I try to not be one for revisionist history.
When your team loses as bad as the Pittsburgh Steelers did in Buffalo on Monday, it’s easy to claim you never believed.
It’s a sort of comfort. A kind of coping mechanism to protect yourself from the embarrassing truth that we all sat down and subjected ourselves to for three and a half hours.
But I did really think they had a chance at this game.
On Saturday, I wrote about what things were like two years ago. In the 2021 season, when the Steelers made the playoffs in Big Ben’s final year, it felt merely symbolic. It felt like the Steelers were slowly being marched to their own death, with a game against the Chiefs surely to deliver the final punch.
I had no real belief that the Steelers stood a fighting chance in Kansas City, and I wasn’t alone. Heck, even the quarterback didn’t really believe.
But this year, things were different. You could just feel it in the fan base. For better or worse, this was a team and a fan base that did believe they had a real chance in Orchard Park.
With Mason Rudolph 3-0 as the starter and a whole new mindset after falling to 7-7 on the year, the Steelers were playing with complete house money when they stumbled into the 7-seed in the AFC, securing a ticket to the playoffs where Anything Can Happen™.
So, it seems rather fitting that once the Steelers ran into a team called the Bills, it all came crashing down.
House money runs out eventually, and Josh Allen made sure of it as he led Buffalo to a 31-17 win.
Down 21-0 at one point, a blocked field goal did help turn some momentum the Steelers way, but truly this game was never in doubt. No matter how hard they tried to sell it, it was never not going to be a Bills win.
Credit to Allen, who went 21/30 for 203 yards and 3 touchdowns, and the rest of the Bills offense. They were phenomenal, like they usually are, and routinely lit up Pittsburgh’s depleted defense.
On the other end, Buffalo’s defense largely kept Pittsburgh in check. Mason Rudolph got a lot better as the game went on, but it wasn’t enough to ultimately swing things his way.
The turnover margin was the key in this game. Pittsburgh, a team that relies so much on winning the turnover battle to win the game, lost it today, and ultimately lost the game with it.
Rudolph’s pick in the endzone, and a fumble by George Pickens directly resulted in 14 points for the Bills. That interception especially was a killer, taking a likely 7 points off the board for the Steelers and handing it to the Bills instead.
I will give the Steelers credit for at least making it a game. When they were down 21-0, I had flashbacks of the Kansas City game from two years ago.
With that blocked field goal, however, things did change, and it was a driving force in any kind of hope the Steelers had later in the game.
But, like I said before, this game was never truly in doubt. When the Bills needed it most, Josh Allen stepped up and delivered. As did the rest of the team.
This might be a little surprising, but I actually don’t have a ton of thoughts on this game, not right now at least. Those will probably come later in the week.
This isn’t a terrible Steelers team; they just ran into a really good Bills team. Like Tony Romo said on the broadcast, it’s a 2-seed playing a 7-seed for a reason.
But they do need a lot of work still. This team is nowhere near a Super Bowl, and I have a bad feeling it will be a while until they are.
More thoughts down below:
-Bills punter Sam Martin injured his hamstring during the blocked field goal attempt on the run down. But even with an injury, he STILL outperformed Pressley Harvin in the punting game. Inexcusable.
-Mike Tomlin is now the longest tenured head coach in the NFL, with Bill Belichick leaving his post in New England. Mike Tomlin also holds the longest active playoff win drought amongst all head coaches, at seven years. In other words, no coach has survived that long without a single playoff win. Something to think about.
-I thought George Pickens had every right to be angry at the no pass interference call late in the game, because it was indeed pass interference. But I will not entertain any argument that the no-call played any role in the final outcome.
-I will say this, however, I think the personal foul call during that Josh Allen run was bogus. Allen had already faked sliding before; a defender cannot commit and then pump the brakes like that, it’s physically impossible. But again, not the reason they lost.
-Mason Rudolph was the Rudolph that we all remembered from 2019 early on in this game. Credit to him for the turnaround, but this was the first game of his this year I would say I was unimpressed by his body of work. Shame it came in the game that mattered the most.
-The Steelers were down 21-0 at one point, another game in which Tomlin’s Steelers weren’t ready to play. It’s become a disturbing pattern in the postseason, where the Steelers have lost four straight.
-This might be a bold claim, but even if TJ Watt was playing, I don’t think the Steelers would have won that game.
-Odd stat of the game: Despite high-powered wide receivers on both sides of the field, both team’s leading receiving yards player was a tight end. Pittsburgh’s Pat Freiermuth had 76, Buffalo’s Dalton Kincaid had 59.
Closer: And so with that, Steelers Reviews comes to an unceremonious end. I started this series to try and do something I normally don’t do here on Fifth Ave. I tried to capture my raw and honest emotions and opinions to the game I had just watched.
Through 19 weeks and 18 games, as soon as a Steelers game was over, I fired up my laptop and began writing. It wasn’t always easy, and it certainly wasn’t always fun. I debated stopping several times in the season, because I wasn’t sure if this kind of style was worthy of being put up on the site.
It didn’t capture any real sense of writing or journalism to me, just more so me angrily slamming computer keys as words flowed out of me. Nevertheless, I opted to proceed, mainly because stopping halfway through would have really bothered me. The thought of it randomly stopping at a certain week drove me too crazy to ever actually stop it.
To those of you who read these every week, I humbly thank you with everything I have. Even if this is your first one, I thank you as well. This is the most consistent thing I have done as a writer on Fifth Ave, so I hope even one of the Steelers Reviews was at least mildly interesting to you.
As for next year, I think I will explore other options for postgame commentary. I don’t really know what that looks like yet, but thanks to the Steelers, I have tons of time to figure that out.
Till next season, my friends.
(Featured photo by Timothy T Ludwig/Getty Images)
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