its certainly much easier for me to be timely with my steelers post when they win! so here i am tonight, a few hours after the steelers (barely) beat the chargers, by a cat's whisker, as bill hillgrove said. it should have been more like a cat's paw because the touchdown should have counted at the end if the referrees weren't dumb as stumps. but it didn't. so the final score was 11-10. the first nfl game ever to end with that final score.
reflections?
ben was fantastic for a change. he seemed more calm and poised, and certainly more accurate. he got sacked a few times, but handled adversity really well and delivered the ball with authority and accuracy. he threw no interceptions, and could have had even better stats than he did if nate washington doesn't drop a couple of passes and stretches the ball out over the goal line for a touchdown. great game for ben.
my favorite steeler, the old man hines ward came up big today with 115 receiving yards. yes he got called for holding, but they all hold all the time, it seems, and it just usually doesn't get called with such fervor as it did today. which leads me to the next point...
penalties. holy yellow flags, batman. 13 steeler penalties? are you joking? to only 2 charger penalties? tomlin didn't really comment about it after the game but you could tell he was frustrated by it. some of them were legitimate penalties (although the ike taylor pass interference call was bogus), but surely we weren't the only team on the field who was holding, were we? really, refs? really?
defense. man is our defense good. james harrison was beastly today. fighting through holds, forcing fumbles, dropping into coverage, making the interception, leaping over would-be tacklers. he is just an amazing specimen of a football player. woodley was clearly a little gimpy and not 100%, but the injured secondary sure played well and troy had a huge game, as well, despite missing a couple of tackles. the interception that you see above was simply freakish. inhuman. beautiful.
overall, i'm pleased with this because it is a win. there is still alot of improving to do, in my opinion, like turning dominant performances into dominant score differentials, but the win coupled with the ravens loss has us back in the driver's seat as we enter this (very) short week before facing the bungles in pittsburgh on thursday night.
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