Had Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown not scored with 9 seconds left in Sunday’s game against the Baltimore Ravens even I must admit that it would have been interesting to see if another play could have been gotten off before time expired.
Earlier this week, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger indicated during his weekly radio show that there would have likely been enough time to run a quarterback sneak. With that said, while offensive coordinator Todd Haley wouldn’t say Thursday afternoon what play would have been run had Brown not pulled off his Immaculate Extension, he did indicate that Roethlisberger, at the very least, would have had enough time to get the offense lined up in order to spike the football in order to stop the clock before it hit all zeros.
“We’ve had some internal discussions but I won’t let out what we said we were going to do,” Haley said during his weekly talk with the local media. “We could have gotten a clock though for sure. We were all clustered in one area, it wasn’t like a big play out in the field. I think we get it done easy, we’d get a stop with a second or two left.”
So, is getting lined up in a hurry in order to spike the football something the Steelers offense practices during their seven-shots drill that takes place during practice? In a word, yes.
“We practice it,” Haley said “I mean it’s a big part of what we do from a two-minute standpoint. It’s a double situation. It’s a two-minute situation that we’re in seven-shots and again, I think that the work that we’ve put in over the last couple of years, our guys thrive when they’re in that situation.”
Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about what would or wouldn’t have happened had Brown not scored on that quick pass from Roethlisberger. Additionally, we don’t have to spend countless hours wondering why Ravens safety Eric Weddle wasn’t flagged for face-masking Brown at the goal-line while attempting to keep him from scoring.
Sure, there will likely always be several “what-ifs” attached to the late touchdown by Brown, but none of them really matter at this point. Just enjoy the fact that Brown scored and in doing so made the Steelers the winners of not only the game, but the AFC North division as well.
