DENVER -- "It was a weird game, you know?"
Yeah, Joe Haden, we know.
Weird enough that an opponent that can't throw willfully targeted the Steelers' most valuable defender ... and get the best of him.
Weird enough that an offense could pile up 527 total yards ... and one touchdown, same as their placekicker would produce.
Weird enough that this same offense would coast right up the field toward another late, dramatic score, all the way to the 3-yard line ... and execute three plays that barely budge the marker.
Calling what happened Sunday evening at the Mile High complex simply 'weird' doesn't come close to sufficing. Because this also was stupid. And with the convenience of hindsight, this was avoidable.
Not that any of these guys wanted to hear that.
"It's just a loss," Ryan Switzer was telling me afterward. "If anything, some of the things we did well as an offense make it that much more frustrating that we couldn't finish it off."
"Naw, man, there's nothing to say other than that we lost," Vince Williams told me. "The defense wasn't good enough."
"Disappointing," Mike Tomlin would open at the podium. Then, after the standard plaudits for the other team, he added, "It was the turnover ratio. We didn't do a good job of taking care of the ball, and we also didn't do a good job of getting the ball. I just finished telling the team that."
He's right. They're all right. The offense committed four turnovers, and the defense forced none. Xavier Grimble was beaten at the goal line by a much smaller man because, as he'd confess, "I could have cut back and scored, but I wanted to run right through him." Antonio Brown wasn't looking back at Ben Roethlisberger and, although Ben would claim AB was held, the real reason the pass sailed right into coverage was that AB didn't make a play on it. James Conner had the ball popped loose in the open field and, as he was barely able to muster, "I think I just let it go." And to cap it all, Ben, poised for the tying touchdown with time ticking away, was picked off. By a lineman. Who'd been blocked right into the pass' trajectory.
So there were mistakes. Too many to mention, if only because I haven't even touched on James Washington.
But I'll repeat here: This also was stupid. And avoidable.
Not necessarily for any of the specifics cited above, but for one broader bit of boneheadedness: Why throw the ball 58 times against the NFL's No. 27-ranked rush defense and limit Conner to 13 carries?
No, really, why?
Please, please save the complaining about his fumble. It's a waste of thought and breath. He blew it and, believe me, he knew it:
Physical mistakes happen. Mental mistakes, in the moment, can be similarly dismissed. But I take much greater issue with a mistake that played out over three hours and change, one that's been forming for a while now: For four weeks, Conner was a horse, averaging 22 carries for 118.5 yards and a total of six touchdowns. The past three weeks, his carry totals have been 13, 9 and now 13, and his yardage totals have been 65, 25 and now 53.
Has he regressed?
Hardly. He averaged 4.1 yards per carry in this game, and he's averaged 4.18 over the past three. He also caught four passes for 42 yards in this game, so it's not like he's diminished in that regard, either. Those are very good numbers for a modern NFL running back.
Is he injured?
Not from what our staff has been able to discern, either visually or from discussions behind the scenes.
Caution over the concussion?
No chance. Not how Tomlin operates. When a player's cleared, he's cleared.
Could it be worry about wearing Conner down, particularly now that Le'Veon Bell's out as the fallback?
Hm. If that's a factor, then Tomlin would be hard-pressed to explain all those remarks during the hot stretch about how Conner "gets stronger with more work" and how he knew that because "I had a good seat for that for a lot of years," referring to Conner's time at Pitt.
Something in the matchup?
Ha! See above about the Broncos' run defense or, better yet, try to envision the Jets grounding out 323 yards on a single Sunday against anyone anywhere. Because that happened.
So, why has Conner seemingly been low-keyed since Carolina?
The man with the ultimate answer, of course, is Tomlin, but he clearly wasn't about to share. In his press conference, which began with the aforementioned preface about turnover ratio, he addressed nearly every question asked of him by referring right back to turnover ratio.
The one time he was asked about the running game, he came back with, "I'm not displeased with anything in terms of how the game unfolded other than the turnover ratio. Some of that minutia, we'll look at when we watch the video."
Hey, it's his podium. But I'll bet that, once he and the coaches do get to dissecting that video, what they'll find is a Denver defense that was ripe to have been ripped apart, including in the red zone.
Including, as I'll now stress, on those fateful, final three plays.
First-and-goal at the Denver 3 saw Ben try a fade to the right corner for JuJu Smith-Schuster:
I hate everything about this call, beginning with time management. The clock showed 1:57 remaining, so the Steelers had everything to gain from a run. There was time to burn, and any time that would get burned would be less for the Broncos once they got the ball back.
I also hate fade routes, in general, but I really hate them for a quarterback who was nailing all targets across the middle throughout the second half and on this drive.
But more than anything, I hate that an opportunity to take three semi-safe cracks from 3 yards prompted Randy Fichtner or someone on the Steelers' sideline to think this was a swell time to try something low-percentage.
Vance Joseph, the Broncos' coach, praised his veteran corner, Chris Harris, for airtight coverage on JuJu, highlighted by a hard push at the line that disrupted the timing. Joseph also called "the big play" in the entire sequence.
He'll get no argument here.
Second-and-goal at the Denver 3 saw sanity prevail, and the ball was handed to Conner:
Much to hate here, as well, notably this: Running was the right idea all along, but it's now outrageously obvious after a first-down fade. It's the natural retreat mode. So the Broncos stacked up their biggest bodies at the line against the Steelers' ... three-receiver set out of a shotgun?
With the utterly useless Washington on the field?
Yet again, trickery was the priority here over playing football. And not even David DeCastro pulling across to the left was going to overcome the Broncos not being fooled in the slightest as they engulfed Conner in orange after a yard's gain.
Third and goal at the Denver 2 brought all this badness:
Maurkice Pouncey's snap went to Roethlisberger's left, always atop the risks taken in the shotgun. Bad start.
Now watch Chuks Okorafor, the rookie right tackle who'd been having a terrific first NFL start, being assigned to pull all the way across to the left to pick up blitzing safety Will Parks. Okorafor did so, but it created even more havoc and caused Ben and Conner to nearly collide. (Both those players curiously denied that ever happened, but the video couldn't be more concrete.)
Ben, meanwhile, never unlocks eyes from AB, who gets hot-tailed off the line by Denver corner Bradley Roby. That play, as the video powerfully illustrates, was DOA even if all else had gone according to the plan, simply because Roby had done his job.
But it sure didn't help that Pouncey then did his job too well.
"Blocked that guy right into an interception, didn't I?" Pouncey would tell me. "Man, that's just how it goes sometimes."
That's how it went. Pouncey shoved nose tackle Shelby Harris far enough back that he was able to bring down that flutter-ball before Roby maybe would have had his own chance at it.
What did Ben see there?
"Once you're late to the handoff, you don't want to force the play. Bad things can happen. I never would have thought in a million years that a defensive lineman would get blocked off the ball that far, right into an interception. Good play by him. AB was coming. I just never would've thought that guy would make that play."
What did AB see there?
"All I saw was an interception."
And Harris, the unlikely hero?
"I actually didn't do what I was supposed to. Honestly, I didn't know what he was trying to do. I thought it was supposed to be a run, and he decided to just pull it and throw it. Then I saw it floating up there and just caught it. I was lucky to be there."
Now, imagine all of the above if the Steelers had simply lined up at the 3 and played football. Right after Ben hit on long passes to JuJu and AB. Right after Ben scrambled it himself for a dozen yards. Right after these guys had just done this a week earlier in Jacksonville, riding as high as I'd ever seen them.
Imagine if they'd stuck to that identity they'd been building over the better part of that six-game winning streak.
But they didn't. They've gotten away from it. Call this coincidence, but all three of the 7-3-1 Steelers' losses have come within the five games Conner's carried 13 or fewer times. They don't perform with the same confidence, the same bravado. And, as I'd been writing all through this streak that's now gone, that's also spilled over to the other side of the ball, to hear the players tell it.
That matters. Identity matters in football.
Ben was asked if maybe the team's worried about the running game.
"Not at all," he came right back. "The game plan dictated today that we could throw it. We threw the ball. A lot of guys made plays for us. Why force something else and get away from something that you're successful in?"
This was why.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers at Broncos, Denver, Nov. 25, 2018 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS