With DeAngelo Williams injured, the Pittsburgh Steelers will have to reply on their passing game more than ever as they head into a playoff matchup.
Williams injured his ankle early in the second quarter and the Steelers’ rush attack promptly fell off a cliff. Fitzgerald Toussiant managed only 24 yards on 12 carries, leaving Ben Roethlisberger and his receivers to do the heavy lifting against the Browns.
Since Pittsburgh’s offense now basically consists of throwing the ball in Antonio Brown’s general direction and hoping for something good to happen, let’s take a look and see how they graded Sunday.
Ben Roethlisberger: C-
Harsh? Hardly. Big Ben looked like a D student at times this week.
First of all, he’s trying to do too much. Roethlisberger is routinely forcing balls into tight coverage or double coverage and putting his receivers in tough spots where they’re required to make incredible feats of athleticism just to make a catch.
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It’s not hard to see why Roethlisberger throws at Brown so much, but he’s starting to go totally overboard. Brown was targered 17 times Sunday, more than triple that of any other receiver.
Roethlisberger threw two bad picks and easily could have had a few more. He needs to stop forcing the issue.
Of course even a bad day for Big Ben is better than many quarterbacks. A high-risk, high-reward offensive attack makes perfect sense given their personnel. All he has to to is ease his foot off the throttle a little bit and he’ll be fine.