The Pittsburgh Steelers (6-2-1) started with a victory over the Carolina Panthers (6-3) in week 10 – and in an absolutely impressive way: Pittsburgh opened the game with a touchdown flood and scratched several historic records as the game progressed. In the end, the Steelers cracked the 50-point mark, while Carolina will need the next few days for the reworking.
Right from the start the spectators in Pittsburgh saw an offensive show. After the Panthers had taken the lead to McCaffrey with an impressive, versatile drive over a TD pass, the Steelers answered with a full broadside: at the first Play from Scrimmage Roethlisberger (22/25, 328 YDS, 5 TD) found JuJu Smith cobbler to the 75-yard touchdown, the Panthers had fallen for the route concept of the Steelers. And it got a lot worse for Carolina.
The next drive ended after a play with another Steelers touchdown – from their own end zone Newton (23/29, 193 YDS, 2 TD, INT) had thrown a horrendous Pick Six over the middle against Pressure. The Steelers were unstoppable in this phase of the game, the next drive belonged to James Conner and ended again in the end zone and after Carolina had worked her way back over the short pass game and finally responded with a touchdown, the Big Play Steelers were back: an easy go route by Antonio Brown against Rookie Corner Daunte Jackson ended after 53 yards in the end zone.
Carolina simply had no defensive answers – not to the Big Plays in the passing game, which came several times over simple routes, and also not when the Steelers bet more on the run game and the short pass game. Pittsburgh opened the third quarter with a seven-minute controlled drive, which ended with a touchdown pass to McDonald.
Protection problems on the part of the Panthers, however, remained a central issue, even in the second half, and so the offense could never find its way back into the game. After a kick-off-return fumble, the Steelers put a touchdown on top of it, at the end of the third quarter Pittsburgh had 430 yards on their account. Eleven minutes before the end Josh Dobbs took over for Roethlisberger. The 52 points for Pittsburgh are the franchise maximum since November 25, 1984 against the Chargers.
The Steelers were able to do offensively what they wanted – and Roethlisberger took advantage of this ice cold. After a shaky start to the season, Pittsburgh’s quarterback has stabilised noticeably over the last few weeks, Roethlisberger found his matchups for Big Plays early and later distributed the ball very efficiently in the short pass game. Big Ben finished the game with more touchdown passes (5) than incompletions (3).
Yes, the Steelers had well designed Blitz packages and could cause Carolina problems with them. But they were hardly ever real overload flashes or 6-men rushes; the Panthers already had great difficulties with the 5-men rush. Then there were communication errors against the 4-men rush and Newton was under permanent pressure and the Panthers had to shift to a much more error-prone short pass game. Carolina’s O-Line has been a positive surprise so far, she saw no country in Pittsburgh.