DeAngelo Williams Ruled Out, Ben Roethlisberger Questionable

Knowing they won’t be facing Brown and will encounter Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger at less than 100% given the injury to his throwing shoulder doesn’t change the fact they want to reassert themselves as the NFL’s No. 1 defense.

“He did a nice job”, Tomlin said of Roethlisberger after the Steelers’ final practice of the week. On Friday, Brown was ruled out of Sunday’s playoff game against the Denver Broncos.

Brown was injured Saturday in a helmet-to-helmet collision with Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict, who drew a three-game suspension from the National Football League for the hit in a testy game that escalated due to overaggressive contact and post-whistle jousting on both sides.

Roethlisberger said earlier that there’s no replacing Brown, but he has full confidence that the depth behind Brown-Markus Wheaton, Martavis Bryant, Darrius Heyward-Bey and Sammie Coates-will step up in his absence. He did not throw until Friday’s practice and is listed as questionable on the injury report.

With Brown ruled out of Sunday’s AFC divisional playoff game against the Denver Broncos because of a concussion resulting from a hit by Burfict, Jones apologized to him on Friday. I was very specific about what I asked him to do. “We get a lot of balls to him”, said Steelers offensive coordinator Todd Haley. He torched the Broncos with 16 catches for 189 yards in Pittsburgh’s 34-27 comeback win over the Broncos on December 20. As I mentioned before, Joey Porter did receive a $10,000 fine, as did Mike Munchak, which I think is more of a joke. While it’s likely that Roethlisberger will play, it just seems to be too much for the Steelers to overcome when they go up against a great Broncos defense. Antonio Brown, on the other hand, has some suitable backups in case he was not able to play.

Asked if the Broncos have to try to figure out how the Steelers would spread out the workload, Kubiak and the Broncos players gave something like a be-ready-for-anything answer.

“We’ve been without people before, that’s the nature of this thing”, Tomlin said. Steelers NT Steve McLendon could play a huge role in negating the ground game and creating long passing downs.