JAGS LEAVE STEELERS OUT IN COLD
Coughlin’s team KO’s Pittsburgh
PITTSBURGH — Jaguars players were well aware, motivated and even amused by the disrespect the Steelers paid them in the lead-up to Sunday’s AFC Divisional matchup here, starting with Mike Mitchell’s comments during the week about playing the Patriots again and culminating in Le’Veon Bell’s ill-advised tweet late Saturday night after the Pats defeated the Titans.
“I love round 2’s...we’ll have two round 2’s in back to back weeks…,” Bell wrote, assuming the Steelers would get revenge for a regular-season loss to Jacksonville Sunday and advance to Foxborough.
Those guarantees went unfulfilled. Outplayed and out-coached throughout, Jacksonville came out with a wild 45-42 victory to silence the Steelers and their fans, and the Jags will play New England next week in the AFC Championship Game thanks to Leonard Fournette’s three touchdowns and huge fourth-quarter plays by Blake Bortles.
Jacksonville, whose front office features local castoffs Tom Coughlin and John Idzik, also came to Heinz Field in Week 5 and won 30-9.
“It was like they had dementia, amnesia, Alzheimers or something,” Myles Jack said. “I don’t know if they just forgot and just thought that didn’t happen, but it happened, and it happened again.”
The Jaguars reveled in a victory in which they jumped out to a 21-0 lead 3:29 into the second quarter. Telvin Smith, who returned a Ben Roethlisberger fumble for a 50-yard touchdown to put the Jags up 28-7 late in the second, was screaming around the locker room afterward. It was his turn to talk trash back at Mitchell. “Another bullet we just put in the chamber,” Smith said of Mitchell’s comments. “All that talking, it was great for the week. On Sunday you’ve got to play, and you see what he came out and did today. Great game.”
Twice on fourth-and-1 the Steelers failed to convert, not using a quarterback sneak either time despite Roethlisberger being 18-for-19 in his career on sneak attempts. The second one came in the fourth quarter at the Jacksonville 39-yard line when Pittsburgh was down seven, an incomplete pass to JuJu Smith-Schuster.
Mike Tomlin made another head-scratching decision with 2:18 left in the game when Pittsburgh went for an onside kick after cutting the deficit to 42-35 despite possessing two timeouts with the two-minute warning ahead. The onside kick failed and Josh Lambo kicked a 45-yard field goal with 1:45 left. Pittsburgh added an inconsequential score with one second remaining.
Tomlin had no confidence his defense could stop the roaring Jaguars, who rushed for 164 yards, 109 of which came from Fournette while he played through an ankle problem.
“We wanted to get the ball back, you know?” Tomlin said. “We hadn’t stopped them convincingly enough to take any other approach in my opinion, and it was my decision.”
Roethlisberger threw for 469 yards and five touchdowns against the vaunted Jaguars defense, which played more conservatively in the second half. A 43yard score to Antonio Brown, playing through a calf injury, cut Jacksonville’s lead to 35-28.
But Bortles came through with a clutch touchdown pass to ex-Jet Tommy Bohanon with 4:19 remaining.
Bell held up his end of the bargain with 155 total yards and two touchdowns, but it was his tweet that everyone was talking about afterward — and Sunday morning as the Jaguars had their team breakfast.
“When someone says something like that, it hits the nerve of my competitive spirit,” Calais Campbell said.
Twitter antics continued after the game. The official Jaguars account quoted a tweet with Mitchell’s quote from during the week about how the Steelers can play the Patriots “in hell, we can play them in Haiti, we can play them in New England. … We’re gonna win.” The Jaguars’ savage response: “You can play them on @EAMaddenNFL all offseason.” Jalen Ramsey referred to Mitchell as “Mike what’shis-name,” and regarding all the trash talk by the Steelers he said, “We don’t give a f--k. We really don’t care.” They have no reason to anymore. They’re the ones a win away from the Super Bowl.