There aren’t a ton of road games the Pittsburgh Steelers play for which there isn’t at least some visible, often audible, presence of their own fans. Whether through travel or diasporic migration, the Black and Gold finds itself anywhere football is—and many places it’s not.
Steelers fans showed up to yesterday’s game against the Houston Texans on the road, but it didn’t help. I recall one moment during the game when there was a very audible “MUUUTH” chant after TE Pat Freiermuth caught a pass, for example. But by and large, the home crowd shut that down. And that’s exactly what Texans QB C.J. Stroud wanted to see.
“We’re fighting our tails off every day to make sure y’all walk around with Texans gear pride”, he said, about Houston’s tumultuous recent history and the rookie’s part in resurrecting the franchise into respectability, via Will Kunkel of FOX 26 Houston on Twitter.
“Y’all walk around with that swag that we walk around with when we get a dub. I take that real personal”, he said. “It’s up to us to work every day and put the work in. You’ve seen, the Steelers fans came, and they showed out today in our stadium and we sent them home. I think our fans felt the energy, like, ‘We ain’t playing today’, from the get-go”.
And that’s pretty much how it happened. The Texans scored a touchdown on their opening drive—really, three times, with the first two touchdowns being negated by penalties. The drive consumed six minutes of game clock and spanned 69 net yards over 12 plays. The Steelers’ first drive ended in an interception.
Indeed, Houston scored on four of its six first-half possessions, albeit mostly field goals, before pulling away late. Pittsburgh punted on its next four possessions.
They came out playing much better to start the second half, but their drives stalled, and head coach Mike Tomlin settled for field goals rather than to push it on fourth down. The closest the game ever got was 16-6. When they did finally go for it on fourth and 1 from Houston’s 33, it was a disastrous play that left QB Kenny Pickett injured.
Houston scored touchdowns on its next and final two possessions after that, the Steelers moving onto Mitch Trubisky as quarterback for the remainder, throughout the fourth quarter. Suffice it to say, they did not make it any more competitive from that point forward.
This was the Steelers’ second road game, having fared much better a week ago against the Las Vegas Raiders. The fans showed out for that one as well, and while it ended up close, they controlled most of the game until late.
Not so in Texas this time around. They were shown to be the inferior team for the day in virtually every way imaginable. Anybody wearing a Steelers jersey was likely feeling a lot more disgust than pride walking out of NRG Stadium. Which was precisely Stroud’s point. If you’re coming here to root for the other team, don’t bother. You’re gonna have a bad time.
