After an impressive first quarter, it looked like the Steelers would walk away from Heinz Field this evening with a blowout win over an awful Jacksonville Jaguars team. But the next three quarters didn’t play out like that at all. Thanks to an anemic Steelers offense, lots of penalties, an injury to Troy Polamalu and poor tackling, the Steelers let the Jaguars back into the game and were barely able to hold them off 17-13.
Jacksonville got the ball down by 4 with 1:01 left in the 4th quarter with a chance to win the game. Brett Keisel had a big sack of Gabbert on the Jags first play which drained most of the clock. Still, the Jags had a chance with a last second hail mary from midfield, but the ball was knocked down by Ryan Clark and Ike Taylor. It is dissapointing that a home game against a rookie QB and a bad Jacksonville team came down to the last snap.
The Steelers offense managed only 3 first downs in the 2nd half and were outscored 10-0. Ben Roethlsiberger was uncharacteristically off-target with many of his throws and the offense suddenly couldn’t produce much on the ground either.
Thankfully tfor the Steelers, young Blaine Gabbert was Roethlisberger’s counterpart and he wasn’t able to generate much offense all game long. Gabbert frequently missed open receivers as much as Roethlisberger. Maurice Jones-Drew had lots of success on the ground, but the early deficit forced the Jags to look down field during most of the 2nd half. It would have been interesting to see how many yards Jones-Drew would have ended up with in a different scenario — he had 96 yards on 22 carries today.
The Steelers worst news of the day, though, came in the form of an injury to Polamalu. It looked like he took a knee to the side of the head while making a tackle and he missed most of the 4th quarter. If he does have a concussion, he could miss a few games.
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