One year ago tonight, the Steelers were handed a last-second playoff victory gift wrapped in tiger-striped stupidity, the complete aesthetic opposite of the one they ripped from the Miami Dolphins Sunday at Heinz Field in a game that was over the minute it started.
Le’Veon Bell gained 11 yards on the first play from scrimmage, Antonio Brown gained 50 for a touchdown on the fifth, then 62 for another touchdown on the 12th for a 14-0 lead, and the next three hours were spent testing whether the depleted Dolphins could actually do anything about it against an increasingly menacing defense.
They could not.
For the seventh time in 17 games, Keith Butler’s platoon allowed only one touchdown, a meaningless 4-yard flip from Matt Moore to Damien Williams with the Steelers ahead 30-6. It was the 12th time the Steelers held their opponent to one touchdown or two, and the notion that this defense is more than just an erratic caboose attached to the club’s high-powered offensive engine deserves some discussion.
“We’re getting better each week; guys are startin’ to feel the energy,” said linebacker Bud Dupree, failing to note that this team is 4-0 since he arrived in the starting lineup. “I would love to say that [it’s because of me]. I hope that’s the case. I feel like we’re more confident. Everybody wants to be that person to make a play.”
The devastating play Dupree made on the scrambling Moore in the second quarter drew a roughing the passer penalty because the initial contact point was too high on Moore’s anatomy, and maybe because the remaining contact was too much like a truck hitting a opossum.
But most of Dupree’s contributions Sunday couldn’t be questioned. He was credited with only a half-sack among the Steelers’ five, but he was constantly in the Dolphins backfield.
“They hit us with a couple pressures that we picked up in practice, but we didn’t fit it up as well as we wanted to,” said Miami coach Adam Gase. “They had too much penetration. It was a tough defense; we knew what we were getting into.”
Moore had been sacked only once in Miami’s three previous games, but four Steelers nailed him Sunday (Lawrence Timmons twice), at least four others had a shot at him, and the growing pressure on the passer is no small part of why the Steelers haven’t allowed a 300-plus passing performance in the past eight games.
James Harrison’s forced fumble and Stephon Tuitt’s recovery constituted the biggest defensive play of the game because it came at the Steelers 8 when the lead might have been chopped to 20-13 in the final minute of the first half.
It was the first of three consecutive Dolphin giveaways, the clincher coming when Moore did not see Ryan Shazier floating in front of Jarvis Landry for a third-period interception. Perhaps Moore didn’t recognize Shazier with his shirt on.
As he had in 25-degree weather three weeks earlier in Cincinnati, Shazier performed his pregame protocols naked from the waist up. Except it was 17. The wind chill was 2. Usually only the fans are that crazy.
“I definitely think it fires the crowd up; some of my teammates probably think I’m crazy,” Shazier said after another blistering performance in the middle of the defense. “I just thought if some people think it’s too cold to play, I’ll just go out there and show that cold is a state of mind.”
Also a stage of frostbite and/or pneumonia, but sometimes crazy is the higher calling. Once Shazier intercepted Moore’s pass, the craziest notion at Heinz Field was that the Dolphins might be something other than dead.
“We’re definitely really confident in one another,” Shazier said about a defense that has permitted only two receivers to gain 100 yards in the past eight games, and then only on garbage time catches that allowed the Giants’ Odell Beckham Jr. to reach 100 and Miami’s Jarvis Landry to reach 102. “A lot of us understand what each other can do and when opportunities come our way, we have to make plays and a lot of guys are doing it. It was a different defense that we put out there [from the first Dolphins game Oct. 16]. A lot of guys are a lot healthier. A lot of guys are just better at their responsibility.”
A lot of guys in Kansas City right now are facing a long week of study, and I wouldn’t advise overloading it on Ben and Bell and Brown. The Steelers will arrive in Missouri Saturday as a balanced force, fully capable of domination on either side of the ball.
“We base our confidence [in the defense] off of what we see,” said Mike Tomlin after his team extended to eight the longest winning streak around here in 12 years. “We see these guys getting better every day. They work hard and we get our vibe off them in a lot of ways. We have belief in them.”
So now, if they can make believers of the Chiefs, they’ll be one step from the Super Bowl.
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com.
First Published: January 9, 2017, 5:00 a.m.
