The Pittsburgh Steelers grinded out a big-time win Sunday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, defeating the road favorites by a score of 20-18. Pittsburgh managed to come away on top of the Bucs in this home matchup despite being ravaged by injuries on both sides of the ball, including losing starting QB Kenny Pickett in the second half of the game after taking a big hit from LB Devin White and going into concussion protocol.
Mitch Trubisky came into the game and helped lead Pittsburgh to upset Tom Brady and the Bucs. When the media asked RG James Daniels about Trubisky and what stood out from his performance Sunday, he mentioned Trubisky’s ability to come into the game in a moment’s notice without adequate preparation as a key attribute that impressed him.
“It was pretty nice how he came in and how he didn’t have any practice reps with the starters, and he just came in and operated the offense,” Daniels said to the media in the locker room on video from Steelers.com. “I’m always impressed by people who can do that because personally I need someone, I’m someone who needs to practice, and them being able to come into the game without any reps and be able to do that is very impressive.”
Mitch Trubisky stepped in for Pickett and proceeded to have his best performance of the season coming off the bench compared to being a starter for Pittsburgh’s first four games of the season. Trubisky went 9/12 (75%) for 144 yards and a TD and carried the ball six times for five yards with a long on nine yards on the ground. He finished the outing with a QB rating of 142.4 in the upset win against the Buccaneers.
As a backup QB, you must be able to come in in a moment’s notice should the starter go down and be expected to keep the team afloat in the midst of chaos. That is exactly what former Pittsburgh Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger said recently on an edition of his podcast, and that statement held true on Sunday. Trubisky had been QB2 on the depth chart for the second week in a row after getting pulled at halftime in Week 4 against the Jets but had to come into the game and try and hold off The Boogeyman Tom Brady and the Buccaneers to give Pittsburgh the win.
Mission accomplished for Trubisky as he earned the praise for his efforts from HC Mike Tomlin as well as several other players on the roster, including Daniels to help keep Pittsburgh’s playoff hopes alive. While the team currently sits at 2-4, the rest of the AFC is a jumbled mess with only the Buffalo Bills sitting at 5-1 and the rest of the conference outside of the Las Vegas Raiders all within two games of each other. With Pittsburgh only a game back of the Ravens and Bengals in their own division, things are still very much open for Pittsburgh to make a run should the team get key contributors back healthy in the coming weeks thanks to the team’s surprising win last Sunday.
