What a difference a year makes.

No seriously – if this was last year, I believe the Steelers lose yesterday’s game.

Why?

The defense would not have been able to hold the lead. Instead of having two passes broken up (one by Artie Burns and one by Ross Cockrell) one of those (or maybe both) would have converted, and the Bengals would have potentially driven down the field and scored the winning TD.

But not this year.

This year is different.

This year we have a better secondary, and it is showing, and paying dividends.

This year, the Steelers are simply a better team.

And to top it off – we have a Wizard.

Let’s get to the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of yesterday’s game.

The Good

Ben Roethlisberger

Ben’s final stat line was 21 of 36 for 286 yards, 1 TD and no INTs. His passer rating was 93.1. That’s good Ben. It’s not great Ben, but it’s the kind of Ben that wins more often than not. He hit 7 different receivers, made good decisions, and played the kind of game that he often plays in Ohio. At this point, it’s almost not fair to call Cleveland and Cincinnati road games, because Ben plays like he’s at home there.

The Bengals were taking away the outside, and yet even with that Ben hit AB on a couple of routes that were important.

And let’s not forget, his day would have been even better if not for some unfortunate miscues. Ben threw an absolutely beautiful pass to AB for a touchdown, but it wasn’t a touchdown because of what “technically” was a chop block by Le’Veon Bell. There were points in that game where I think the refs would have called something if we breathed hard on someone, but I’ll rant about that later.

The point is, Ben played an above average game, and it could have, and should have been better. As Coach Tomlin said after the game, once the Steelers stopped “whoopin’ our own butts”, things went a lot better.

Lawrence Timmons

I feel like I’ve been giving Law Dawg the short shift this year. I went back, and realized, this guy is playing at a Pro-Bowl level, and I haven’t called him out once, other than some off handed references. He’s not so quietly have a great season.

He literally blew up Jeremy Hill not once, not twice, but twice, preventing Hill from getting into the end zone. He was immovable.

And his pick of Dalton was another example of how great he’s playing. The guy is a beast! I mean, he had mad ups to get that ball. Dalton had to be saying “WTF!” (right, Terry?).

It’s going to be a crime if Lawrence Timmons doesn’t make the Pro-Bowl this year. He’s playing at that level.

Artie, Ross, Sean and Mike

• Artie Burns – 3 Tackles, 2 passes defensed.
• Ross Cockrell – 3 Tackles, 1 pass defensed.
• Sean Davis – 6 Tackles
• Mike Mitchell – 6 Tackles

Do I need to say more? Sean Davis is turning into an absolute stud at safety, and Artie Burns isn’t far behind! Ross Cockrell is making Rex Ryan look more foolish than Rex Ryan does all by himself. What a steal.

And Mike Mitchell is the “Punisher”.

I love our secondary.

Deebo

Two games in a row, James Harrison (or as I call him, Uncle James – it’s hard to explain) has played every single defensive snap. Not only did he play every single defensive snap Sunday, he led the team in tackles with 9 (4 solo, 5 assist and 1 TFL).

He was out making tackles in coverage. He was rushing the passer. He was everywhere.

Nation – when Stephon Tuitt went down, and Ricardo Mathews got dinged, he played Defensive End.

James Harrison is awesome. We bow to his awesomeness. He’s so awesome, awesome people say “Damn, that dude is friggin’ awesome!”

The Wizard of Boz

How can you not love Chris Boswell. The kid, as Trent says in the movie Swingers “is so money, and he don’t even know it!” The Wizard of Boz accounted for 18 points, and saved another 4 (at least). He hit from 45, 40, 30 and 3 times from 49. That’s 18 points all on the wizardly foot of Chris Boswell.

And that’s not all!

After one of those 49 yard FG’s, Boswell kicks off and Bengals returner Alex Erickson takes the ball at the 2, breaks left, and is gone.

Well almost.

Boswell takes a nearly perfect angle and gets just enough of Erickson’s right leg to save a touchdown, and the Bengals drive stalls, and they have to settle for a field goal.
Remember the final score? 24-20. Guess what the score is if that’s a TD and not a FG?

What’s the difference between 7 and 3? 4.

It was like Boswell reached out his wizards wand and shouted “Tackleosio” (Hey, sue me, I don’t know spell names, sheesh).

Chris Boswell deserved the game ball he got yesterday. He won that game for the Steelers.

The Bad

Injuries

Stephon Tuitt left the game early in the 1^st quarter with what Coach Tomlin called “a knee”. He’ll be evaluated. It’s hard to overstate what that loss meant to the Steelers Sunday, and what it will mean going forward.

They had to figure out how to play without Tuitt, and parts of their game never really recovered from him being out.

Don’t get me wrong – the defense played lights out in the second half. They held the Bengals scoreless, and did something that we haven’t seen in a few seasons – they held the opposing team when it counted.

At the same time, the first few series with Tuitt out, the Bengals were able to run the ball pretty effectively, and the pass rush was not nearly as dominate as it has been in past games (and this against a Bengals team that has been handing out sacks at a pretty steady pace).

Ricardo Mathews also was in and out with some kind of ankle injury, and he will also be evaluated.

If we lose one or both of those guys for any extended period, that makes us pretty thin on the D-line.

We can win without them, but it really won’t be ideal to have to face the Ravens next week without Tuitt.

Red Zone Efficiency

The redzone was not our friend yesterday.

1-5, which is 20%, and not very good. Thankfully the Wizard made sure we never walked away without points, but if you convert on just 2 more of those red-zone visits, this game isn’t even close.

We know that the red-zone has been a problem for the Steelers at various times, and at least 2 of those failures were our own fault (as I mentioned, Ben did hit AB for a TD that got nullified by a penalty, and we ended up settling for 3). Ed Bouchette was having quite the time tweeting yesterday about every visit to the red zone being “a chance for another Boswell field goal.”

Hopefully we will improve on this, and to be fair we have been better in the red-zone this year than we have in recent years. But it was a sore spot yesterday.

Penalties

104 penalty yards.

In case you didn’t notice, that’s a lot.

7 penalties for 104 yards.

Those penalties were often directly responsible for points on the Bengals side (Can you say pass interference?) and also drive killers or at least drive “let’s make it way more difficult”ers.

And some of them, well, some of them were just really bad calls.

To be fair, the Bengals did their own little mini-implosion in the second half and ended up with 8 penalties for 86 yards…and it should have been much worse because of the almost innumerable non-calls that were never made.

Which brings me to…

The Ugly

Do I even have to say it? The Refs, OMG the Refs!

Dre Kirkpatrick tweeted yesterday that “the officials let the Steelers do whatever they wanted to do, and we couldn’t defend ourselves.”

What reality does Dre Kirkpatrick live in, because it’s clearly, well, wrong?

I suppose the officials were “just letting” the Steelers jerseys jump into the Bengals defender’s hands as they were trying to get separation? And how rude of them to finally notice it and call holding!

Look, the refs have been a yinzing point for me all year.

They stink. All of them stink.

I wasn’t always this way. Really – I wasn’t. My grandfather was a ref, and I understand that it’s a tough job, and I honestly used to believe they got more right than they did wrong. And nobody’s perfect.

But these guys are getting way more wrong than right now.

There were 3 – THREE! – clear facemask penalties that happened directly in front of the men in stripes, and they just rolled their eyes and held those flags. It took them three whole quarters before they actually decided they better call some of the holding penalties that the Bengals secondary was continually perpetrating on Steelers receivers.

Don’t get me started on how handsy the Bengals O-line was. James Harrison was tackled at least twice, and yet no yellow hankies were anywhere to be seen.

They call Le’veon for a chop block, when it’s about as fringe as you can get, and they don’t call obviously blatant infractions. On the two-point conversion, the Bengals defender clearly is face guarding AB right in front of the ref, but nope…not calling that. Apparently if it’s obvious, they just figure it couldn’t have happened. I could go on for hours, but my editor gets annoyed when I type too many words.

They stink.

Conclusion

The Bengals are done. They will have a losing record. They won’t be in the playoffs. And that fact makes me smile.

Time to look ahead, because the entire season comes down to next Sunday.

Christmas Day – Ravens vs. Steelers in Heinz Field.

Win that game, and we win the North. Lose that game (shudder) and we probably are out of the playoffs.

It’s been this way for 5 weeks, and it will remain true the rest of the way – win and we move on. Lose and we are done. Every game is must win. Every game is a playoff game. Time to buckle up the chin straps Nation!

Until next time.