The title says it all: Ben Roethlisberger had an incredibly bad day. This ugly loss to the Ravens stuck a nail right into the Steelers’ playoff hopes.
All sides of the ball for the Steelers were terrible as Marc stated here. However, I’m just going to focus on how horrifying Big Ben performed today.
24/34 passes completed? Not bad actually. But it was the 215 yards, zero touchdowns and two interceptions that he threw that caused me to rip my hair out in chunks.
It seemed to me as though that the play calling was too “playmaking” as opposed to adjusting to the flow of the game. The calls were continuously risky, overlooking the checkdown for the big play that usually wasn’t there.
Of course, a lot of this blame can fall to Todd Haley for calling some doo doo plays, but Ben was frequently over throwing his receivers, misjudging the coverage, and taking too damn long on his audibles.
One such example of Big Ben’s misjudgment was on a first and ten on the PITT 37 yard line. Instead of throwing it to Heath Miller for the easy first down, he forced it deep down the middle intended for Antonio Brown which was then intercepted by Daryl Smith.
Another obvious mistake was throwing an interception at the Ravens’ one yard line to Jimmy Smith, again trying to force it to Antonio Brown. He was really lucky that Courtney Upshaw lined up in the neutral zone which erased Smith’s pick six.
It’s very embarrassing that this “magma hot” Pittsburgh Steelers squad can’t even beat the Ravens during their worst season in years. They’re without Terrell Suggs, the leader of their defense, and they still managed to contain this offense.
Its very ridiculous that the Steelers dropped a game so imperative so late in the season. Now that the New York Jets have defeated the New England Patriots in an overtime spectacle, Pittsburgh is on the outside looking in as they prepare to face the Cleveland Browns next week to wrap up their 2015 regular season.
Every Steeler fan should tune in to that Bills-Jets game and pray that Buffalo takes care of New York. Its kind of ironic that the Steelers will have to rely on a former Raven to lead his team to victory so that Pittsburgh can make the playoffs.
However, that game won’t matter if they don’t handle business in Cleveland first.
Stats and info courtesy of NFL.com and Steelers.com
