THE STREAK. IS. OVER.

After 58 straight games of football for the Pittsburgh Steelers without cracking 400+ yards on offense, they finally did it yesterday against the Bengals in Cincinnati.

It was Pittsburgh’s first game since firing offensive coordinator Matt Canada, and promoting Eddie Faulkner to the role of OC and Mike Sullivan to the job of calling plays in-game.

As if Canada’s work in the NFL wasn’t bad enough, it’s a damning stat to see that the Steelers, in their first game without him, broke a streak that hung over his entire reign as OC.

The streak actually predated Canada as the OC. The Steelers hadn’t had 400+ yards on offense since Week 2 in the 2020 NFL season, where they reached 410 in a win over the Denver Broncos.

But Canada was with the Steelers organization in 2020, as the quarterbacks coach in that year.

So in actuality, the streak was here for ALL but ONE of Canada’s games working for the organization. And as soon as he is gone, so is the streak.

But for all the talk about those 58 games, when was the last time the Steelers surpassed 421 yards, which was their total yesterday?

For that answer, you’d have to go back all the way to the 2018 campaign, when in Week 16 the Steelers entered a must-win game against the powerhouse New Orleans Saints.

So I thought it would be fun to go back and re-live that game.

For reference, no one who played a single snap for that Steelers offense in 2018 is still a member of the team.

It’s the day before Christmas Eve, 2018. Quarterback Ben Roethlisbeger led an 8-5-1 Steelers team into the Superdome against the 12-2 Saints. Pittsburgh was playing for their playoff lives, while New Orleans was looking to lock up the top seed in the NFC.

The Steelers opened the scoring with a field goal on their second drive, which began thanks to a Sean Davis interception. A Chris Boswell kick was no guarantee back in 2018, but he drilled it there to go up 3-0.

The Saints responded, aided heavily by a bogus pass interference penalty on Pittsburgh’s Joe Haden, to take the lead at 7-3.

Boswell would tack on another field goal, but while the Steelers were notching field goals, the Saints were scoring touchdowns. Alvin Kamara finished off another Saints TD drive that was also aided by a pass interference penalty, this time on Morgan Burnett.

Towards the end of the half, Ben gets things cooking, and gets the Steelers in the endzone with a touchdown and successful two point conversion. (You guessed it, there was a DPI on this drive too).

However, left with 40 seconds left before halftime, Saints QB Drew Brees is able to march New Orleans into field goal range, where Will Lutz gives his team the lead at 17-14. And the Saints continued that in the third quarter, getting back into the endzone to take a commanding 24-14 lead.

But despite their defensive woes, the Steelers were far from out of this game. Ben goes wide receiver by committee on this drive to get it to a 24-21 score, and then after the defense forces a quick punt by the Saints, Ben goes AB, JuJu, AB for the score and the lead at 28-24.

The fourth quarter was high stakes, and in the hopes to try and catch New Orleans off guard, the Steelers run a fake punt on 4th and 5.

Yes, my friends, this was the infamous fake punt game. Roosevelt Nix, who was tasked with getting those 5 yards on the fake, was tackled short of the line to gain, but celebrated as if he had reached it.

Fun fact: if you type in Roosevelt Nix into YouTube’s search bar, “Roosevelt Nix fake punt” and “Roosevelt Nix celebration” are among the top results.

Maybe he truly believed he got the first down, but in any case, he did not.

The Saints get a gift with the ball at midfield needing a touchdown to take the lead. Brees and the Saints do a masterful job of killing clock while moving the ball, but to Mike Tomlin’s credit, he uses his timeouts wisely to keep as much time as possible for Pittsburgh.

In the end, Brees connects with Michael Thomas to get the Saints in the endzone and re-take the lead at 31-28, but they leave 1:28 left on the clock for the Steelers to come back and rally once again.

After a false start and three straight incompletions, Antonio Brown makes one of the best catches you will ever see on a 4th and 15 to keep the Steelers alive.

The Steelers begin to march and get close to field goal range, but on a slant route that goes to JuJu Smith-Schuster, New Orleans’ Sheldon Rankins forces a fumble and it gets recovered by the Saints.

The Steelers would lose a heartbreaker, and even though they won their final game, the standings didn’t shake their way, and at 9-6-1, found themselves out of the playoffs.

No one knew it at the time, but this was Antonio Brown’s last ever game as a Steeler. In his outgoing performance, he caught 14 passes on 19 targets for 185 yards and 2 touchdowns.

During practice the next week, a blowup between him and Ben would result in Brown skipping practice all week, then showing up Sunday still expecting to play in the season finale.

Tomlin had publicly said that Brown’s absence was due to injury, but in the end, he decided to bench Brown for his behavior. Brown left the game at halftime, and soon after would publicly request a trade, forcing his way out of Pittsburgh.

JuJu’s efforts are overshadowed by the game-ending fumble, but he played great up until then, catching 11 passes on 15 targets for 115 yards.

In the running game, Jaylen Samuels was in for an injured James Conner. Samuels was one week removed from his monster game against the New England Patriots, but he could not replicate that against the Saints, rushing for 53 yards on 12 carries.

Ben finished his day with 33/50 passes completed for 380 yards and 3 touchdowns.

His counterpart in Drew Brees finished at 27/39 for 326 yards and 1 touchdown.

As for the defense, the aforementioned Sean Davis had the only Steelers interception in the game. TJ Watt and Stephon Tuitt both got to Brees for 2 sacks on the day.

On the New Orleans side, the Saints got to Ben 3 times, but were held without a pick.

Despite the disappointing result, looking back it is one of the most entertaining games the Steelers have played in years. Two dominant offenses going head to head, and if JuJu doesn’t have the ball popped free at the end, that game probably goes to overtime.

And if it goes to overtime, who knows what happens next. The alternate history for that is something to explore another day perhaps.

The Steelers gained 429 total yards in that game, a mere 8 more than they did yesterday vs the Bengals.

If you want to watch the full highlights of that electric game, you can find them here.

(Featured photo by Butch Dill/AP)