Kovacevic: Season over? Ben done? Not so fast

ST. LOUIS -- For far too long, it's been the most fait accompli scenario in football: If Ben Roethlisberger goes down, the Steelers are done.

And it just might be that they are.

It just might be that, at 2:04 p.m. Central time, when the franchise quarterback was cut down to the Edward Jones Dome turf by St. Louis safety Mark Barron, when he rolled and writhed in clutching his left knee, when he was carted off to the locker room, the 2015 season ended before it really began.

But I just don't think so.

I really don't think we've seen the last of the Steelers as a contender.

Nor, I dare say without playing doctor, have we seen the last of Roethlisberger.



Let's tackle the important stuff first -- no, not the 12-6 tapdance around the terribly one-dimensional Rams that would play out almost as a sideshow -- and that's what we know about Roethlisberger's injury:

• Mike Tomlin described it as a knee injury and added that Roethlisberger would have an MRI. The coach made no mention of X-rays being taken and, when one seriously annoying reporter asked about that, he snapped back thusly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjevLMuuO9k

That means there's no break or fracture in the knee region. That's a plus.

• We also know, based on ample precedent in sports medicine, that if Roethlisberger's injury had been to the ACL -- the worst-case scenario -- it can be identified rather easily on the scene by simple examination. He was, in fact, administered that type of examination here, I'm told, and the focus quickly moved on to the MCL. That would be a lesser injury -- say, a month and change -- depending on its severity.

• He left the locker room on crutches with no cast, only a soft brace, on the knee. Our Neal Coolong captured this on video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s63H3BfOmhU

• According to CBSSports.com late Sunday night, Roethlisberger had his MRI and it showed an MCL sprain and no damage to the ACL, estimating his recovery at four weeks. The Post-Gazette reported the MCL sprain but added a bone bruise, estimating his recovery at six weeks. ESPN then swooped in with 'probably six weeks.' Our own latest information pointed more toward four weeks. The team itself stayed silent.

Add all that up and ... well, what do you say we just wait, huh?

Tomlin promised to have more information for us media types "the next time we meet," and that will be Monday at noon back in Pittsburgh.

In the meantime, why not hold off on administering the Steelers their last rites, too?

Look, it would take a fool to diminish Roethlisberger's importance or to suggest Michael Vick, suddenly the starter mere weeks after so many wondered if he'd be worth the fuss, can replace him. If all anyone had ever seen of the Steelers was this game, that would be glaringly obvious.

Roethlisberger was having yet another masterfully precise performance, 20 of 24 for 192 yards, and the only thing stopping him from producing more points was the maddening tendency to keep running directly into the Rams' fantastic front four. Otherwise, the passing continued short and deep, far and wide, and the offense with Le'Veon Bell was taking yet another step toward being the NFL's scariest in every way.

But once Roethlisberger went down, Vick, while not exactly awful at 5 of 6 for 38 yards, dramatically limited the playbook to the extent St. Louis hilariously stacked nine men in the box for the Steelers' final series.

It'll be a huge dropoff, whether it's Roethlisberger to Vick or Roethlisberger to anyone.

But it's also not insurmountable, as history has shown us over the past decade:



In the current context, too, at least from this view, it doesn't look insurmountable.

Assuming that a month ends up being Roethlisberger's prognosis, the Steelers' schedule shows the 0-3 Ravens coming to town Thursday, followed by the 1-2 Chargers, the 3-0 Cardinals and the 1-1 Chiefs. If it goes beyond that, it's the Bengals, Raiders and Browns.

Arizona looks like the only legit top-level team in the pack.

You see anyone else on that list that looks like a lockdown loss, Roethlisberger or not?

I'm not wild about what I saw from Vick on this day, to put it mildly, but it seems fair to consider he's still learning the playbook, as he freely conceded after this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKCd93sK0uM

Several offensive players spoke of needing to stress the running game and the short passing game. That makes sense. Bell and Antonio Brown are as dangerous as any two players in the NFL when catching the ball in space -- Bell had 70 receiving yards to outdo his 62 rushing yards, and AB caught 11 passes for 108 yards -- and there's no reason Vick shouldn't be able to, one, keep defenses honest with the run and, two, execute those passes.

"If we run the ball and hit our big guns, we're fine," Ramon Foster said. "I don't think that changes. That's a big, big part of who we are right now."

"We've got to run the ball, catch passes, protect the ball and help Mike out," Brown said. "It's still about making plays. It's still about executing."

The primary concern that seemed to be expressed about Vick, though not explicitly so, is that the Rams regularly flushed him out of the pocket. And with Vick apparently still thinking he was a rookie with the Falcons, he'd still try to outrun them. Without success.

That must change.

"I know what I've got to do, and I know the kind of player I am now," Vick said to that subject. "We have some great weapons here. I've got to get them the ball."

I also like -- no, love -- this team's spirit.

Although Tomlin dismissed a question about whether he took issue with Barron's hit "I didn't," was the entirety of his response -- the players privately fumed.

"I'd think that maybe it was an accident if not for who the player was," one veteran told me, a clear reference to Barron's longstanding reputation for dubious hits.

Those guys don't want to get fined. I run no such risk. The hit was filthy.

The NFL rule book states that a "rushing defender is prohibited from forcibly hitting in the knee area or below a passer who has one or both feet on the ground." This could serve as Exhibit A. It should have drawn an unnecessary roughness flag, and it should still draw a hefty fine from the league, even if the rule was instituted in 2009 because Tom Brady was hit similarly and blew out his ACL.

Or do these rules just apply to Brady?

This was Barron's defense: "I stumbled on the way in and just caught his leg. Some kind of way, he ended up hurt. I didn't have anything to do with his knee. I saw him fall. I just saw him fell. I just caught him around his ankle, and he fell and grabbed his knee."

Judge for yourself:





In general, the Steelers' spirit has been in place since before Latrobe. This collective is focused more toward the younger talent than at any point in recent memory, and they're not easily fazed. They believe in each other. That was detectable in the locker room after this game, too, from players on both sides of the ball.

From the defense, which asserted itself for a second straight week ...

"We rallied around Ben," Cam Heyward said of limiting St. Louis to two field goals and executing a game-altering takeaway with Will Allen's late pick. "He's our captain, and we're going to pick up the slack in other ways. We don't want there to be any let-off because he's out. We want him to come back and be able to do something special."

From the offense, too ...

"It hurts, no question," Bell said of watching Roethlisberger leave. "You hate to see it. But the rest of us, we've still got a job to do, and we're going to do it."

"It's always disheartening when your leader takes a fall," Brown said. "I've never seen him down, so it was a little shocking."

AB was among the first to rush to his quarterback's side.

"I just asked him how he was doing. He said he's all right, and he'll be back."

So will the Steelers. The Ravens are next. Think Charlie Batch thoughts.