Through nearly 90 years of their storied and often gloried history, the Steelers had never until Sunday taken an unbeaten team onto a football field to confront another one so late in the season, so it seemed absolutely right that through the first 59 of this 60-minute matchup of unstoppables, there was no clear indication of who had stopped whom.
When the fourth quarter clock had faded to 1:00, the 5-0 Tennessee Titans were at the 25-yard line of the 5-0 Pittsburgh Steelers, where it appeared one of two things was imminent — the Titans were either going to tie this thing or win it. But as often happens in these Seussian outcomes, Thing 1 and Thing 2 flash a shameless disregard for the possibility of Thing 3.
Thing 3 was on the grass in Nashville in the fully developed imagination and relentless musculature of Stephon Tuitt, the Steelers defensive end who gets too little notice in a lineup of punishing, ball-hawking, quarterback-terrorizing all-stars. But it was Tuitt, the mauling 300-pounder out of Notre Dame, who won the game on the next play.
Crushing the protection for Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill on the right side of the offense, Tuitt forced the most critical pass of the afternoon: Tannehill to nobody. Nobody caught it because nobody was around it. Tannehill got rid of it just as Tuitt was burying him like a cave in.
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"Don't forget Cam (Heyward), Tyson (Alualu), and Stephon Tuitt because those guys don't get blocked often, and if they do it's for a very short time," said Steelers linebacker Robert Spillane, who'd just gotten his first start as a Steeler instead of the injured Devin Bush. "Playing behind them and then having Minkah (Fitzpatrick) and Terrell (Edmunds) behind me, you feel so safe on the field because you know you have playmakers all over the field, so all I have to do is do my job and play hard."
Spillane played hard enough that he nearly broke himself in half tackling Tennessee Clydesdale Derrick Henry near the goal line earlier in the fourth quarter, but Henry scored two plays later to pull the Titans within three. Mike Tomlin's defense still needed a monster play from a monster/playmaker, and Tuitt took care of it.
He forced Tannehill into an intentional grounding penalty that made it 2nd-and-20 at the 35, and though Tannehill made up seven of the lost yards on his final completion of the day, the Titans were faced with a 45-yard field goal try by the curiously manic Stephen Gostkowski.
Formerly the uber-reliable thumper for the New England Patriots, Gostkowski's had been all over the place this year, missing three field goals in Tennessee's opener and two more last week. When he missed wide right with 14 seconds left on Sunday, his teammates dropped to 5-1. He sent the Steelers to 6-0.
"We didn't get a lot of shots at the quarterback and we knew going into the game they hadn't given up a lot of sacks (six in five games), but I don't know what this says," groused Heyward in a post-game Zoom session that was decidedly uncelebratory. "We're 6-0, we won the game, but nothing's guaranteed. There's a lot we've got to improve on."
I suppose there are areas with which to find fault with the first 6-0 Steelers team in 42 years, but even as a past president of Unremitting Fault Finders of America, I have to tell you that any such soul searching this team does internally right now represents an excess of introspection.
Yes, they led by 20 and won by three, but it was on the road in the National Football League against an unbeaten opponent. If the defense made it an uncomfortable proposition in the fourth quarter, that might have been because the defense could barely get on the field for most of the first three.
Randy Fichtner's offense was so good from the start, scoring on its first four drives, that it ultimately ran up almost 37 minutes of possession time, the fourth consecutive game in which Ben ran the show for at least 34 minutes.
"It felt like we ran 100 plays (as opposed to 74); we're exhausted," Roethlisberger said after what went into the stats as his worst start of the year, what with those three interceptions. But he still completed a season-high 32 passes, two of them touchdowns to Diontae Johnson, all on a day when Tennessee's defense wouldn't give rookie sensation Chase Claypool a whiff of space. And still Pittsburgh converted 13 of 18 third downs, including 3rd-and-11 and 3rd-and-14.
The flip side of that stat only confirmed Pittsburgh's monstrous defensive reputation. Tennessee went 5 for 13 on third down, so combined with last week's dismantling of the Browns, the last two Pittsburgh opponents are 6 for 25 in those situations.
"We have a chance to be really special," said T.J. Watt, who again spent most of his workday in the opponent's backfield. "But we've got to do a much better job than we did in the second half."
OK then, this team's got some problems. Every other team in the league would love to have them. Can we leave it at that for a day?
