FanPost

Silver Lining From (Halfway) Ugly Game Against The Browns.

Yeah, so people were calling for Todd Haley, Dick Lebeau, Mike Tomlin, even Ben Roethlisberger's head during the second half. These were also the same people praising them in the first half for how good and prepared we looked. Well, anyone who watched the game knows that we looked in mid season form during the first half and we looked every bit the 0-4 team we started out as last year in the second half.

There are a couple things, however that gives me immeasurable amounts of hope for the season.

1. The Steelers looked awesome in the first half. This is the beginning of the season and therefore growing pains are expected, especially on a trending-young Steelers team. Both our offense and our defense dominated the first half. The run blocking was incredible and the pass blocking was mostly good the first half. Yeah, the second half was the opposite story, but we have a good coach and system in place to improve upon our performance. People expected our offense to do well, but some feared the worst for the defense, but they looked good in the first half. There is no reason we can't learn to sustain such a performance over a whole game.

2. This is the most important talking point in this article. This is something that has been missing from the Steelers for a couple of years now. The Clutch Factor. I cannot remember how many times over the past couple of years we came down to the wire and blew it at the end. This was not typical for most of Roethlisberger's tenure in Pittsburgh. Well we came down to the last moment and our defense stepped up and gave our offense the chance to win. Our offense then promptly stepped up and won the game in a very reminiscent-of-Ben's-early-career fashion.

If we had the clutch factor throughout last year, we could have been a 11-5 team, rather than the 8-8 we finished with. All too often last year, when games were close, my heart would sink and a terrible feeling would come over me. It just seemed like Steelers never stepped up in the close games. I thought a loss was a sure thing when it came to the wire. Games shouldn't have to be this close, but that is the nature of the NFL. Anything can happen. I think that the return of clutch performances towards the end of games will take us far this season.

No time to panic fellow Steelers. The best is yet to come.

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