3 reasons the Pittsburgh Steelers will win in their Week 8 Matchup vs Ravens
The Ravens will have their hands full with running back James Conner of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Ignoring his injury-riddled 2019 season, James Conner has been a monster in division games. In his first match up with the Ravens as a starter he only saw 9 carries and it was a disaster, even with him converting a 2 point attempt. However, in his other game against Baltimore as a starter he has one of the better games of his career tallying 163 yards from scrimmage and a receiving touchdown. This isn’t a game where the Steelers are still feeling out James Conner in the big moments, like his first match up. Now he is healthy and the threat of the passing game is back. Let’s not forget the fact that Conner is averaging a career-high 4.7 yards a carry this season.
The Ravens are ranked 10th in opponent rushing yards per game. With a healthy James Conner having a career year, this could be a rough one for the purple and black. Conner was rushing incredibly well in the first half of Week 7 and unfortunately due to the flow of the game, the running attack was put on the back burner with a 20 point lead that was quickly disappearing. I would think that Pittsburgh’s coaches would go back and look at the film and see that all but abandoning the run game in the second half was the reason why the offense started to stall. If Ben is the reason why the offense is a threat again, Conner is the next key to its success. His vision and ability to make the first guy miss is incredibly underrated throughout the league and the ability to consistently break off 6-12 yard gains as often as he does really brings a different dimension to this offense.
If the Pittsburgh Steelers can continue to mix the run with the pass for the whole game to the same capacity that they did in the first half of the Tennessee game, Conner will have a huge day, to the capacity of 150+ yards from scrimmage with 2 or so touchdowns. More importantly, the Ravens’ offense will be kept off the field. I don’t think the Ravens, or even anybody in the league can stop the Steelers offense when it is using such a well-balanced game plan and Pittsburgh needs to utilize this strength to it’s extent to show the league how great they really are.