Pittsburgh Steelers win sealed by an unexpected player vs. Denver Broncos

The Pittsburgh Steelers almost failed to hold onto the lead against the Denver Broncos. Here’s how an unexpected player showed up to save the game.

Football is a sport of high emotions, and as fans, we tend to let these moments short-sight our thoughts and comments to either heavily criticize or amplify players. Scanning through the Pittsburgh Steelers roster, there are several “favorites” that unfairly at times have to face the commentary more than others.

However, in a game that appeared was moving in the direction of a blowout, it took its unexpected and questionable talent of the Steelers to rise to the occasion as the score drew closer towards the end.

Steelers sloppiness saved to seal their second win

“Overreaction Monday” is a thing of beauty if you are a culprit of sports social media that provides all the takes of what occurred on Sunday to project an entire player’s career. For the Steelers, they missed the popular cut knowing they played last Monday night but were assuredly not left out from any sort of slander the next day.

Pittsburgh’s own RB James Conner was the first to catch the tweets, as he exited the game in Week 1 in the first quarter with an ankle injury. Leave it to RB Benny Snell, showcasing his talents to 113 rushing yards, but giving a vengeance for Conner to cause havoc this week against Denver.

Leaning on a motivated Conner could be worthwhile if his health didn’t have its suppressing-effect. Today was historic for James in his career as he carried the ball 16 times for 106 yards (6.6 yards per carry). This was the highest mark for his career when running with at least 15 attempts. He also capped it off by rendering the Broncos timeouts useless on the Steelers last drive.

And on the defensive side, it’s challenging to find any sort of wrong considering the elite level of performances they are maintaining from last year. On a day that the Steelers defense added seven more sacks and one interception to the books, their biggest play came from safety Terrell Edmunds.

Continuously disregarded for a replacement, it’s difficult for Edmunds to escape the noise of criticism, but a round of applause has to be thrown his for what he did on Sunday. After ten plays, four-plus minutes ran off the clock, and a 15-yard penalty, the drive the Broncos were conjuring up to close the game could have been the dagger.

That would be until Edmunds would be sent on a blitz on 4th down and 2 – sacking Denver’s QB Jeff Driskel and turning the ball over on downs.

Although he was untouched, Steelers fans everywhere let out a giant sigh of relief that his usual tackling angle didn’t supersede this attempt. A moment for Edmunds to celebrate and for everyone else to breathe, this would be the last time the Broncos would see the field and fall to 0-2 to open the 2020 NFL season.

When it’s easy to demean, we also have to tip our cap for when they do right. In this case, we were just thankful the Steelers were able to run off Heinz field for a second consecutive win.