to be proud of, but we are probably not that good. You get games like that sometimes. The ball gets rolling downhill, we are appreciative of it. It was a great atmosphere tonight. Man, we’ll enjoy this long weekend and get ready to roll up our sleeves and fight again but great night tonight, great atmosphere, Steeler Nation was out. I like the contributions of a lot of people. We came into tonight with a mentality that we had to play everyone in a helmet, that’s just part of short week football, and I thought everyone came with that spirit and got contributions from a lot of people. The distribution of the football on offense is reflective of that.”
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Rivera’s opening statement: “The truth of the matter is that it’s one football game. We are 6-3 right now. So, we have seven more games to find out. Next week, we are going to get ready for Detroit, and that’s what I’m going to look at. At the end of the day guys, this shit happens, and I’m going to put it just like that. Okay, let’s just be honest about it. It happens. This is my 30th year in the NFL. I have seen games like this; I’ve been part of games like this, on both sides. At the end of the day, you continue to dwell on it and worry about it; it’s going to creep in. If you get over it, and you start preparing on your next game and focusing on your next game, you give yourself the chance to win the next game. That’s what we are going to do. There’s no magic pill. Pittsburgh is a very good football team that came out and did a great job against us. We made too many mistakes expect to beat a good football team. So, we’ll correct those at the end of the day.”
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Injuries: Conner was checked for a concussion during the third quarter but was cleared and returned to the game. However, Conner was taken to the locker room early in the fourth and was re-evaluated for a concussion.
Tomlin said: “James Conner is in the protocol, but I do not know to what extent. I am sure we’ll have more information the next time we come together. The rest are just bumps and bruises associated with play.”
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Kaboly’s take: It pretty much doesn’t get any better than this one for the Steelers. And it was definitely one that they needed — defensively that is.
The Steelers have had a fantastic defensive turnaround during their winning streak but really haven’t played much in the way of a good offense (other than maybe Atlanta). The Panthers provide defenses much better than the Steelers matchup nightmares with Newton and McCaffrey.
OK, maybe McCaffrey had his way with the Steelers with 138 total yards and three touchdowns, but Newton was not a factor at all. A lot of that credit has to go to Butler and the defensive staff.
They had a plan of hitting Newton on every occasion they could. Stopping Superman was No. 1 on the priority list, and they accomplished that in a way we, No. 1, never thought they could be by playing straight up and allowing their inside linebackers to cover and pressuring the hell out of a mobile quarterback like Newton.
Make no mistake about it, stopping Newton was the first goal.
“Everything runs through (Newton),” Hilton said. “That’s their guy, their go-to guy. McCaffery had a couple of runs that he broke but nothing really over the top so I think we played well.
“The plan was to hit him. He’s a big guy, so we were trying to get as many hits on him as possible. We could tell throughout the game that the hits were taking tolls on him. It really slowed the offense down.”
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The ability to trot out different defenses schemes based on their opponent’s strength was something that was unheard around here for a long time. Remember during the AFC title game a couple of years ago when Butler knew if he sent only three or four rushers at Tom Brady that he would pick them apart? And yet he did it because there were no other options.
Now they have schematic options that span from man-to-zone and from the 3-4 base to seven defensive backs. It’s has helped tremendously that Joe Haden is playing like a Pro Bowler and Coty Sensabaugh has quieted down the other cornerback position.
For this defense to accomplish what it did on Thursday against a top-tier team and the top offense is something that’s even more impressive than Roethlisberger’s 158.3 passer rating, JuJu’s touchdown pass, Conner running the ball and the offensive line dominating.
The offense is always going to be there. Thursday showed me that this defense is going only to get better.
(Top photo: Charles LeClaire/USA TODAY Sports)