The Baltimore Ravens exposed the Pittsburgh Steelers on Wednesday. Let me explain:
The Baltimore Ravens lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers. That was inevitable. The Ravens were down almost 20 players due to their Covid-19 nightmare of a week.
They didn’t have their starting quarterback. They didn’t have a couple of their best offensive linemen, and they were thinner on the defensive front than any team I’ve ever seen.
Robert Griffin III tried. It wasn’t pretty. Greg Roman never opened up and went for it. That’s a different conversation though.
The Ravens were supposed to lose this game what they were not supposed to do is make this such a fight. The Ravens held the Steelers to 19 points in a game where people thought Pittsburgh would roll an embarrass Baltimore.
The defense gave an incredible effort being on the field almost what seemed like the entire game. The Ravens had to punt seven times they also turned the ball over twice.
Not only did the Ravens’ uninventive offense sputter but the team did the things they could not do to win this game. You would have thought looking at the box score that this was a normal Raven vs. Steelers game. You know tough battle, points are at a premium and all that. It wasn’t a normal battle, in this rivalry. That’s the entire point.
You’re telling me that the Steelers only had 334 total yards and averaged only 4.7 yards per play in a game where the Ravens were so depleted and so up against a wall? You’re telling me that the Ravens almost won this game and they were three for 13 on third-down conversions? They had 49 total plays on offense how do you win like that? Wait how do you only lose by five like that?
The Steelers didn’t come into this game thinking it was going to be hard work; they didn’t look like an undefeated team. You have to have the sense that if the Ravens play them in the playoffs with this type of effort they’ll probably pull away with a victory.
The Raven should have beaten them earlier in the season. They just gave Pittsburgh a fight with a lot of practice squad players. While there are no more victories, the Ravens just proved that they can play with the Steelers anytime anywhere under any circumstances (To borrow a line from the BYU football team).
The Steelers on the other hand look like a team that’s 11-0 because of an easy schedule. If it wasn’t for a highly controversial roughing the passer penalty against the Cowboys, they are probably not undefeated right now. The Cowboys, by the way, are not a very good football team.
The Steelers are a good football team. The only thing they have proven is that they can beat bad teams. It feels like they’re playing down to the level of their opponent.They’ve been in close games plenty of times this year.
Ben Roethlisberger will likely be the comeback player of the year. Mike Tomlin might be on his way to the NFL Coach of the Year.
T.J. Watt is probably going to be the Defensive Player of the year. With all that, they barely scraped by this version of the Ravens?
The Bottom Line:
The Ravens exposed the Steelers. They are undefeated but they didn’t deliver the type of performance they should have, They’re supposed to be better than they are.
The Ravens have given a great effort. The Steelers need to be careful or their perfect season could be ruined somewhere along the way.