Najeh Davenport is returning kickoffs tonight? Who thinks he has anywhere near enough speed for that? Why not Cedric Wilson or Nate Washington? I'm pretty sure Wilson returned kicks in S.F. Not surprisingly, the kickoff's only returned to the 20. 1st down, Big Ben floats it way too high for Ward. 6 to Heath Miller. Steelers do a bunch of fake criss-crossing in the backfield, and Ben hits Hines Ward wide open for 31. Reggie Nelson hits Ward way late out of bounds and in the head, with no penalty. Next play, though, John Henderson stupidly horse-collars Big Ben on the scramble for a 15-yard penalty. Pittsburgh's already at the J35. Quick hitch to Ward for 6. 12 more to Ward on the sideline. Davenport splits right up the middle for 12 down to the 7. Henderson, ironically, was hurt on the horse-collar play, and his replacement, Derek Landri, is MUCH MUCH smaller. Ben hits Matt Spaeth, who loses the ball at the goal line diving for the TD, but his knee was clearly down at the 1. Don't know why Jax challenged the play.
Tonight's referee is Scott Green.
Henderson is being carted off. Uh-oh.
2nd-and-goal, and Jacksonville ain't the Rams, as Davenport is stopped short. He gets a hole on 3rd down, though, and scores to put Pittsburgh up 7-0. Great opening drive put together by Pittsburgh OC Bruce Arians.
Maurice Jones-Drew brings the ensuing kickoff all the way back to the Pittsburgh 1-yard line. He got most of it right up the middle of the field. Fred Taylor vultures MoJo's TD the next play to make it 7-7.
Wow.
Watching the 4th quarter of Washington-Seattle and the first 5:00 of this game, how can you not love football?
Davenport returns a very short kick to the 28. I don't know why you'd do anything but kick deep to him unless you're trying to induce a fumble. Najeh gains 6 inside left tackle. Ben rolls out of trouble and hits Russell on the sideline for 5. Hayward had beaten his man. Najeh inside right tackle for 5. Steelers run out of a 4-WR formation but McCray squirted through and shut it down. Good pass rush from Landri flushes Ben to force a punt. Northcutt fields the punt at the 6 but brings it back only to the 9.
Taylor does well to find 2 yards in traffic on 1st down. Haggans jumps offsides, though, to give Jax 2nd-and-3. No room up the middle again for Taylor, 3rd-and-2. MoJo muscles through for the first down, though. Garrard burns a timeout with 1st-and-10 from the J20. They try a counter right with MoJo for maybe 2. Garrard escapes the rush and scrambles for 11 after the Jax line VERY SOLIDLY picks up the Steeler blitz. He again barely avoids a sack and gets a pass off to Marcedes Lewis for 11 more. Taylor off left tackle for 2. A RICHARD ANGULO sighting! Garrard has him open over the middle deep but way overthrows him. 3rd-and-8. Keisel leaps and knocks down the Garrard pass to force the punt, which finds the end zone.
Tony Pashos earned much RamView love in the player intros by announcing "You'll never get rid of the Chief", referring to the University of Illinois' long-time mascot / political-correctness victim, Chief Illiniwek. Maurice Williams, though, just sounds desperate when he declares he's from THE University of Michigan. Leave the pompous use of articles to the Buckeyes, Maurice.
Henderson left with a strained hamstring but is back. Ben rolls and is nearly taken down by Paul Spicer but hits Miller instead for 12. Ben steps away from yet another good Jagwire rush, but Cliff Ingram breaks up a long pass for Santonio Holmes. That's a LB defending a pass to the guy the Rams made look like Lynn Swann a couple of weeks ago. Henderson's out again as Russell plunges forward for about 2 to end the first quarter with the game tied at 7.
Pittsburgh opens the quarter on a bad note; Ben holds the ball forever and Spicer and Landri get to him for the sack. Good punt return by Northcutt, too, and Jax will start from their 39.
Kirschke and Woodley get through to Garrard for a big sack. Garrard claims he threw the ball away but he was in the grasp; good call. Taylor still can't get anywhere; he loses 2 to make it 3rd-and-25. So much for the great field position. Reggie Williams gets them back to the original line of scrimmage on a cross, but that's it. Great punt is fielded by Cedric Wilson at the 5, but he gets almost no return. Jagwire penalty will force a rekick. Wilson is replacing Alan Rossum on punt returns. I still don't understand why Davenport's the returner on kickoffs. Fair catch at the 15 on the rekick.
Najeh can't gain anything sweeping left. Rashean Mathis breaks up a quick slant to Holmes to force 3rd-and-10. Not Immaculate, but an impeccable reception, off Miller's fingers to Ward for a big gain. Madden makes an appropriately ironic remark. Meanwhile, Russell loses 1 to create a 2nd-and-11. Mathis jumps Santonio Holmes' route, picks off Big Ben, and returns it for a TD. Pittsburgh also got a bizarre flag on the play. Russell dove at Mathis trying to make the tackle, and took out another Jagwire below the knees, drawing a penalty for a low block even though he was on defense at the time. Well, they're trying to protect players' knees, so I'll go along with the call. Jagwires lead 14-7 and will kick off from the 45.
Inevitable touchback will start Pittsburgh from their 20. On first down, nobody blocks big mf'er Grady Jackson, who drops Najeh for -5. Um, Grady Jackson shouldn't be real hard to find. That's followed by a STUPID play by Ben on 2nd-and-15: while scrambling right, he flings one up for grabs for a double-covered Davenport, who's behind the DBs, but the pass is too short, Mathis again picks it off and returns it to the 20. Mathis has two INTs in like a minute. The play by Big Ben was the same play stupid Gus Frerotte made twice this year for INTs. Pittsburgh challenges that Mathis was down by contact at midfield where he caught the ball.
Effective challenge. Green calls Mathis down by contact, although we don't see any evidence of it at home. Maybe Green was afraid to call Mathis down because his hair was out of bounds, the call Albino and Madden lobbied for. So, from midfield, a blitz forces a bad swing pass incomplete for Drew, and Taylor only gets 3 on 2nd down. On 3rd-and-7, SWEET play by Jacksonville! Drew comes out of the backfield and beats Farrior; Garrard hits him with a perfect pass, and MoJo slips through a POOR, Jonathan Wade-quality tackle attempt from Tyrone Carter for a 45+-yard TD! 21-7, Jacksonville!
That Jacksonville play looked just like a play Scott Linehan called last week in Az, with the QB flanked by two RBs. Leonard didn't go upfield like Drew did, though, Pittman got hung up at the line of scrimmage, and Bulger got sacked.
Wow, I thought the Steelers would rebound from their home loss to the Jagwires three weeks ago, but it sure doesn't look like it. Jax is pressuring Ben quite effectively and he is off his game, and without Willie Parker, Pittsburgh doesn't have the running game to offset Ben's struggles. Jax opens this drive by engulfing Davenport for a loss. Pittsburgh is completely falling apart. Ben can't find anybody open on 2nd down and gets sacked by Mincy. 3rd-and-16, Jacksonville blows up the screen pass, Ben tries to improvise, and Landri catches him when he tries to scramble right. Roethlisberger has already been sacked four times, and those great Steeler fans are BOOING their team at a home playoff game. Nice.
Jax takes over at their 46 after a bad punt. Taylor bounces to midfield. Nice cutback left by Taylor for 10 more. Another handoff to Taylor for 9; he's just surging up the middle this drive. Drew tags in for the first down. He's the shortest short-yardage back in NFL history. From the P29, Garrard goes up top for Northcutt in the end zone. Ike Taylor's blatant DPI is not called; 2nd down. Taylor loses 4 on 2nd down. HUGE play here. Garrard gets FOREVER to throw but can only find Lewis for 2. VERY big play for Pittsburgh, since it's not a big surprise when Josh Scobee misses from 46.
Steelers from their 36 with 2:08 left in the half. 4 to Miller as we hit the 2:00 warning.
Weird that Pittsburgh felt like they had to rely on quick passing two weeks ago against the Rams but aren't doing it tonight against the Jagwires.
There's a quickie, to Washington for about 10. Ben scrambles for 6. Tick, tick! Swell diving catch by Holmes over the middle for about 16. Pittsburgh calls timeout, which gives the booth a chance to review the play! Looks like a catch all the way, though.
Madden and Albino are now ranting about how Tampa would have gone to Super Bowl XXXIV but for the Bert Emmanuel play, which was like the Holmes catch here, and the two fatheads need to shut the hell up. The Emmanuel play was NOT a catch by the rules of the game in the 1999 season, and was absolutely called correctly. You want to make a clean catch then, you don't let the ball touch the ground. Madden starts howling how Emmanuel's play would have been a catch all the decades leading up until that game, including the 20s and 30s, when I doubt many downfield passes were even thrown, and SHUT UP, YOU WORTHLESS FATHEAD. Instant replay wasn't in the rulebook until the 1990s. All those plays were incompletions before, you fat doofus. Go suck on a turducken.
Christ sakes, I get tired of having to defend the NFC win over Tampa in 2000. It's not like it was the freaking Tom Brady Tuck Rule. A couple of plays later, Shaun King committed a brutal grounding penalty that wasn't called; how come nobody ever complains about that?
Proving himself the master of irony, Scott Green calls the play an incomplete pass, and because I'm so pissed off at the NBC morons for moaning that Emmanuel caught the ball, WHEN HE DIDN'T, I throw myself 100% behind Green's call.
Pittsburgh really screwed themselves with that timeout there, and it's now 3rd-and-4 back at the J45. Davenport makes a great YAC play, takes a 5 yard pass crossfield for about 19. 1:17 in the half. Another dumpoff, to Davis, for 6. Then, with a big rush on, Ben attempts a screen but it's his THIRD INT of the half instead, picked off by the DT Landri. What a terrible first half for Roethlisberger. What's his passer rating tonight, negative twenty-nine and a half?
Those great Steeler fans BOO their team off the field at halftime of a home playoff game, trailing 21-7.
Like Washington in the first game, Pittsburgh is getting dominated in the trenches in the first half of this game. Jacksonville has figured out their bunch formation, which they're lining up in on nearly every play. Spread the field better, dummies; you'll never get Holmes or Ward open 1-on-1 otherwise. They also should do a better job of exploiting Landri and run at him. Steeler D was actually stopping the run pretty well until the end of the half. They'd better get serious about blitzing Garrard on passing downs and make him beat them. The Jagwire O isn't doing that much except for the big play by Jones-Drew; big blitzing would be worth the risk when you're down 14. The Jagwires, otoh, are in perfect position, with a big lead and a running game that can wear down the other team. Come out running and stick a fork in Pittsburgh with play-action. Jags haven't had to blitz Ben at all, and are covering the Steeler WRs like a blanket; I wouldn't change a thing. Their d-line rotation is so deep it's not like they'll get tired out there.
3rd quarter. EXTREMELY short kick is fielded by the up man at the 29 and returned to the 31. Taylor gains a couple. Exactly what the Jagwires do NOT need on 2nd down; not a good throw by Garrard at all, jumped and picked off by Farrior. Steeler ball.
Davenport can't get outside on 1st down. Miller gains 12 out of the bunch pattern again for a 1st down. Steelers at the J32. Russell up the middle for 2. 14 to Holmes on a slant. Ball at the 16. 3 more up the middle for Davenport. Brian Williams blows up a quick hitch to Holmes for -2. 3rd-9, Ben's got nobody downfield and has to dump for Davenport, who gets rocked at the 10 to force a FG. Reed hits it to make it 21-10.
Greg Jones muffs the kickoff out of bounds around the 20. Not sure if that was on the way out or not. Taylor opens with a 7-yard run up the middle. Foote and Keisel, who both have had good games, next stop him for 1. 3rd and a long 1. 12 yard scramble by Garrard out of shotgun - may have been the designed play - for a first. Garrard is so strong, that when he gets up from his slide, he unintentionally flips Farrior head over heels. Garrard scrambles and slides again for about 5. 2nd down, Pittsburgh gets to David for a sack, but Taylor commits a costly 15-yard facemask to set Jax up at midfield. Beautiful throw to ER-nest WIL-ford for 21. Wilford drew the facemask penalty earlier, though the catch he just made was his first tonight. Now WILford's open again, at the 10. Pittsburgh really didn't have to worry about the WRs in the 1st half, but Jax is eating away at soft zones here. 1st-goal, MoJo gets a big block from Khalif Barnes at the line and another from Northcutt at the goal line for a 10-yard TD run, and this thing may be over. 28-10, Jacksonville.
Wow, wow, wow.
On the kickoff, Najeh is DRILLED at the 32 and fumbles out of bounds. Under 5:00 left in the 3rd quarter. Empty backfield, Terry Cousin breaks up a dumpoff to Miller. Pittsburgh sure wasn't dumping off all the time like this in St. Louis. Davis runs for about 4. Pretty stupid to be running any more this game, down 18. Ben gets nice time and hits Miller for about 8 and a first. No-huddle now, 9 more to Miller. Davis gets a first down across midfield. Empty backfield, 5 wide, 12-yard completion to Ward. STILL RUNNING, Davis loses one. And now the LT moves. 2nd-16, Ben holds the ball so long he makes Marc Bulger look like Peyton Manning and takes a huge sack. The third quarter expires after a completion to Ward leaves Pitt with 4th-and-12.
On 4th-and-12, the Jagwires ludicrously bring a huge blitz, Ben hits Holmes on a quick slant, he breaks poor tackles by Mathis and Cousin easily for a 37-yard TD. What a stupid defensive call by Jacksonville. No need to guess whether that'll be ripped in TMQ on Tuesday. 28 to 17.
Short kick is returned by the up man to the 39 as Pittsburgh studiously continues to avoid Drew.
A rare hit on Garrard, by James Harrison, forces an incompletion on 1st down. Jax is THROWING AGAIN on 2nd down, and Garrard chucks it away under pressure. Jax needs a first down, or there's officially a momentum swing. And swing it does, as Garrard gets forever to throw, and after Jax picks up the blitz the first time, Harrison and Farrior, who was knocked to the ground initially, break through for the sack.
Three straight passes with an 11-point lead, huh? Jax barely even took 30 seconds off the clock.
Steelers take over from their 31. Ben pump-fakes, then finds Ward on a cross for 12. Quick hitch back to Ward, who breaks three tackles to gain 7. Ben's 2nd down pass is right to LB Justin Durant, but he can't hold it. 3rd-3 from midfield. Ben rolls out of trouble and sidearms it to Ward for 6. 1st-10. Ben goes up top, looks like the pass went through Washington's (bad) hands in the end zone. Yikes. 2nd-10. Miller jukes Cousin badly after the catch and gains about 10 more for a 14-yard gain. Pittsburgh's inside the 30. Draw to Davenport gains 4. Landri nearly brought Ben down before he could hand off. Nice pocket for Ben on 2nd down, and he hits Wilson for 10. Steelers at the J14. DROP by Davenport on 1st down. 2nd-10, play action pass to Miller for the TD. By not abandoning the run, Pittsburgh kept the possibility in Jacksonville's heads and set that play up, because the LBs were completely fooled. Down 28-23, Pittsburgh goes for 2, and an incredible catch by Ward on the back line for 2 is erased by a questionable holding call against the center. Steelers go for 2 from the 12. Ben runs down to the three, at which point he should have just lobbed the ball back over his head and tried for a Stanford-Cal play, but he gets taken down instead, and the Jagwire lead is still 5.
Davis BLOWS UP Scott Starks on the kick return, which only gets Jax out to the 24. I don't think Drew was even back there. Taylor breaks through the middle for 5, but a hold on ANGULO brings it back. 1st-20 from the 14. Taylor to the right for about 5. 2nd-15, Garrard's not expecting Lewis to pull up, but he does, and the pass flies way over him and to Ike Taylor, who breaks a tackled attempt by Wilford, returns the ball to the Jax 16, and puts this game in the FREAKIN AMAZING GAME column.
Davis is wide open on the sideline for 8, and Pittsburgh is inside the 10. Davenport grinds for almost 2; it'll be third-and-a-football-length. Steeler players have to tell their brilliant fans to be quiet for this key play. Ben gets the Bush Push from Davenport for the first down. 1st-goal from the 5. Fake toss left, roll right, completion to Ward close to the 1. 2nd-goal from the 1, and the Pittsburgh Steelers try a rollout pass? Tipped and incomplete. 3rd down. Looks like the 3rd-down play is an attempted screen to Davis, who drops it at the goal line. Pittsburgh goes for it on 4th down. They try their 4th straight pass, a fade to Ward. Brian Williams CLEARLY interferes with him. First and goal at the 1, Pittsburgh FINALLY runs. Davenport gets a TD after a discussion. Good call. Pittsburgh has come all the way back for a 29-28 lead. Ben's fade pass for the two-pointer is terrible and incomplete for Washington.
What a game. 29-28 Steelers, about 6 minutes left.
Poor return by Starks again, only out to the 21. Pittsburgh is figuring out where Drew is and kicking it away from him. That doesn't seem all that brilliant, but few teams ever manage to pull that off. False start on Barnes starts Jax off 1st-and-15. Garrard hits Taylor for 2, as now, it's Pittsburgh shutting down Jax's receivers downfield. Garrard is flushed and gets a pass off to Greg Jones, but he drops it. Would have had the first. 3rd-and-13. All night for Garrard, who hits Northcutt at the 36. Gigantic play with 5:17 left. Inside handoff to Drew for about 3. Again getting all night, Garrard rolls right and slips about three different sack attempts before throwing the ball away. 3rd-and-7, Woodley beats Greg Jones clean for a huge sack to force a punt. Pittsburgh has the ball back at their 22, 3:43 left and a 1-point lead. They'll win it with a couple of first downs.
Five yards for Davenport. Jax lets the clock run down, to 3:00. They stuff Davenport on 2nd down and use their first TO with 2:56 left. 3rd-5. I say play-action to Miller. Pittsburgh gets curious instead, lining up 5 wide and then having Ben try to run for the first. He comes nowhere close, and Pittsburgh will punt with 2:50 left. Nice clock management by Del Rio. I would have used up all my TOs by now. And, uh oh, there's trouble on the punt, which isn't very good and is returned by Northcutt nearly to midfield.
Jax has 2:38 and a timeout left and only needs a FG. They're passing, though, and a long low one to Wilford is called incomplete. Point of the ball hit the ground before he had control of it, so I doubt Del Rio's challenge is going to work. And it'll cost him the last time out. Costly, costly challenge there. Wilford may have hurt his team by arguing the call and not knowing the rule. 2nd-10. 8 to Reggie Williams to beat a blitz. Jax lets the clock run down to the 2:00 warning on 3rd-and-2. Lewis misses a difficult but makeable catch, and it's 4th-and-2.
QB DRAW. What a gutsy call. Garrard not only makes the first down, he jukes Carter and rumbles all the way down to the 11. A 32-yard run. Pittsburgh now has to use their TOs to preserve the clock. They have two left. Farrior BURIES Drew at the 15, and Pittsburgh uses TO#2 with 1:30 left. Drew drives up the middle for 7. 1:25 left, Jax has the ball at the 8-yard line, neither team has a TO left. 3rd-and-7. Drew damn near gets the 1st down, running up the middle for almost 6. At 0:40, Jax takes a delay of game, and Scobee has a 25-yard FG attempt. At least we won't have one of those half-assed sideline timeouts. Great hold by Podlesh the punter/holder, and Jacksonville takes the lead back, 30-29.
37 seconds left. Davenport eats up a LOT of clock getting out to the 29.
29 seconds left. Bobby McCray sends the Steelers home for the holidays, whipping LT Trai Essex AND Davenport and knocking the ball away from Roethlisberger for the win.
Pittsburgh was ultimately done in by their injuries. They've been playing for a while without either of their regular starting tackles, and without Parker, they have a critical lack of speed at RB. And still, if Ben makes one less terrible play in the first half, they probably win. But Jacksonville's ability to generally control the line of scrimmage won it for them.
Plus David Garrard is for real, even if I'm misspelling his name half the time. He's not necessarily pretty, but he wins, and that always makes you dangerous in the postseason.
As I expected, NBC pusses out again and puts both Garrard and Jones-Drew on the stupid horse trailer. Surprised they didn't put Rashean Mathis on there, too. RamView gives the sole game MVP to Jones-Drew for his 3 TDs. He was a threat rushing, receiving and on special teams.
This probably sets up a Jacksonville-New England matchup next week, and a lot of folks have felt for a couple of months that the Jagwires are a team that would give the Patriots trouble. Garrard will have to play a lot better and smarter than he did tonight, though, to pull that off. New England will certainly force Garrard to beat them. The Patriot o-line is banged up, so Jax could give Tom Brady some of the trouble Ben had tonight. But Brady's a lot better under pressure than Ben, should get better protection than Ben got, and Brady's receivers will give Jax even more trouble than Pittsburgh did tonight. Have to like the Patriots there, though I wish the Jagwires all the luck in the world eliminating the evil empire.
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