The other Pittsburgh drive led to a Steelers field goal, but with 19 seconds to play and an onside kick the Steelers’ only hope, the Broncos came up with the ball, sealing the deal.
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Brady has his detractors in the wake of “Deflategate”, but the Patriots were the better team and the win set up what might be the last showdown between Brady and Peyton Manning, who engineered the Broncos’ exciting victory over the Steelers on Sunday. Brock Osweiler looking like Manning’s permanent replacement pretty late this season, until Broncos coach Gary Kubiak decided he wasn’t.
PANTHERS LOSE VETERAN LINEMAN: Jared Allen suffered a foot injury in Sunday’s win, which could end his season and prevent him from playing in his first-ever Super Bowl.
On a chilly afternoon Sunday, the Broncos held off Pittsburgh, 23-16, as Peyton Manning returned as the starter after being sidelined with a foot injury for the final seven games of the regular season.
With Denver trailing Pittsburgh 13-12 with less than 10 minutes left, cornerback Bradley Roby punched the ball from Fitzgerald Toussaint’s arms and teammate DeMarcus Ware recovered at the Denver 35-yard line.
Ware’s sack ended Pittsburgh’s next drive and McManus kicked his fifth field goal, joking it was such a tricky crosswind that he just kept aiming “at the guy holding the beer in the top left corner”.
Why? First of all, does anybody within reason believe the Steelers would’ve gone into Foxborough against a much healthier defending champion New England Patriots and won the game? It goes through Brady and Manning, nearly always, and it now goes through them again.
McManus is the seventh kicker to make all five of his field goal tries in a playoff game. For the first time in a game he started this season, Manning did not throw a single interception. In the end, the Steelers just didn’t have enough healthy offensive firepower left to get past the NFL’s most stingy defense. “They’re a good defense, playing really well for the past number of weeks”.
Roethlisberger threw a 55-yard pass that was incomplete on the first play from scrimmage. “We stepped up and got to this point”.
Manning knew the correct play and the right read against the coverage (he said any of the four receivers were options, based on what the Steelers did), and he knew he’d have a window to get Fowler the ball. “Their secondary, they missed, (safety) T.J. Ward – got hurt in our game – and (safety Darian) Stewart’s a little nicked up, but they’ve got everybody back”. Just like this year, the crowd will be into it. They’ll have a great team. The 31-point halftime lead was tied for the sixth-largest in National Football League postseason history. “They played great all season and were dominant today against a high-powered offence”.
The Broncos signal-caller played down the significance of what will be his 17th meeting with Brady next week, when a place in Super Bowl 50 will be the prize for the victor. “We come out seven minutes before kickoff and I see a 30 miles per hour crosswind come in over the Rockies”, said McManus.
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They had to settle for that after getting a first down at Denver’s 10, thanks in large part to Martavis Bryant’s 52-yard pass reception from Roethlisberger, which he caught eight yards deep and ran 44 yards to the Denver 27. “We knew they were counting us out”.
