Jan 13, 2018 5 min read

Ben Roehtlisberger is not going to throw five interceptions against the Jaguars today. You can bet your life savings on that.

But, if he doesn’t, does that mean the Steelers are going to win and advance to the AFC Championship game next week? Of course not, but that seems to be why lots of people, including some of the experts, are so confident that the Steelers are going to win.

Roethlisberger was intercepted five times back in October in a 30-9 loss to Jacksonville. Two were returned for touchdowns and another led to a score. That’s a 9-9 tie without the interceptions, right?

And the Jaguars only got to 30 on a 90-yard run in garbage time by Leonard Fournette.

The problem is the nine points the Steelers scored. It’s hard to score points when you keep giving the ball to your opponent, but the Steelers got inside the Jaguars’ 20-yard line three times, including once to the two and couldn’t do any better than a Chris Boswell field goal. It was a pathetic performance by the Steelers’ offense but, as it turned out, the Jaguars’ defense wasn’t given enough credit.

Here we are three months later and the Jaguars have what most people believe is the best defense in the NFL.

And the temperature at kickoff should be about 15 degrees. It’s perfect playoff weather for a team that likes to run the ball and play good defense. That’s what the Jaguars do. Not a lot has been said about the weather being a factor but, if it has been mentioned, it’s been as a positive for the Steelers because of where the Jaguars play their home games.

Will the cold weather be a bigger problem for the Jaguars because they’re a Florida team or will it be a bigger problem for the Steelers because they’ve become a pass-first team with Roethlisberger, who has averaged 37 passes per game this season?

Roethlisberger threw the ball 55 times in the loss to Jacksonville and had two games with 45 attempts and one with 66, all wins.

The NFL ball get’s hard and slippery on really cold days. That’s why Tom Brady liked to have the ball boys make the footballs just a little softer on days like today.

The Jaguars don’t need cold weather to make them reluctant to bring an aerial circus. Their quarterback is Blake Bortles.

So, warm-weather team or not, the weather favors them. It’s not a good day for any quarterback to be throwing the ball 40 times.

And Antonio Brown playing at what appears to be less than 100 percent is another good reason for the home team to play good old-fashioned Steelers playoff football.

Here’s a prediction. If the Steelers throw the ball less than 28 times they win – probably easily.

If they throw it 28 times or more they lose.

Just don’t bet your life savings on that.

• Keith Jackson died Friday night. He was 89. Did you ever hear anybody say they didn’t like his football play-by-play? I never did. I also don’t know of anyone saying or writing anything negative about him personally. That’s pretty impressive for a guy who was as visible as he was for so long. He will always be the voice of college football, but he also did Monday Night Football and Major League Baseball on ABC.

You can hear him on the call of the 1979 World Series, the last one that included the Pirates. When Jackson called a college football game, at least until late in his career, anybody who watched college football heard it because it was almost always the only game on television. Once in a while there would be a doubleheader but ABC was the only network carrying games and it picked a Game of the Week. And it was almost always a game you wanted to see. Saturday TV in the fall is oversaturated with football now and no game has the big-deal feel that the big-deal games used to have.

And Jackson was ridiculously good at what he did at a time when being that good could really be appreciated.

• It’s amazing how much better the Penguins look when the stars come out. They’ve scored 10 goals in their last two games and Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessell have seven goals and 10 assists.
• If you ever wonder where the St. Louis Cardinals get the money to be a top-10 revenue team in Major League Baseball, all you have to look at is where their offseason caravan stops. Six states – Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Arkansas and Tennessee. They have a huge footprint leftover from the days when they were the only MLB team west of the Mississippi.

They draw three million fans per year and have a $1 billion local TV contract.

• More time has passed between the last time the Pirates went to the World Series and now than the time from when the U.S. entered World War II and the Pirates won the 1979 World Series.
• The Pirates traded Gerrit Cole and are probably going to deal Andrew McCutchen. Why not end the agony in one fell swoop? Throw in Josh Harrison and really shake things up.