Alright, let’s get the lie out of the way early. There will not be five thoughts in this edition.

At least, not in the traditional, numbered format. There will be many thoughts, probably even more than five. But to be perfectly candid, it would drive me insane to have this be titled differently than every other game review, so I’m still labeling it the same.

That insanity would come in second place, however, forced to take runner-up status to watching the most obvious trap game I have ever seen unfold right before my eyes (well, kind of. There was a lot of snow).

An 8-2 Steelers team walked into, ironically, the one place that truly gives them horrors: Cleveland. For years, decades even, the Browns have been portrayed as the little brother to the Steelers. The helpless, flailing, easy-to-beat-up little kid that the Steelers bullied mercilessly dozens of times.

But eventually, that little brother grows up. He gets to the point where he can fight back, where he can defend himself, and where he can hold his own against the arrogant older brother.

We saw that happen in 2020, when the Browns shocked the football world, toppling the Steelers in the Wild Card game and producing the greatest photo in Browns football history, the one with their old bully, Ben Roethlisberger, in tears on the bench.

For the last few years, no matter the circumstances, the Browns have held their own. They are no longer the annoying little push-over. And that’s something the Steelers failed to understand last night, when they allowed the 2-8 Browns to beat them.

AFC North football is tough. It’s ugly. It’s nasty. It is a dogfight for every single yard, and no game should ever be taken lightly or for granted. Somebody should let the Steelers know that.

There was an eerie feeling in the town all day. This metaphorical cloud hovered over the black and yellow in this town, as fans looked to this game with far more anxiety than they did excitement. Rarely, if ever, should an 8-2 team have so much worry as they traveled to face a 2-8 team.

This is a very unfortunate part of Mike Tomlin’s Steelers.

Look, I have to preface that I think Tomlin is a good football coach. A great football coach, even. For some reason, people don’t seem to think you can believe Tomlin is a great coach and also completely, utterly, bitterly loathe this very obvious flaw of his.

Poor timeout management. Horrid clock management. And yet another game where his team showed up unprepared against an inferior opponent who leaped all over them.

Talking heads love to discredit the Steelers all the time. Like clockwork, even after the Steelers took down the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday 18-16, there was still chatter about this team not truly being a Super Bowl contender.

We here in Pittsburgh can disagree with that assessment, but games like this are always and forever prime fuel to the fire for the anti-Steelers argument.

I don’t know when it ends. Truly, I don’t. And the worst part about all of this was just how predictable this loss was.

A very good majority, at least of the fans I saw, had a bad feeling about this game. We knew what was coming. We were dreading this game. And we had every reason to.

The usual Tomlin antics in trap losses like this were at play, and the final few minutes of the game were especially bad. While his team was up 19-18 and had the ball, he took out Russell Wilson in favor of Justin Fields, and had him throw a deep ball that had a little-to-no chance of completion.

Before this game, I advocated for using Justin Fields in as many packages as made sense. But Fields needed to be deployed in the red zone, or in areas where a running quarterback gave the Steelers a serious advantage. Remarkably, the one time and one method to not use Fields was in that play: on your own side of the 50 and having him throw his own version of a moon ball.

The incomplete pass stopped the clock at 3:29 and forced the Steelers to punt. Corliss Waitman then suffered his worst punt of the season, booting it a sad 15 yards to the sideline.

Then, in the final two minutes, Tomlin called a timeout (his second) ahead of a third down play. This was his big move, trying to get his defense in the perfect position and declaring that this was THE play of the game.

The Browns convert.

The Steelers were still in the prevent mode after that, rather than the more affordable option of letting the Browns score and giving Wilson and the offense ample time to try and mount a game-winning drive.

Instead, Wilson got under a minute with one timeout. As one would expect, it failed.

The Steelers failed. Again.

I am grateful for their 8-3 start. I am grateful for the work Tomlin has done with this team this year. But how can you trust that this year is truly different when a game like this still happens?

You can’t.

Some other thoughts:

• Big-time playmakers on the Steelers’ defense didn’t step up. TJ Watt was a ghost, which won’t help the lopsided national outlook against him, especially when his rival racked up 3.0 sacks. Credit to Myles Garrett, I thought his comments before the game were cocky and off-putting. But when you talk like that you have to back it up, and he did more than that.
• Same goes for Minkah Fitzpatrick. I haven’t been on him as much as some others have been this season, but he was just as invisible as Watt was.
• Wilson stepped it up a lot in the second half. He opened the game with the pocket presence of Kenny Pickett, but he shook off some first half struggles and did all that he could do in the end. He should 5-0.
• Speaking of Steelers from last year…Arthur Smith, what are we doing buddy? There were some egregious play calls throughout the entire game last night, definitely his worst game as offensive coordinator. He reminded me of Matt Canada.