T'wouldn't be terribly uncommon for any NFL team to string together a month of Sundays without extricating itself from a 10-point deficit, much less in the second half, so what kind of NFL team pulls off that very thing twice within eight days?
An 8-0 team by the most popular description, an unprecedented and unpredictable 8-0 Pittsburgh Steelers team that, among its varied and estimable talents, can drain the last ounce of logic from a linear football equation and spin it back together in ways that virtually fracture credulity.
Down by 10 to a Cowboys outfit that in some sectors was down to its rodeo clowns Sunday, Mike Tomlin's team crawled out of a 19-9 ditch with two minutes left in the third quarter and walked erect from Jerry Jones's Dallas metroplex space ship 24-19 winners.
One Sunday prior, the same assemblage of Steelers became the first NFL team to overturn a 10-point lead in the second half at Baltimore in nearly a quarter century, cashing in the game's fourth and final lead change to win 28-24.
"I don't give up," said tight end Eric Ebron, who got the touchdown that started the comeback last week and the touchdown that completed it this week. "I try to pump so much energy into this team, man, and I think it works. I feel like it all comes together. In the end, I wouldn't bet against us."
No one's contradicting No. 85 in this moment, but perhaps we ought to take a moment to point out that while Eric's been pumping 'em full of energy, the unvanquished are benefiting greatly from the deflating effects of oppositional stupidity — or does 180 yards on 16 penalties by the Cowboys and Ravens not factor into the most promising Steelers season in their history?
After Baltimore's defense accounted for 85 yards in penalties last week, including a 20-yard pass interference call that moved the ball from the 39 to the 19 on the winning drive, Dallas' defenders manufactured a complete inversion of the Doomsday Defense concept Sunday.
There was defensive end Randy Gregory shoving Steelers wideout Chase Claypool after Claypool instigated a third-quarter kerfuffle. There was linebacker Jaylon Smith grabbing a Steeler's jersey to negate a Ben Roethlisberger fumble on a day when Pittsburgh would ultimately offer no turnovers. There was linebacker Leighton Vander Esch, on the same fourth-quarter possession, hand-fighting a fallen Benny Snell and finishing it with a right cross that didn't appear to land but gave Pittsburgh a first down at the Cowboys 27 anyway.
But for the show-stopping brain cramp that ruined Dallas' any given Sunday, Smith rammed his paw into Roethlisberger's face mask just as Ben was unleashing the third-and-10 incompletion that would have preserved a 19-18 Dallas lead with 3:58 to play.
Some of these calls had Dallas head coach Mike McCarthy scratching his head. Others had him having his cow. Longtime Texas correspondent Rick Gosselin had pointed out during the week that the Steelers were 0-5 since 2015 in games called by Tony Corrente's officiating crew. On Sunday, they flourished in part due to the return sway of that pendulum.
But idiotic penalties like those cooked up by Vander Esch and Smith were not what Tomlin meant in the postgame Zoom-off when he mentioned that his team was "getting hit in the teeth." That referred to the many elements of this whole ridiculous episode in which a team starting its fourth quarterback in five weeks had built a 10-point lead in the first place, in further which a team with the worst rushing defense in the NFL had reduced the Steelers to 2.6 yards per carry on 18 attempts. When Roethlisberger bolted up the middle for 8 yards on the first offensive possession of the day, he'd just authored Pittsburgh's longest run from scrimmage in Sunday's 60 minutes.
By contrast, when the Steelers committed penalties, at least once accrued to their benefit. When Cam Heyward jumped prematurely before a failed 54-yard field goal try by Chris Boswell, the false start necessitated a 59-yard attempt that went between the uprights for the longest field goal in franchise history.
"That was just another example that we weren't on the nuts and bolts of it from a special teams standpoint," said Tomlin, who ran his all-time record against NFC teams to 37-18. "They do that shift trying to get you to jump all the time. We worked (on) it, and we failed in that instance. I'm thankful that we did get a re-kick."
For all of Tomlin's general eloquence, he leans too hard sometimes on that "standpoint" thing. He said he had confidence in Boswell "from a distance standpoint," but you can be sure that one of these weeks, these Steelers will reach a distance from a deficit standpoint from which they will not be able to retain their status from an undefeated standpoint.
For the moment at least, they remain uncannily resourceful, at least for as long as their opponents continue to dabble in the bonehead arts.
