Scared money don’t make money. That was Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin’s message to his club this week. Coming off a three-game losing streak that may prove too deep a hole to dig out of, he was encouraging his clan to be bold and go for the jugular.
As the scoreboard bears out, it worked. The 34 points scored by the offense was the most that they put up all season, and the most they’d managed to score in a game that they actually won in years. their 23-point win is also quite a rarity, again, the last one coming years ago.
The Steelers only had three explosive plays on the day, all of them to WR George Pickens. The shortest went for 44 yards. He also scored from 66 yards out and from 86, the latter coming on their second play of the game from scrimmage. And not by coincidence.
“Coach T talked about it earlier this week that we got to be able to take those shots and kind of let our nuts hang out there”, C Mason Cole said after the game, via Brooke Pryor on Twitter. “There just ain’t nothing to lose. Good to see the success down there, and good to see us complete those shots. It changed the game for us”.
The 86-yard catch-and-run score off a slant set an early tone that they were actually able to maintain. Just a week earlier they went up by two touchdowns early only to allow 30 unanswered points. Not this time against the Bengals, however.
Even when Cincinnati finally got on the board with a big-play 80-yard strike to WR Tee Higgins, the offense was able to respond immediately. That’s when QB Mason Rudolph hit Pickens for his second touchdown for 66 yards.
Of course, the biggest variable was Rudolph at quarterback. He started because Tomlin decided to bench Mitch Trubisky as Kenny Pickett’s backup, and the latter was not quite ready to return from an ankle injury just yet. The head coach declined to say who would start next week assuming Pickett is healthy enough to play.
Rudolph did miss some shots—he went 17-for-27 overall and was kicking himself after the game for a miss to WR Diontae Johnson late that would have helped seal the deal even further—but given the standard of execution at the position this season, it doesn’t seem to matter.
The Steelers certainly let their nuts hang out for this one—chestnuts, of course, for this time of year—and it paid off. Rudolph proved to be the right man for the job on this day. Right now, though, it’s the holidays. They can figure out the rest after unwrapping some presents.
