Anytime the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens get together, it’s a big-time matchup. Anytime the division lead is on the line, the stakes are raised all the more. But Sunday’s game and win meant more to LB Patrick Queen than anyone else inside Acrisure Stadium, something Mike Tomlin embraced before kickoff and after the game.
“It just seemed like right for us,” Tomlin told Bob Pompeani on The Mike Tomlin Show of sending Queen out for the coin toss. “He’s been that type of a guy for us. Probably the only reason he hadn’t been elected captain for us is ’cause he’s so new to us.”
Typically, only the Steelers’ captains take the field for the coin toss: QB Russell Wilson, DL Cam Heyward, EDGE T.J. Watt, and ST’er Miles Killebrew. But the team made an exception for this one, adding Queen to the mix. It was his first game facing the Ravens since leaving in free agency. Queen was transparent about the free agent process that led him to Pittsburgh. After his fifth-year option was declined last summer, the Ravens didn’t offer him a contract and Queen hasn’t spoken to the coaching staff or front office since March.
Fueled by the matchup, Queen played one of his best games of the year. He led the team with 10 tackles and forced a key fumble late in the first half to give Pittsburgh its first-half lead back.
As much as the X’s and O’s matter, Tomlin knows he coaches players. Not a whiteboard.
“It’s important that we recognize the human component of what we do from time to time,” he said. “That was a personal game for him for a lot of reasons, obviously. And it’s okay to acknowledge that. It’s okay to support that and tee that up.”
Queen is hitting his stride at the right time. He flew around the field in the Steelers’ Week 10 win over the Washington Commanders and followed that up with a heck of an encore performance versus the Ravens. Now, he’ll have to keep that energy on a short week as he gets his first taste of what Steelers-Browns is like. A similarly intense rivalry but with more contempt for each other than Steelers-Ravens.
