PITTSBURGH – You can watch an exciting half of a football game and it can convince you that everything you saw last month was wrong. This is what we do as NFL watchers. It is the lifeblood of our weekly column of overreactions.
Example: The Steelers were ready. I mean, ready. They seemed lost throughout December, especially when they lost to Bengals last Monday and completely exaggerated on Sunday afternoon, when they lost Colts 24-7 at the end of the third quarter and failed to reach the end zone after four consecutive attempts from within the 2-yard line. They had no racing game. Ben Roethlisberger was making a terrible move after a terrible move. Made with a capital “D” and it rhymes with “E” and means “Early departure from the playoff”.
And then, just like that, they weren’t.
After the Colts’ resistance on the goal line, the Steelers’ defense hardened and forced a punt, which the Steelers returned to the Colts’ 39-yard line. And on the next move, Roethlisberger found Diontae Johnson with a Picasso throw from nowhere for a touchdown that reduced the lead to 10 points.
A switch was activated. Suddenly, the Colts could do nothing in the attack and the Steelers, who had accumulated only 95 meters in a drowsy first half, could not be stopped. Roethlisberger gave touchdown passes to Eric Ebron and JuJu Smith-Schuster in the fourth quarter and Pittsburgh won again 28-24, winning their first AFC North title in three years.
When it was over, Smith-Schuster came for his post-game interview with us and explained that Roethlisberger had given a speech at the interval at which he told the team that it didn’t look like they were having fun. So, they came out in the second half and had a lot of it.