I’ve given you the gift you always wanted. A fun edition of “Stats of the Weird.”
– Where to even begin. The Pittsburgh Steelers scored 30 points for the first time in well more than one full year, last doing so November 20, 2022 in a 37-30 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.
It’s the first time Pittsburgh’s scored 30-plus points in a win in 58 games, easily the NFL’s longest drought until last night. Something they hadn’t accomplished since beating…the very same Bengals 36-10 in Week 10 of the 2020 season. A game less than 6,000 people attended due to crowd restrictions in the pandemic. That’s how long ago it was.
– Meaning, Pittsburgh broke their 400-yard streak against the Bengals in Week 12. And they broke their 30-plus points streak against the Bengals Saturday night. All without accomplishing the other drought. In Week 12, they didn’t record 30 points (a 16-10 win) and in Week 16, they came close but didn’t reach 400 yards, finishing with 397.
– We’re about to load you up with weird stats. WR George Pickens finished the game with four catches for 195 yards and two touchdowns.
– It’s the most receiving yards by a Steelers’ wide receiver since Antonio Brown’s 213 in 2017.
– Pickens is the first Steelers WR to have two 66-plus yard touchdowns in franchise history. His 86-yarder is the team’s longest passing score since JuJu Smith-Schuster’s 97-yard touchdown in 2018 against the Detroit Lions. It’s the longest first quarter offensive touchdown in Steelers’ history.
Pickens now has three touchdowns of 65-plus yards this year, breaking a tie with the Miami Dolphins’ Tyreek Hill.
Pickens is the first WR to have three such touchdowns in a single season since the Bengals’ Ja’Marr Chase in 2021. Chase is also the last receiver to have multiple 65-plus receiving touchdowns in the same game, doing so in a wild Week 17 win against the Kansas City Chiefs.
If you’re wondering, the last receiver to have four such touchdowns in the same season is the New York Giants’ Odell Beckham Jr. in 2015.
– Pickens averaged an absurd 48.8 yards per catch Saturday night. He’s the first player with that kind of average on four or more catches since Desean Jackson in 2010, who caught four passes for 210 yards and a touchdown.
Pickens is now just the eighth player in NFL history to have at least four receptions, 190 yards, two touchdowns, and average 45-plus yards per reception in a single game. And he’s the first since the St. Louis Rams’ Eddie Kennison in 1996.
– Pickens’ average is the highest in Steelers’ history of any player with at least four catches in one game.
– Pickens was responsible for more than two-thirds of the Steelers’ passing yards Saturday, 67 percent.
– One more wide receiver stat not related to Pickens. Calvin Austin III had a 7-yard touchdown run in this game, the longest rushing score by a Steelers’ WR since Darrius Heyward-Bey’s 29-yard touchdown against the Cleveland Browns in 2017.
– Pittsburgh has five offensive touchdowns of at least 65 yards this season, their most since 1988. That year, WR Louis Lipps had four of them, all receiving, while WR Dwight Stone added the other.
– Defensively, LB Elandon Roberts was hurt early in the second quarter of the game. He still finished tied-fourth on the team with five solo tackles.
– T.J. Watt has at least a half-sack in eight of his last nine games.
– Safety Eric Rowe picked off a pass in his first game as a Steeler. It’s his first pick since Week 14 of the 2020 season. Though specific, he and Patrick Peterson became the first pair of 30-plus year old Steelers to intercept a pass in the same game since William Gay and James Harrison in a 2015 win over the Cleveland Browns.
– Here’s a wild one. Mike Tomlin won two challenges last night, overturning a pair of initially-ruled completions. It’s the first time Tomlin won two challenges in the same game since 2013. Which also came in December and also against the Bengals and also came in a game where Pittsburgh scored 30 points. Insane.
– In two games against the Bengals this year, the Steelers are 48.4 percent on third down. They’re 33.5 percent against the rest of the NFL.
– The Bengals had three combined rushing first downs in their two games against the Steelers.
– Finally, I bet QB Jake Browning is happy to be done seeing the Steelers. In two starts against them, he has two touchdowns and four interceptions (QB rating of 79.4). In his three other starts against the rest of the NFL, he has five touchdowns and two interceptions (QB rating of 112.6).
