The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Rusty Steelers beat Ravens to move to 11-0
PITTSBURGH » Mike Tomlin isn’t one for excuses. Even as COVID-19 wreaked havoc with his team’s schedule, pushing their matchup with Baltimore from Thanksgiving night to middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week in the middle of a pandemic, the longtime Steelers coach refused to reach for one.
So while the Steelers stayed perfect with a disjointed 19-14 win over the undermanned Ravens in the first NFL game on a Wednesday in eight years, their play was anything but. And Tomlin knows it.
“To be bluntly honest, I’m really disappointed in our performance tonight,” he said after Pittsburgh improved to 11-0. “We did enough to win tonight, that’s all.”
Calling it “junior varsity”-level play, Tomlin seethed in the aftermath, a testament to both how high the bar is set and just how far the Steelers came from clearing it.
Tomlin was asked about an offense that managed just one touchdown in four trips to the
red zone.
The missed opportunities allowed the Ravens (6-5) to hang around until the final minutes. Tomlin didn’t offer analysis as much as rage.
“Us sucking,” he said, declining to get into specifics.
There really was no need to.
T he Steelers turned it over twice, once on a fourth-down heave into the end zone by Ben Roethlisberger, the other a fumbled punt by Ray-Ray McLoud that set up a 1-yard touchdown plunge by Gus Edwards.
T hey let Ba lt imore backup quarterback Robert Griffin III briefly turn back the clock to his 2012 Rookie of the Year season and looked at times like a team in the middle of ho
hum midweek practice — which, to be fair, Wednesdays typically are — rather than a showdown with its longtime rivals.
“Obviously we won, but it sure doesn’t feel like it,” said Roethlisberger, whose 1-yard strike to JuJu SmithSchuster early in the fourth quarter gave the Steelers a 12-point lead they flirted with squandering. “Just not good football. It starts with me. It’s a mental game, it’s been a challenging and draining week but at the end of the day we need to step on the field and play good f ootball when it ’s time.”
Pittsburgh didn’t for long stretches, though some of the credit goes to a spirited effort from the Ravens. Running onto Heinz Field missing more than a dozen players on the reserve/COVID-19 list, including reigning NFL MVP Lamar Jackson and running backs Mark Ingram and J.K. Dob
bins, Baltimore didn’t exactly roll over.
While Griffin completed just 7 of 12 passes for 33 yards and a first-quarter Pick-6 by Joe Haden that gave the Steelers an early lead, Griffin ran for a gamehigh 68 yards before leaving in the fourth quarter with a left hamstring injury. Trace McSorley, one of 11 players promoted from the practice squad, came on and connected with Marquise Brown for a 70-yard touchdown with 2:58 to go. But the Steelers were able to drain the clock behind a third-down grab by James Washington, eliminating the Ravens from repeating as AFC North champions.
“The way the game went, obviously we wanted to win,” Griffin said. “We felt like we had a chance to come in here and win, shock the world and do something special. I put it on myself. I feel like if I didn’t pull my hamstring in the second
quarter we would have won. It was really emotional trying to fight through that. I feel like I let my guys down.”
A COVID-19 outbreak in Baltimore forced the NFL to push the game back three times: first from Thanksgiving to Sunday, then from Sunday to Tuesday, and eventually from Tuesday to Wednesday. The teams kicked off in the afternoon to not interfere with NBC’s annual Christmas special at Rockefeller Center.
Good idea. The fewer eyeballs on this one the better.
While NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called it “a great game,” the product on the field suggested otherwise.
The Ravens couldn’t pass. Pittsburgh’s receivers couldn’t catch. And a contest that looked like a mismatch — the Steelers went off as 10 ½-point favorites, a rarity in a rivalry that is one of the NFL’s best — was instead a festival of blah.