TAMPA, Fla. — No truth to that story about the Steelers’ flight to Florida Sunday being delayed due to an excess of baggage, but, yeah, the Le’Veon Bell stuff and the continuing Antonio Brown drama felt like enough to ground a flight and a maybe a franchise.
The news that the New York Jets were exploring a trade for Bell, the AFC Jet Skier of the Week, almost seemed to make sense because the Jets have the cap room; it was more a matter of do they have the crap room. You’ve got to put up with a lot from the greatest inactive running back on the planet.
But the most egregious gross weight baggage overage on the young season’s first plane trip had to do with the massive volume of pejorative adjectives the so-called Steelers defense was lugging around in its carry-ons: beleaguered, embattled, disorganized, incommunicative, vulnerable, flammable, suspect, clueless, useless, and every plausible synonym that could be stuffed into an overhead bin.
Then a funny thing happened in the second quarter on Monday Night Football. This very same defense forced turnovers on four consecutive possessions to turn a football game and maybe a football season inside out.
Maybe, I said.
“When we communicate, we’re able to do more things,” said defensive end Cam Heyward. “When we don’t, we’re vulnerable , and in some cases we didn’t and we have to keep learning from it. Not every game is going to be perfect. It’s a matter of who can get off the field when they need to.
“I like the way we played in the first half. The third quarter was a little abysmal, but we fought back and we won the game. We were giving ourselves a chance at least. There is going to be adversity. They are going to be busted things. You just keep battling and thinking, ‘We can win this game.’”
Tampa quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, often called FitzMagic when he plays out of his mind, got himself intercepted more times in three possessions than he had in the season’s first two games. He wouldn’t have been in the starting lineup at all this season if Jameis Winston hadn’t been sidelined for groping an Uber driver, and the national pigskin punditry had already calcified around the notion that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would do well to stick with FitzMagic even when Winston arrived back on the scene, although not via Uber, which stripped him of his app.
The pass Fitzpatrick whipped to fellow Harvard matriculator Cameron Brate late in the first quarter was his ninth touchdown of the season and the eighth against the bedraggled Steelers secondary.
It would not be the last.
But Pittsburgh’s secondary authored a resurgence, and it started from what many thought the least likely source — Artie Burns, the third-year corner who had been so thoroughly roasted in the first two games that he’d been replaced in the starting lineup an hour earlier by Coty Sensabaugh.
Burns put his helmet into Chris Godwin’s belly early in the second period, dislodging the football that Mike Hilton scooped up near the Tampa 33. Almost immediately, Ben Roethlisberger executed a crossing route to Brown, who water-bugged 27 yards down the right sideline to the touchdown. It was the disgruntled wideout’s longest reception of the year, but as he crossed the goal line to swell the Steelers’ lead to 16-7, A.B. looked positively gruntled.
On the next possession, linebacker Jon Bostic, the thus-far underwhelming replacement for Ryan Shazier, blew in on Fitzpatrick and batted his pass skyward. Hilton stole that one too, and on Tampa’s subsequent possession, Fitzpatrick made it easier on everyone by simply throwing one to Bud Dupree, of all people, who returned it 10 yards to the end zone.
And FitzMagic wasn’t done.
His deep ball for Mike Evans near the end of the half was sailed right into the hands of rookie Terrell Edmonds. But that was the end of Fitzpatrick’s philanthropy.
“We just had better confidence this time,” said Hilton. “We knew the situation we were coming into. These guys were comin’ in hot, lookin’ to put up some points, so we had to do our best to get turnovers and get a short field for our offense, and we did that.
“Nobody lost confidence. The first two weeks were a struggle, but it’s a long season. We wanted to come out and get this first W in a prime-time game.”
Yet for all of its apparent karmic inversion, the besieged Steelers defense continued to signal its instability. Sensabaugh lasted two series as Burns’ replacement, then re-appeared in sub packages that still surrendered secondary acreage of alarming dimensions.
Had Fitzpatrick been as sharp as he had in the season’s first two weeks, the opportunities were there for another half-dozen touchdown passes or so. Nor was it lost on the veteran quarterback that if he just kept banging on this defense, he could drag the home team back into it late.
Which he did, because of course he did. This was the Steelers defense when it walked into Raymond James Stadium, and it was the Steelers defense when it walked out 30-27 winners on a night when it was good and bad and lucky. Tampa Bay had a punt return touchdown by DeSean Jackson in the second half called back on one of the game’s 22 penalties (13 by Pittsburgh) or the Steelers might still be winless this morning.
Down 30-20 in the final minutes, Fitzpatrick had no difficulty moving the Bucs 92 yards in 9 plays – it took all of 2:52 – and neither Burns or safety Sean Davis seemed to have any answer for why Mike Evans was floating free in the end zone with 5:43 left. That touchdown brought Tampa to within three points.
So was Mike Tomlin’s team any better than it was last week when it allowed six touchdown passes to Kansas City?
Maybe.
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com and Twitter @genecollier.
First Published: September 25, 2018, 11:00 a.m.
