The Pittsburgh Steelers rode the arm of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to a 51-34 win Sunday over the Indianapolis Colts and only nine of his 49 passes fell incomplete. A few of those, however, were blatant drops by his receivers.
Not only did Roethlisberger carve up the Colts secondary to the tune of a career-record 522 passing yards, he did so by throwing the ball vertically down the field quite a bit in the game.
Including the plays wiped out by penalties, Roethlisberger threw 50 passes Sunday and six of those flew 20 or more yards past the line of scrimmage. Four of those six throws were completed.
In addition, Roethlisberger threw another 11 passes that traveled between 11-19 yards past the line of scrimmage and nine of those throws were completed.
Those 16 passes that stood resulted in 313 yards of passing offense and three touchdowns.
The Steelers offensive line did a tremendous job of protecting Roethlisberger Sunday and the offense’s ability to run the football early on in the game helped out tremendously when it came to play action.
The Steelers eligibles provide Roethlisberger with quite a bit of YAC (yards after the catch) Sunday on top of it all. Early count has the 40 completions resulting in 216 yards after the catch was made. Remember, that yardage reflects passes caught behind the line of scrimmage as well.
