By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh Steelers running back Willie Parker breaks for a first down during the fourth quarter.
DENVER -- Against the National Football League's Rocky-bottom run defense, your borderline helpless Broncos, the Steelers came out last night looking to establish the pass.
Me neither.
The proclivity of coaching staffs to outsmart themselves with an extra week to prepare is way too subjective a notion to carry any documentation, but you can't help but notice this morning that Denver is 15-4 coming off an open week while Mike Tomlin's first crew is 0-1.
The Steelers did almost nothing to disguise their aerial intent from the start last night, as a game-opening scoring drive of 60 yards included only 3 yards on the ground. By the end of the quarter, the Steelers had 10 rushing yards on three attempts. By halftime, offensive coordinator Bruce Arians had called 21 passes to 12 rushes as the Steelers dug into a 14-point deficit.
"The flow of the game," Tomlin said in the minutes after consecutive Steelers road losses, "prevented us from running the ball as much as we would like."
From Tomlin's perspective, there wasn't much resembling flow to this Steelers effort until after halftime, and though his offense scored touchdowns on all three second-half possessions to forge a 28-28 tie with only 70 seconds remaining, his defense countered with a shaggy last-minute performance that permitted an unimpeded Broncos drive to the Steelers' 32, from where Jason Elam launched a winning 49-yard field goal as the clock expired.
"We learned about ourselves," Tomlin said. "Because there was adversity."
Most all of it self-inflicted by the curious game plan.
There were perhaps a handful of plays in that fitful first half on which the Steelers were essentially compelled to throw the ball, but certainly not two handfuls. There was only one play, in fact, on which a deep pass was compulsory -- a desperation attempt from the Denver 48 with three seconds on the clock.
Of course, on the one play on which the Steelers simply had to throw, they didn't. Instead, the Steelers lined up for a 65-yard field goal.
Note to staff: There are no 65-yard field goals.
Jeff Reed left that one short, as has everyone in the long history of the sport, and the Broncos rode three Steelers turnovers to a 21-7 advantage at halftime.
Then suddenly, the Steelers rebooted the offense, emerging from their Invesco Field locker room with their stated identity intact, running the ball on the first six plays of the third quarter, even if one of those came on a Ben Roethlisberger scramble for 11 yards up the middle. The lone pass on the drive that pulled the Steelers within 21-14 was a fastball Big Ben fired at Santonio Holmes between Dre Bly and Nick Ferguson in the end zone. Ferguson walloped Holmes, who can't have a complete memory of how he possibly hung on.
Desperate to prove they are not as pitiful as their previous three games would indicate -- they had been outscored, 102-37, in those 12 quarters -- the Broncos cobbled together an exhaustive 13-play, 79-yard drive that stretched the lead back to two touchdowns as the third quarter became history.
But Arians' newly balanced offense had begun to gain traction, and Denver had no solution for it in the entirety of the second half.
Rookie Matt Spaeth's third touchdown of the season made it 28-21 with 10:10 remaining, and when Heath Miller caught Roethlisberger's fourth touchdown pass of the game in the right corner of the end zone, the Steelers looked suspiciously like they had snaked into position to win in spite of themselves.
Denver Broncos kicker Jason Elam (1) watches with Pittsburgh Steelers special teams players Ike Taylor, second from left, and Troy Polamalu, fourth from left, and Broncos special teams player Chad Mustard, left, as Elam's kick sails through the uprights for the winning score in the fourth quarter of the Broncos' 31-28 victory in an NFL football game in Denver on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007.
Jay Cutler whipped the Broncos upfield from his 20, hitting tight end Tony Scheffler for 16 yards to the 36, wideout Brandon Marshall for 9 to the 45, and, after James Harrison was flagged for lining up in the neutral zone to put the ball at midfield, Cutler zipped a slant pass to Glenn Martinez for a first down at the Steelers' 39 with 30 seconds left. The 13-yard completion to Daniel Graham that followed immediately was reviewed automatically when an incomplete pass was ruled on the field. It was evident enough that Denver coach Mike Shanahan signaled incomplete from his own sideline, but an official review resulted in a complete pass at the 30 with 26 seconds left.
After Selvin Young lost 1 yard to the 31, the Broncos let the clock wind to 0:02 and sent Elam on stage as the executioner.
"We felt like we had time to get back in the football game if we could stop them," Tomlin said about his halftime adjustments. "We didn't want to be one-dimensional in the second half."
Well that's nifty. But he certainly was content to be one-dimensional in the first half, and it wasn't the dimension called for against this particular desperate opponent.
First published on October 22, 2007 at 1:37 am
Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.
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