Though it hasn’t been the tallest task in the world this season, the Pittsburgh Steelers shut out the New England Patriots in the second half of last night’s game at Acrisure Stadium. The only problem is they gave up three touchdowns in the first half, and that proved to be enough.
Though one score was aided by a takeaway that gave the Patriots possession right outside the Steelers’ 10-yard line, their other two scoring drives traversed more than half the field. They moved the ball 75 yards on their opening drive, QB Bailey Zappe connecting twice with TE Hunter Henry and once to RB Ezekiel Elliott. So what was different in the second half.
“Nothing, really. We just had to stop BSing, and that’s all that was”, CB Joey Porter Jr. said after the game, via audio provided by the team’s media department. “That’s all the adjustments we had from the first half to the second, and I feel like that showed”.
Asked to explain what he meant by his comment about stopping the BSing, he said it was about “guys doing their job. Everybody can’t make a splash play, so if we just stay doing our job, we’ll be fine”.
While he wasn’t about to name names, one player who might have had an issue there was S Damontae Kazee, who made a couple of attempts on the football that led to negative plays.
“It’s film study”, Porter added in further stressing the importance of everybody doing only what they are asked to do. “Anticipating a play that you think is gonna happen and it doesn’t. Stuff like that always happens, so we’ve just got to stick to our job”.
The Patriots scored only 13 points in their previous three games combined prior to last night’s win over the Steelers. It was just the second time all season they scored 20-plus points and is in fact a new high. They scored 20 in the opener in a loss to the Philadelphia Eagles and had since scored no higher than 17 in any other game before running into Pittsburgh’s defense.
How exactly does that happen? Well, perhaps Zappe really is better than Mac Jones and they should have made the change at quarterback much sooner. Yet this is the same quarterback who led the offense to a scoreless effort in a 6-0 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers on Monday.
“They were doing everything that we thought they were gonna do”, Porter insisted. “We just missed the plays we were supposed to make, and I feel like we really calmed down in the second half. But we’ve just got to come out like that”.
So they didn’t throw any curve balls to confuse the Steelers and manufacture offense. The defense was just beaten by a team on its second quarterback with several skill players missing due to injuries. Yet they held the Patriots to just three first downs in all of the second half and 79 total yards. Why did it take them so long to settle it down?
