All the Pittsburgh Steelers had to do to make the playoffs was beat a couple of bottom feeders from the AFC North. Beat the Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns, both with double-digit losses, and make the postseason for a second consecutive season.
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Arsenal, thrashed 4-0 at Southampton on Saturday, got back to winning ways by seeing off Bournemouth at The Emirates. The Spaniard could not believe he did not score, saying: “I think I put my foot correctly”.
For those courageous souls who play Week 17, perhaps Roethlisberger and Brady can make it up to you.
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And 16 months on, it is clear the former Everton manager is still unhappy about how his reign at Old Trafford ended. They don’t want to become a club which continuously changes their manager”.
The Ravens (5-10) had lost three straight, the last two by a combined 69-20 score.
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Is it the right decision? EPL defending Champion, Chelsea have garnered 20 points from 19 games and are just three points away from the relegation zone.
After watching them play in Baltimore, the rest of the AFC might no longer think the Steelers are the one team they do not want to see in the playoffs.
“This might sound brash, but we believed the whole time that we were going to beat Pittsburgh”, Smith said. “They made a good play”, Roethlisberger said.
In sweeping the Steelers for just the third time in franchise history, the Ravens improved to 5-10 on the season. The goal doesn’t change that way whether you’re in the playoffs or not in the playoffs.
Mallett finished 28-of-41 with 274 yards, one touchdown and no interceptions in the win; It was his second victory of the season, the first coming all the way back in Week 3 when he was still playing for Houston. Signed by the Ravens on December 15, he was the fourth quarterback to start for Baltimore (5-10) in a span of six weeks. “I thought the inability to get off the field on third downs was a critical element of the game”. The win came with so many once eager and confident Steelers fans getting a front-row seat.
As things stand now, that means only four Ravens games in 2016 will be against playoff teams, the two against Cincinnati and the games against the Redskins and Patriots. With Andy Dalton still on the mend, the Bengals need at least a first-round bye in the playoffs to ensure he’s given the maximum amount of time to recover and heal before he possibly returns to the starting lineup.
“We’re capable of beating anyone, but we’re also capable of losing to anyone, particularly, if we lose the turnover battle, which we lost today”, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said.
Just as Tomlin exclaimed, such is life for the Steelers when you do not do what you are supposed to do.
“We shot ourselves in the foot today, ” Roethlisberger said after the loss.
Whenever something bad takes place with the Steelers, we can always count on Snoop Dogg to give us a little pick-me-up with his rants like this. Even De’Angelo Williams, filling in for the injured Le’Veon Bell, had helped establish a solid run game. Ben Roethlisberger, who is having one of the finest seasons of his prolific career, threw for just 215 yards and tossed two interceptions and no touchdown passes.
“We didn’t give up any points on turnovers”, Harbaugh said about the Steelers game. Two came at the start of the third quarter that resulted in 29- and 24-yard gains, the latter to the Baltimore 1. But Baltimore’s Courtney Upshaw lined up offside on the play, negating the TD, and Williams scored his second touchdown with 6:33 left.
The Ravens may not have technically deserved an A for their defenses performance, but if you hold the Steelers to 17 points with the talent they have on the field, anything less than an A is unfair.
Mallett jogged into the huddle and in his Ravens debut engineered a 15-play, 75 yard scoring drive that lasted more than seven minutes. Though the march did not produce points, Baltimore kept the ball away from the Steelers for almost seven minutes and pinned Pittsburgh on its own 9. That score was set up by Jimmy Smith’s interception of Ben Roethlisberger (his second pick of the afternoon). Mallett then had a 39-yard pass to Chris Givens and a 34-yard strike to fullback Kyle Juszczyk.
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Ravens kicker Justin Tucker responded with field goals from 37 and 50 yards to boost the margin to 13-3 at the half.
