Mike Tomlin: We’re focused on getting stench of last week off

They can take consolation in being the reason why the Pittsburgh Steelers may suffer the same fate.

The Steelers didn’t get the ball again until there was 4 seconds left.

Taking a respite from a season filled with losses and injuries, Baltimore upset the Steelers 20-17 on Sunday, leaving Pittsburgh in desperate need of help as the regular season enters its final week. “And we let them have life by the mistakes we made”, Foster said.

“We didn’t panic, that’s the most important part”, Chiefs linebacker Derrick Johnson said, thinking back to that slow start. If those two things don’t happen, NY gets the No. 6 seed in the AFC instead of Pittsburgh.

That’s why some Steelers fans are voicing opposition to head coach Mike Tomlin more than ever. He went 28 for 41 for a career-high 274 yards with a touchdown. They were starting their fourth different quarterback on the season who had only been with the team for less than two weeks. Against the then 4-10 Ravens on Sunday, Roethlisberger threw for 215 yards, with two interceptions, and was outdueled by Ryan Mallett, a guy the quarterback-hungry Texans released due to tardiness. “To get a turnover in a rivalry game when things are not going the way we want to is better still”. When looking at the snap totals from the game, there is a clear sign, and also the key to success against the prolific Pittsburgh offense, as to why both the Steelers offense and defense struggled in Baltimore last week.

“To operate the way he did, change plays at the line the way he did, I think it says a lot about him, but it says a lot about our coaches as well”, Harbaugh said. But he toted the ball just nine more times for 20 yards. “We have to find a way to be better in that area, especially on the road”. Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger threw a pair of picks in the contest, hurting his team’s chances of winning.

“That’s our fault, my fault”.

“We just didn’t make the plays today”, Roethlisberger said. If the Ravens play like they did last week in their upset of the Steelers, this game could be much closer than some expect.

Mallett got the nod, and after his performance it became clear who would call the signals in the finale at Cincinnati. Yes, that really was Ryan Mallett, Javorius Allen and Kyle Juszczyk pushing Pittsburgh to the brink of elimination. The offense is empirically excellent, as I’ve noted, and the defense improved after promoting Keith Butler to defensive coordinator and letting Dick LeBeau go. That seemed like a sure victory for the Steelers this morning, but after seeing them lose to a 5-10 Baltimore team – and never have the lead – who knows what Johnny Manziel has in store for the Browns’ division rivals.

In short, the Steelers looked like the team nobody wanted to face in the AFC come the playoffs.

The Steelers had been piling up points on everybody over the previous six games – 38, 30, 30, 45, 33 and 34 – and opponents in that stretch included teams ranked first (Cincinnati), third (Seattle) and fifth (Denver) defensively in the NFL. I value a more aggressive approach but you can not argue with the idea of letting DeAngelo Williams and not Ben Roethlisberger beat you. It converted just 2 of 8 third downs. The Ravens converted 9 of 18 third downs.

Cincy allowed Denver to rally with 17 straight points and tied the game on a long Mike Nugent field goal with six minutes to go. The Ravens rushed for 121 yards on 31 carries and got some big runs late in the game when they had to keep possession and run time off the clock. “There’s other plays that happened before then that could have put us in a first down, but that play’s highlighted more because of situational football and it was 4th-and-1”.