Week 1: Steelers at Giants
With what is certain to be a strained training camp do to the virus in America, the first week of the NFL season is likely to be a wild one. While the Steelers have arguably more talent than the Giants, they are also notoriously slow starters, as evident last year against the Patriots and the year before against the Browns. With the Giants, they have a young QB in Daniel Jones who showed off a lot of talent in his rookie season.
While he still makes some mistakes in the form of two interceptions to Minkah Fitzpatrick and Cam Sutton as well as taking 3 sacks, his precision leads to four passing TDs on the day. Evan Engram, now fully healthy, grabs two of those scores as well as 123 yards. The Steelers do well to stop Saquon Barkley on the ground (48 yards), he scores through the air and makes Vince Williams look silly on a 54-yard screen that he takes to the house.
The Steelers offense looks sluggish, with the lone bright spot being a James Conner 31-yard rush TD (he has 114 total yards on the day). Roethlisberger logs two interceptions and no TD’s, but James Washington hooks up for a 48-yard catch and JuJu Smith-Schuster has seven catches for 82 yards. As well, Benny Snell finds the endzone on a 3-yard goal line dive.
This onslaught by the Giants is rough, as the Steelers lose 31-20. The passing game looks rough behind a rebuilt Roethlisberger, and every news source instantly clamors for a new face on the team. Even more so, analysts pan the Steelers for not finding their QB of the future. All in all, not the way the Steelers wanted to start the year.