16
17Not a whole lot to say about this one. Not many of the starters played for either team.
The Steelers won their 4th coin toss of the preseason.
Charlie Batch got the start. KDKA embarrasses themselves by showing Mendenhall and Wallace in the starting lineup.
Dwyer works it up to midfield then Homestead Charlie slings one for Sanders who splits double-coverage at the goal line and hauls in the bomb for the early score.
7-0
Derek Anderson gets the start for Carolina. He sucks.
Chris Rainey takes a punt back to the house, but it’s called back on a penalty. The offense responds by doing nothing, but Carolina muffs the punt and Curtis Brown recovers.
Both offenses do nothing and Rainey runs another one back, but guess what – another penalty.
Dwyer puts together a few nice runs then Chuck hits big Will Johnson on a 3rd and short play-action pass down the sideline to get us down to the red zone. A penalty sets things back a but, but Suisham connects from 49 at the open end of the stadium.
Impressive kick.
10-0
Second Quarter
Apparently, Derek Anderson is capable of throwing an out-route. Carolina uses that to march down the field. The defense holds in the red zone.
10-3
Nothing else of significance happens the rest of the half. Jonathan Dwyer runs hard.
Third Quarter
Mike Tomlin talks to the weather man at the start of the half. Let that sink in for a minute.
Jimmy Clausen comes in for Carolina. Remember when people were suggesting we should trade Ben to Oakland for a Top 10 pick to draft Clausen? Embarrassing times.
Really strange turn of events when Chris Carter comes free on a blitz and Clausen grounds the ball.The refs call it a fumble at first, but Carolina challenges and it was clearly grounding. Somehow, it’s ruled an incomplete pass but not intentional grounding.
Huh?
Carolina takes advantage and marches down to tie the game.
10-10
Jerrod Johnson comes in to hand off and run some clock.
Neither team does anything on offense. The weather man interviews a Mountain Man, presumably to get his predictions on the snow this winter. I don’t know, I turned the sound off. No sound is better than listening to Edmund Nelson.
Sean Spence suffers a gruesome knee injury on a 3rd down. Vomit. That looked awful. Probably done for the year.
Fourth Quarter
Johnson threads the needle to hit Maze on a deep out to break up the monotony. A few plays later, Johnson slings one over the middle to Weslye Saunders to get us down to the 20. Some back we picked up off waivers gets some carries to get us inside the 5, then Johnson hits Saunders again at the goal line for the go-ahead score.
17-10
Not much happens for a while, then Carolina takes over with about 3 minutes to play. Clausen airs one out down the sideline and Terrence Frederick makes a terrible play on the ball – he jumps in front of the receiver for the ball and misses, giving the receiver a cakewalk into the end zone.
17-16
Not wanting to send this to overtime, Carolina elects to go for two. Frederick gets called for interference, but Cortez Allen saves the day and knocks a pass away.
Carolina elects to kick off deep and call their timeouts. They get the ball back with just under 2 minutes to play and are able to get to the fringe of field goal range. However, it’s a 50-yarder at Heinz Field. It’s not happening.
Victory Formation.
Game.
Preseason, thankfully, is over.
See yinz in Denver. Be ready.
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