"You would have thought we lost a game."
That's how Connor Heyward described the mood in the locker room to me after the Steelers' 28-14 victory over the Browns Sunday afternoon at Acrisure Stadium. Yes, the Steelers capped off a comeback from a 2-6 start to the season to finish 9-8, but the Dolphins' victory over the Jets ended Pittsburgh's playoff hopes.
That was the goal -- making the playoffs. Ultimately, the Steelers had to take care of business against their AFC North rival in order to keep their playoff hopes alive, regardless of what happened around the league.
"Obviously you want to continue your season and make the playoffs," Jaylen Warren told me after the game. "But we did our part. We controlled the controllables."
In order to beat the Browns, the Steelers had to continue to build on the type of play that led to the 6-2 record since the bye in Week 9. Finding a way to not allow the Browns to tally 171 yards on the ground again, as they did in Week 3, was a good place to start. And since the Week 14 loss to the Ravens, that's exactly what they've done — shut down the run. In addition, T.J. Watt continued to feel more like himself down the stretch, which made the defense more like it was supposed to be from the start of the season.
"I think we were starting to play some really good football in all phases," Watt said after the game. "I think on defense we were starting to really get that splash. We were able to stop the run and make teams one-dimensional and able to get after the quarterback."
Getting after the quarterback and forcing turnovers is exactly what this defense set out to do in 2022, and they set the tone in Week 1 by taking the ball away five times and sacking Joe Burrow seven times.
In Sunday's game, the Steelers' pass rush was a problem for Cleveland's offensive line. It started with Watt drawing an illegal hands to the face penalty on the Browns' first drive, which ended with a punt. Then Alex Highsmith drew a holding call on Cleveland's second drive, which also ended with a punt.
As the game wore on, despite Deshaun Watson's remarkable escapability, the pass rush wound up tallying the same number of sacks as they did in Week 1, including this one by Highsmith on third and 14 late in the game to help clinch the victory:
Watson's ability to escape hurt the Steelers as he racked up 44 yards on six carries. The Browns' quarterback also escaped sacks multiple times, helping extend drives.
"Obviously he is a problem, particularly as he runs around and extends plays and things of nature," Mike Tomlin said after the game. "That's probably not going to go anywhere."
If that's the case, then the Steelers might be called for roughing-the-passer at least once per game when they face Watson. His strength and athleticism forces pass rushers to be more physical when trying to bring him down. Even so, the NFL should be ashamed for calling Cam Heyward for roughing on this play in the fourth quarter, which led to a Browns touchdown that closed Pittsburgh's lead to only six points:
In addition to the seven sacks, the defense found a way to help flip the field with takeaways. With the Browns trying to break a 7-7 tie with less than two minutes remaining in the first half, Levi Wallace intercepted Watson, which gave the offense an opportunity to move the ball down the field and get three points on a Chris Boswell field goal just before halftime, with the Steelers receiving the second half kickoff.
After the offense turned the opening drive of the second half into three more points to take a 13-7 lead, the defense struck again when Damontae Kazee perfectly timed a pass from Watson, jumped the route, intercepted it and ran it back to the Browns' 25-yard line:
The offense didn't waste the gifted field position as Najee Harris scored six plays later to extend Pittsburgh's lead to 20-7:
And that, in and of itself, was exactly what the offense set out to do. Not only in this game, but all season long.
It's no secret that the offense was going to be behind the defense in terms of productivity and consistency. It's a much younger group that's very much in transition. They had to overcome a horrid start to the season to find their identity, which wound up revolving around Harris and the running game along with Kenny Pickett taking care of the football.
Sunday was a microcosm of that. The Steelers' opening drive went as perfect as it could be, getting down to first and goal at the 2-yard line. However, after Harris was stopped short on first down (replay would later show he actually got in, but the Steelers didn't challenge) and Pickett was held to no gain on second down, Harris tried to go over the top on third down and had the ball knocked out with Cleveland recovering the fumble.
The offense limped on for nearly the remainder of the first half, but managed to answer the Browns' opening score of the game with a scoring drive of their own. Facing third and 15, Pickett dropped back and found George Pickens streaking down the seam without a defender in sight and hit him for a 31-yard score to tie the game.
After the Browns capitalized on the Heyward roughing-the-passer penalty to make it a 20-14 game on a Nick Chubb 2-yard touchdown catch, the offense had another chance to answer.
Pickett, Harris and the young group marched 75 yards down the field on 14 plays, capping off the drive with a 1-yard touchdown run by Derek Watt:
It took too long for the offense to get going on Sunday but once they did, they were able to do pretty much everything they wanted to do -- two red-zone touchdowns included.
"Saw a lot of improvement," Pickett said. "Really liked the way we were improving and getting things off tape and moving the ball really well. Finished a lot better today than in previous weeks. There's positives. There's negatives, like there are every game. Wish we had another week to keep improving, but it is what it is."
That's why even though the Steelers won on Sunday, it felt like a loss. They won't get another week to improve, at least not with this exact group. Their season is over.
In order for the Steelers to have made the playoffs in 2022, they needed more than the Patriots and Dolphins to lose on Sunday. They needed the defense to create more splash throughout the season — that's difficult to do when Watt missed seven games and played several more games at less than 100 percent. The offense was always going to be inconsistent with the transition at quarterback from an 18-year future Hall of Famer to a rookie.
Finishing 9-8 in a transition year surely isn't anything to be ashamed of, especially when they started the season 2-6. It shows this defense is capable of being impactful when healthy. It shows that the offense got better down the stretch, which was the ultimate goal on that side of the ball. It also shows that this team found a way to come together and play complementary football, no matter how unbalanced they were earlier in the year.
"I'm appreciative of the efforts today. I'm appreciative of the efforts all year," Tomlin said. "We're an evolving group, and that evolution continued even into today. But I'm just appreciative of the collective. I'm appreciative of the men, not what they're capable of, but what they're willing to do. In the face of adversity that football presents, in the face of adversity that life presents, we have an opportunity to kind of display some things in all of that. Hopefully we learn something."
THE MULTIMEDIA
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