Colts “Optimistic” That Hasselbeck Will Play Sunday

It does appear to be good news on his injury front though with Pagano expecting Hasselbeck to play on Sunday in Jacksonville. They’re not a pushover as they used to be, but it’s a game the Colts really ought to win.

How did the Steelers grade out in the win?

The Steelers happen to have some pretty good weapons on offense and they were able to use all of them freely without fear of any pressure reaching their quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

“Oh, he should have stuck the landing.” said Ben Roethlisberger.

“I did get X-rays and I’m in a little bit of pain, but I don’t know anything else other than that, yet”, he said in his post-game press conference.

But instead of collapsing, the Steelers offense survived and is thriving again behind a healthy Roethlisberger, receivers who seem to have no ceiling as a group and halfback DeAngelo Williams, 32, who has had a rebirth with the Steelers. Brown leapt between two defenders to haul in a 48-yard gain then caught his second touchdown pass of the night 49 seconds into the fourth quarter. Markus Wheaton added a touchdown and tight end Jesse James added three early catches subbing for the injured Heath Miller. Williams had a long run of 21 yards and averaged 5.2 yards per carry. This game gave him his third 100 yard game of the 2015 season, and now he has 697 yards rushing on the season. Roethlisberger completed six straight passes on an 80-yard drive that ended with a 7-yard dart to Brown that pushed the Steelers ahead.

-Inside linebacker Nate Irving (wrist) is expected to be listed as week-to-week in practice after he was hurt in the Steelers game on Sunday night.

The spectacular performance by Antonio Brown possibly overshadows the spectacularly very bad performance by Jacoby Jones, as pointed out by the PPG’s Gene Collier. Chris Boswell made three field goals, which was a positive. The offense was outstanding and a couple coaching moves panned out, most notably adding Boykin to the nickel package and benching Jones at halftime. The Colts head coach repeated how he tried to instill into his team Monday the importance of getting hot down the stretch. Maybe it wasn’t Buffalo easy in Seattle, but easy enough that Mike Tomlin talked openly about exploring personnel changes in the secondary being “the prudent thing to do”.

It is hard to get overly excited.

Just when the Colts thought they were on their way to a touchdown, Steelers outside linebacker Jarvis Jones nixed that plan. The beat a bad team at home in primetime.

The team’s medical staff informed Pagano of Hasselbeck’s likely availability when practice resumes Wednesday, but Hasselbeck’s workload might be limited. But throw in that kickers are “only” hitting 93.7 percent of extra points now and it’s actually possible they’ve bought themselves an extra five or six points with this strategy (and indeed, Pittsburgh has missed two extra points this year).

-Guard Hugh Thornton (elbow) was held out of the Pittsburgh game after he was dinged up against Tampa Bay two weeks ago.