It wasn't going to be pretty
It was what Brad used to call an "ugly" win. One of those wins that happened because the team fought and scratched and pummeled for it. It was what the Steelers did this past Sunday. After handing it to the Patriots 34-20 and then turning around and rolling over the Eagles in high fashion 27-3 the Steelers kept their tempo up and beat the Browns last week 24-10. And then yesterday, they played the Bengals in Cincinnati and it was definitely a not-so-pretty win. Ben Roethlisberger, by the time it was all said and done, had been sacked 7 times. But he did complete 15 of 21 passes for 138 yards and a touchdown. Sports critics are saying that he finally played like a rookie. I completely disagree. They expect Ben, after playing like he has, to be perfect. Well, guess what guys, he's not perfect. Like any human, Ben has his own performance capabilities which is often affected by what the opposing team can do on defense. He didn't play like a rookie, at least not in my opinion. He played like a quarterback against a Cincinnati team that was well-coached and seemed to have found a bit of a crack in the Pittsburgh offensive line. In the first half, Pittsburgh linebacker James Farrior made a play that changed the entire momentum of the game. He intercepted a pass and returned it 14 yards for a Steelers touchdown. During the second half the Pittsburgh defense brought the house to Cincinnati quarterback Carson Palmer. He was forced to get rid of the ball on more than one account. One of them clinched the win for the Steelers. With 2:38 left on the game clock and the ball on the Cincinnati 2, the Pittsburgh defense blitzed and Palmer had nowhere to go, so he backpedaled. Right into his own endzone. He was brought down and then called for intentional grounding. The safety gave the Steelers 2 points and a score of 19-14 with just over 2 minutes to go. Out come Ben and his offense in the victory formation. Another win for the Steelers. During the course of the game Jerome Bettis passed Tony Dorsett and became the 5th all time leading rusher in NFL history. With Duce Staley still out with a hamstring injury (which is making me sad, by the way, I miss watching Duce play) Bettis has gotten the starting position and while he killed his yards:TDs ratio, he's definitely shown that he is still the Bus. Wide receiver Plaxico Burress went out in the first half with a hamstring injury. Keep your fingers crossed. This could change the Steelers' throwing game big time. It would, at the very least, probably take some time for the offense to get used to not having Plax around. A final note on the Steelers-Bengals game. What the Bengals managed to show yesterday, though, is that there appears to be a way through the Steelers' offensive line that has been, thus far, doing a phenomenal job of giving Big Ben the space and time he needs to completely plays. Ben was sacked seven times. Compare that to 9 total sacks in Ben's last 7 games combined. Either the Bengals are doing something right or the Steelers were having a little bit of an off day. Maybe both. I'm going to be interested to see whether something like this happens again. *A couple of asides * As a pretty avid sports fan (largely college basketball and now pro and college football) I've seen what people refer to as a "hot streak" or a "hot hand". I'm not sure I buy all that. I'll give writers and fan a little bit of leeway on the hot streak concept. If a team consistently plays well, with a few bumps here and there, a hot streak is probably legit. Take, for example, the New England Patriots. They are a very solid football team. They always play well. They definitely had a streak going there for awhile. But as a general rule regression towards the mean always takes place. People will regress towards their natural average performance rate. This means that to get to an average level of performance for that person (for example, Michael Jordan's free throw percentage average is ALWAYS going to be better than mine) there have to be some ups and downs along the way. Over time, as you accumulate a record of performance you'll see that it averages itself out. Why bother with this? Big Ben. I have no doubt, after watching him rally in the 2nd half of yesterday's game, that he is definitely an above average quarterback. He fights and doesn't take the sack easily. However, he, too, has a performance mean. He didn't play like a rookie yesterday -- he just played like Ben. But then again, what do I know? * We went to "Lunch out" with the church and arrived back at JJ's to find that his Tivo apparently has an override system. If the game shows on Sunday Ticket and on local network television and you set the Tivo to record both, NFL Sunday Ticket overrides network in terms of recording priority. The problem is ... if the game is being broadcast locally, it doesn't appear on NFL Sunday Ticket. I have to say that I'm thoroughly relieved that we had seen good chunks of the first half while we were at lunch out. Otherwise, this girl would have been running for dear life. But we did get to see the second half and even though I really was falling asleep, I couldn't fall asleep. Why? Because the game was so crazy close the whole way. Next week, Steelers-Redskins.