The Pittsburgh Steelers have a reason to feel slighted by the final minute of a 27-24 loss to the New England Patriots. But there’s also no doubt the Steelers mishandled the situation.
A call by officials nullified what looked like a game-winning touchdown for the Steelers, but it didn’t have to be the end. They still had another chance to score. Instead, they botched it. Pittsburgh could have — and should have — been much better prepared on a final play that ended with a Patriots interception.
Much of the problem for the Steelers was that Ben Roethlisberger and the coaches had a different opinion on how to handle that play.
Let’s set the scene:
The Steelers had enough time left to win the game
Right after they surrendered the lead, a 69-yard reception for JuJu Smith-Schuster put the Steelers 10 yards from the end zone. Roethlisberger appeared to take advantage of the field position by finding Jesse James for a touchdown on the next play. But after a review, officials ruled James bobbled the ball when he went to the ground:
Should it have been ruled a catch? In a world of common sense, absolutely. But the NFL’s catch rules say that a player has to control a ball through the process of going to the ground and that means it was probably called correctly by the letter of the law — even if it’s an unpopular rule.
But either way, it left the Steelers with about 30 seconds and a second down on the 10-yard line. Pittsburgh had no timeouts but had three downs to try and win the game. The Steelers put themselves in a tight spot, though, by throwing a 3-yard pass to Darrius Heyward-Bey that kept the clock running in bounds.
That’s when things got messy.
Did Ben know what down it was?
On third down, the Steelers hurried and got a snap off with nine seconds left on the clock. It was this jumbled mess of a fake spike, and only Eli Rogers actually did much of anything against a Patriots defense that didn’t have to defend anyone else.
Every player on the offense other than Roethlisberger and Rogers appeared to think a spike was coming.
"I knew there was a chance he'd spike it, but I wasn't 100 percent sure,” Jesse James said, via PennLive.com. “I just heard him talking so I knew there was a chance he might try to do something with it. It was third down, so he wanted to give it a rip, didn't want to just put the ball in the ground and have to kick a field goal.”
The confusion stemmed from the fact that Roethlisberger was yelling at his team to spike the football and set up another play:
“It wasn’t a fake spike, I was yelling ‘clock it’ because I felt like that the thing to do was to clock it and give yourself another play,” Roethlisberger told reporters in the locker room. “It came from the sideline ‘Don’t clock it, don’t clock it.’ Well at that time, everyone thinks we’re clocking and I don’t have time to try and get everyone lined up.”
Uhh Ben ... why in the world would you want to clock it?
If the Steelers spiked the ball, it would’ve set up a fourth down on the 7-yard line. At that point, the right call is likely for a game-tying field goal to send the game to overtime.
Assuming Mike Tomlin isn’t feeling incredibly daring on fourth down, the third down was Pittsburgh’s last chance at a go-ahead touchdown before settling for the conservative approach. It certainly shouldn’t have taken Roethlisberger more than 20 seconds to call and run a no-huddle play that looked more organized than the one that happened instead.
After the game, Roethlisberger said it was offensive coordinator Todd Haley in his ear telling him not to spike the football on third down.
“That’s coming from the head guy, Coach Tomlin, so maybe they wanted a field goal,” Roethlisberger said. “I don’t know, so maybe that’s on me. Maybe I should’ve just clocked it or whatever it is, I don’t know. We’re not going to look back and second-guess anything.”
Roethlisberger says he’s not dwelling on the finish, but Sunday was a tough pill for the Steelers to swallow. They almost beat the Patriots, a team that has owned them for the better part of a decade. Pittsburgh was also on the verge of a win that would’ve essentially locked up home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. Now a trip to the Super Bowl for the Steelers likely goes through Gillette Stadium in New England.
If the Steelers had a better grasp on how to handle the final 30 seconds, their fortunes could be much more favorable heading into January.