Nov 17, 2013 4 min read

PITTSBURGH – If the Steelers can turn around this season, which had been pretty much a disaster in the first half, they will be able to point to a series of plays in Sunday’s 37-27 win over Detroit as the reason.

With the Steelers on the ropes, down 27-23 after having just been forced to settle for a field goal despite having three shots to score from the Detroit 1, the Lions drove to the Pittsburgh 10 early in the fourth quarter.

Facing a fourth-and-5 at the Pittsburgh 10, Detroit head coach Jim Schwartz sent out his field goal team for an apparent attempt that would have given the Lions a 30-23 lead.

Instead, the Lions tried a fake on a direct snap to holder Sam Martin. Martin doesn’t double as a quarterback, running back or any other kind of back who might be comfortable with the football in his hands.

Martin is a punter. And he looked like a punter running with the ball, fumbling it when hit by defensive linemen Cameron Heyward and Steve McLendon at the Pittsburgh 7, three yards short of the first down marker.

“It was a great play by Cam and Steve,” said Steelers safety Ryan Clark, who recovered the loose ball. “They read it perfectly.”

The Steelers recovered the loose ball but faced a crucial moment of their own moments later after two Le’Veon Bell runs netted just one yard.

On third-and-9 at the Pittsburgh 4, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger fired a pass toward wide receiver Antonio Brown, who was blanketed by a pair of Detroit defenders.

Brown, all 5-10 and 186 pounds of him, leaped into the air to snag the ball and held on despite taking a big hit at the Detroit 20. Thirteen plays later – the most crucial a fourth-down conversion on a 3-yard pass from Roethlisberger to Bell – the Steelers scored on a second opportunity from the Detroit 1.

It was the defining drive of this game. And if the Steelers somehow find a way to earn a playoff spot this season – they’re now a game out of the second wild card spot in the AFC – it would be the defining drive of the season.

“Hopefully, three or four months from now, we can look back at it and say it was,” said tight end Heath Miller of the 16-play, 97-yard touchdown drive.

Just as meaningful was the way the Steelers defense rebounded in the second half after recovering from a second-quarter shellacking at the hands of Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford and receiver Calvin Johnson.

Stafford threw for 267 yards in the second quarter, and Johnson had five receptions for 173 yards and two touchdowns as Detroit turned a 14-0 deficit into a 27-20 halftime lead.

Cornerback Ike Taylor compared covering Johnson to getting into a street fight. He dealt some blows, took some blows from Johnson and, in the end, came out the victor.

“We stuck with it,” said Taylor of his one-on-one matchup with Johnson. “It’s not how you start; it’s how you finish. We finished pretty good in the second half. I don’t know what they had in the second half, but it was enough for our team to win.”

What Johnson had in the second half was no catches. Stafford threw for 35 yards in the final two quarters.

It was a microcosm of the Steelers’ season to this point. They looked good and bad at different points. But, most important, they have continued to fight.

Can they turn around what has been to this point a lost season? Perhaps. Losses to Minnesota, Oakland and Tennessee still loom large.

But as the Steelers showed Sunday, they can go toe-to-toe with a team considered one of the league’s best and win. And outside of a trip to Green Bay in late December, there aren’t any great teams left on the schedule. Heck, there aren’t many good ones remaining.

The easy thing to do would have been to write the season off and quit, as apparently many fans have. There were 8,000 empty seats Sunday and many of the seats that were filled, were inhabited by people wearing blue and silver clothing.

“We are out to play every game like it is the most important,” said quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. “I told you guys that I wasn’t going to quit. There was no quit from me or from anyone on the team.”

And there won’t be, regardless of how bad things have looked.

F. Dale Lolley can be reached at dlolley@observer-reporter.com