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Steelers still need a better Roethlisberger

4 min read

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Ben Roethlisberger needs to play a lot better if the Steelers are going to average 30 points per game on their way to losing to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship game.

That was the universally accepted preseason analysis, wasn’t it?

One of the storylines coming out of the Steelers’ win in Kansas City last week was that Roethlisberger had played a lot better than he had against Jacksonville two weeks ago. He had five interceptions against the Jaguars and had nowhere to go but up. Roethlisberger would have had another game with more interceptions than touchdowns if not for a lucky 51-yard touchdown pass to Antonio Brown late in the fourth quarter. His hideous pass on fourth-and-two play with the Steelers up 12-10 bounced off Chiefs defender Phillip Gaines’ head and hung in the air perfectly for Brown to snag it and easily run down the sideline for a touchdown.

If that had been intercepted and the Chiefs had kicked a field goal to win 13-12, Roethlisberger’s passer rating would have been in the 70s and he would have spent another week talking about whether he was serious when he said he might not be able to do it anymore.

But a win is a win is a win, and the Steelers are at the top of the AFC with the Chiefs and New England Patriots.

It’s good news that they are there in spite of Ben Roethlisberger, as long as Roethlisberger starts looking like his old self sometime soon.

The Steelers’ defense won the game for them last week but it’s too early to say it’s good enough to play this well for the long haul.

Today it will be playing against a guy who has shown how quickly a quarterback can turn his game around. Andy Dalton went from being a laughingstock in his first two games to completing 73 percent of his passes with seven touchdowns, two interceptions and a 116 passer rating in his last three.

Lately, Dalton has been putting up the kinds of numbers expected of Roethlisberger.

The Steelers won’t beat the Bengals if Roethlisberger doesn’t play better than he has the last two weeks.

• SI.com reports that NFL owners spent more time talking about what to do about TV ratings at their meetings this week than they spent on what to do about national anthem protests, though the protests received most of the media coverage.

Twenty-five teams have seen a drop in local ratings and included in that group are the Dallas Cowboys (8 percent), Patriots (7 percent) and the Steelers (6 percent). The New York Jets are down 37 percent.

• Alex Ovechkin had 10 goals in his first eight games. And he was a minus-1.

• The only teams that have gone longer than the Pirates (1979) without winning a world series are the Cleveland Indians (1948) and teams who have never won one – the Milwaukee Brewers, Houston Astros, Seatttle Mariners, San Diego Padres, Washington Nationals and Texas Rangers. It’s amazing that so many expansion teams, including the Astros, who started playing in 1962, are still waiting for their first championship.

• The Nationals fired their manager, Dusty Baker, after winning back-to-back division championships.

Dumb.

• If you have seen video of Conor McDavid, you know that Sidney Crosby can’t skip a beat at 30 if he wants to maintain his status as best player in the world. McDavid’s speed can only be described as warp. He’s also skilled enough that he just might end up being Mario Lemieux with world class speed – a scary proposition.

• In his last nine games, going back to the 2016 postseason, Roethlisberger has six touchdown passes and 11 interceptions.

• Pitt’s three wins have come against Youngstown State, Rice and Duke. Better than nothing but not much. Still Bowl eligible, I presume.

• After much trashing of NFL games for being boring, it’s only fair to mention that the Oakland Raiders’ win over the Kansas City Chiefs Thursday was pure entertainment.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.

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