Washington coach Ron Rivera described the mood in his victorious locker room as “euphoria” after his team’s stunning comeback victory against Pittsburgh on Monday night.
But the Football Team’s unlikely triumph did more than tighten the race for the top seed in the AFC playoffs and hand the Steelers their first loss of the season.
It robbed Buffalo of its chance to do the same.
“The difference between talent from the best team to the worst team is like this in the NFL,” Bills cornerback Tre’Davious White said, the All-Pro holding his fingers slightly apart to make his point. “These are all professional athletes, so I’m never surprised at the outcome of a game. We’ve just got to go ahead and prepare like they were still undefeated, man. They’re still a great team, so we have to come with our best football, for sure.”
The Bills certainly weren’t complaining after dispatching the San Francisco 49ers 34-24 in the nightcap, their first victory on Monday Night Football since 1999, which improved their record to 9-3 and maintained a one-game lead over the Miami Dolphins for first place in the AFC East with four games to play.
On Monday night, Josh Allen delivered again, writes Vic Carucci.
Josh Allen became the first quarterback in franchise history to complete 80% of his passes and throw four touchdowns in a game. Cole Beasley had a career-high 130 yards. And White snared his third interception in four games.
But the Bills (9-3) were widely expected to have an opportunity to change the national narrative and gain a degree of league-wide respect when they host the Steelers (11-1) on Sunday night at Bills Stadium. They were supposed to have the chance to knock the Steelers from the ranks of the unbeaten, to prove they deserve to be considered among the NFL’s legitimate contenders.
It might have been a playoff preview. And it still may. But Pittsburgh’s sudden struggles and 23-17 loss to lowly Washington (5-7) alters the dynamic. Now, the national topic du jour becomes, “What’s wrong with the Steelers?” And it’ll remain so should Buffalo win, rather than a triumph over Pittsburgh being seen as a defining victory. Now, the game against the Bills offers the Steelers an opportunity to prove this hiccup against Washington was a fluke and to “get right” against a likely playoff team.
“I’m excited about facing the adversity of losing with this group, man, and smiling in the face of it and preparing and getting ready for our next challenge,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said in a video conference call with reporters shortly after the Bills kicked off against the 49ers. “Because different points along the journey you get a chance to learn about yourself, who you are, what you’re made of, individually and collectively, and it takes the journey to reveal that. And so we’re faced with a loss now, so we’ll get an opportunity to smile in the face of it.”
To be sure, the Bills will still see this marquee matchup between division leaders as an opportunity to prove something to themselves, to defend their home turf and knock off a top-tier opponent.
The Steelers are tied with Kansas City for the best record in the league.
But they’ve scored just three offensive touchdowns the last two games.
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“I wasn’t good enough, we didn’t put up enough points and we didn’t possess the ball long enough,” Ben Roethlisberger said when asked for his initial takeaways.
He agreed the loss could help sharpen the team’s focus.
“I hope so,” Roethlisberger said. “We’re getting to that point of the season when you’ve got to be sharp in all areas and your whole team, on both sides of the ball, and all that stuff. There could be all kinds of distractions and changes and this, that and the other, but at the end of the day we’ve got to go play good football.”
The national narrative this week was always going to be about Pittsburgh.
Much has been made about the Steelers being forced to play three games in 12 days after their matchup against Baltimore was postponed from Thanksgiving to last Wednesday because of the Ravens’ Covid-19 outbreak.
They edged a Ravens team playing without quarterback Lamar Jackson 19-14 at home in that odd mid-week matinee, raising concerns, then blew a 14-point lead against Washington.
Pittsburgh’s game against the Bills is the third game in that stretch and a chance for retribution after Buffalo defeated the Steelers 17-10 on Sunday Night Football on Dec. 15 last season in Pittsburgh.
The Steelers had been 78-1-1 when they held a 14-point lead at Heinz Field, according to the Fox broadcast. But then Washington tight end Logan Thomas caught a 15-touchdown pass from Alex Smith to tie the score at 17-17 with nine minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, Dustin Hopkins kicked a 45-yard field goal to give Washington a 20-17 lead with 2:07 to play, and Roethlisberger had his very next pass batted into the air. It was intercepted by linebacker Jon Bostic at the Pittsburgh 25-yard line.
Hopkins tacked on another 45-yard field goal to set the final score, prompting the 1972 Miami Dolphins to again pop bottles.
“Humbling .. Humbling game,” Steelers tight end Eric Ebron tweeted. “I’m happy about this loss, the fire has been re-lit. We will be ready come Sunday.”
The Steelers were the 12th team to open a season with an 11-0 record. Only two finished the regular season undefeated – those legendary ’72 Dolphins, which topped Washington in Super Bowl VII, and the 2007 Patriots, which lost to the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII.
Three finished 15-1, most recently the Carolina Panthers in 2015, when Rivera served as head coach and Sean McDermott was defensive coordinator.
They won their first 14 games on the way to Super Bowl 50.
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“Every situation is different,” McDermott said. “But I know going through that … it’s a hard thing to manage, the pressure every week of you keep adding wins up and everyone wants a piece of you at that point. So I can empathize with their situation. That’s a hard thing to continue to roll out every week and play at the level that they’ve been playing at, so we’re going to get their best.
“Mike Tomlin is one of the greatest coaches in this league and I think he’s going to have them ready to go and I think we’ve got to be ready. That’s probably the best team in the NFL, and so they’re coming to Buffalo and we’ll be ready.”
Six teams that opened with an 11-0 record finished with two losses.
The Bills will have an opportunity to add the Steelers to that list and take another step toward winning the AFC East for the first time since 1995.
“Honestly, I don’t even want to think about the Steelers yet. I just want to enjoy this win. I have a couple more hours to let this one sit in, soak in,” Bills left tackle Dion Dawkins said, keeping his attention on the Bills’ first victory on Monday Night Football in two decades. “That just shows what the guys upstairs did. They put a good group of guys together to continue to put themselves in position to win. Nobody’s perfect, but we just find a way to just come together and get the job done.”
But they haven’t proven anything in the grand scheme of things this season.
The country saw the Bills get smoked 42-16 by a Tennessee Titans team that hadn’t practiced in nearly two weeks because of their own Covid-19 outbreak on a Tuesday night in mid-October, then saw them again the very next week, when they lost at home to the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs 26-17 on Monday Night Football.
The Bills did precisely what was expected against the Niners (5-7) on Monday night, but the chips were stacked against the “home team,” with San Francisco forced to relocate to Arizona after Santa Clara County banned contact sports in an effort to curb the spread of coronavirus.
The Niners also have a losing record and have been playing without numerous injured starters, including quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and All-Pro tight end George Kittle.
It’s been a swift fall from grace for last season’s NFC champions, who can no longer can be considered among the league’s elite.
The Bills are still fighting for that respect.
Win or lose against the Steelers, that’ll still be the case.
