Steelers vs. Browns Review

I keep thinking that I should post something about how awesome it is that we took the Browns to the woodshed and beat them like a red-headed rented step-mule. Something with a lot of exclamation points and words like clutch, key, dominant, suffocating, and impressive. But... I can't.

Two reasons:

1. The Browns looked worse than Michigan out there yesterday.
2. If you look at the stats and the game itself, we really didn't do all that great.

The first four drives for Cleveland went punt (for 15 yards - and ten of that came back because of 1 of 4 penalties), interception, punt, fumble.

When you look at it (and you look at the average starting field position the Steelers enjoyed early on), you may well have assumed that we had a 28-0 lead early in the first quarter. But, we had some issues in the red zone and the running game got off to a slow start, so we only jumped out to a 17-0 lead.

It was an ass-kicking, let their be no doubt. But, it could have and should have been a lot worse.

And, I'm not talking about the fact that Tomlin was gracious enough to put the second stringers in for most of the 4th quarter. I'm talking about the fact that we had a chance for a kill shot before the first quarter even ended and we didn't take it. Granted, I had no fear whatsoever that we were going to lose the game after leading by only 17 points at halftime, but a 28-0 shitstomping in the first quarter is the only way I can see the ending stats as something that warrants a lot of exclamation points.

We rushed for 206 yards. I realize that most of that came in the second half when we rushed 18 straight times... but, did it seem to anyone else that we were dominant up front and that you could safely say after the game that we "pushed the Browns around" or "man-handled" them for 206 yards? It didn't look like we man-handled anyone. We... really just rushed for 206 yards.

Fast Willie rushed for 109 yards. Really? He did!?!? When the announcers said, "And, Willie Parker is now over 100 yards, with 102," I remember being surprised, thinking that he only had 65 or 70 at that point.

Ben threw four touchdowns... but for only 159 yards. On 23 attempts. Completing 12.

I'm not saying we didn't kick holy-hellfire out of the Browns. We did. I'm not saying I'm not happy. I am. I'm not saying we should strike this victory from the record books and say that the Steelers suck big, fat, hairy balls and the Browns just had a bad day. Because that's not true and Goodell wouldn't let me strike anything from the record books.

I'm saying that we have a lot of teams on the schedule (almost all of them - we do play Cleveland again this year) where 159 passing yards and 206 rushing yards (on 42 attempts) just ain't gonna cut it.

I'm saying that it's highly unlikely that we'll be +4 in the turnover category and have 4 drives that begin on the opponent's side of the field in the first quarter again.

The bright side is that the defense looked especially sharp, the passing game showed flashes of brilliance, and we're a few timing issues away from having the running game truly explode (trust me on the running game - Willie was closer than you think to breaking about 4 or 5 additional big runs yesterday).

The other important thing to remember is that we have Allen Rossum returning punts and kick-offs now. He won't break any big returns, but he most definitely will make the right decisions at the right times. This includes him always catching and securing the ball, since that is always the right decision.

We've got another (presumably) easy game coming up in the soft part of our schedule. We need to keep this up.