4 players who killed Steelers chances in Wild Card game vs Chiefs

Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger

While the Steelers were able to slide into the playoffs with the extra Wild Card seed this year, this certainly was not the ending that Ben Roethlisberger had in mind to end his Hall of Fame career. Instead of going out in a blaze of glory, Big Ben limped to the finish line.

Pittsburgh’s offense was non-existent until late in the game when the Chiefs decided to play prevent defense. Prior to this point, Roethlisberger couldn’t seem to get anything going. Though the wide receiver and offensive line play weren’t great either, good quarterbacks need to find ways to overcome talent deficiencies, and Ben wasn’t able to do that.

Roethlisberger passed for a dismal 1.7 yards per attempt in the first half, and most of his production came in garbage time late in the fourth quarter. Even with the Chiefs allowing him to dump everything underneath for garbage yardage late in the game, Roethlisberger still finished with just 215 yards on 44 pass attempts (4.9 yards per attempt). This equated to a pathetic 15.0 QBR.

Ben Roethlisberger will go down as one of the best Steelers of all time, but his sad performance really hurt Pittsburgh’s chances of stealing a road win in the playoffs this year, and his career will end on a very bad post-season game.

The Steelers had plenty of other players who didn’t earn their paychecks in the Wild Card round of the playoffs against the Chiefs, but the defense was off to a blazing-hot start and held the Chiefs scoreless in their first four drives. If these four players whole have played good games, who knows what the outcome could have been.