But here it comes, my confusion.

Who was that?

Was that Randy Fichtner, the offensive coordinator?

Did he change his plan that he now understand that you got to protect Ben Roethlisberger and we have to try to push the ball downfield instead of this kind of dink and dunk hit the short pass, get yards after the catch?

Or was that Ben Roethlisberger Was that been saying, You know what?

I'm running the offense now.

They spend the They sped the pace up.

They got out of the huddle quicker.

They did some no huddle.

They did some hurrying up to the line, and that helped this team.

And then defensively, you saw what happens when you make Philip Rivers play quarterback.

He doesn't always quarterback the best he can.

So I do feel better than I felt last week where I felt like this team had no opportunity to beat a playoff caliber or playoff level team.

But I'm not in the same place I was when I thought that They were the largest threat to the Kansas City Chiefs when I thought that Ben Roethlisberger could stand across the field for Patrick Mahomes and go toe to toe.

Or that this this defense could get in Patrick Mahomes face enough to cause him enough confusion to make him have enough problems where this team could win.

And so, where you are encouraged that they had a good second half, you don't feel any differently about their chances to win the Super Bowl.

And when you play for Pittsburgh, that's the bottom line.

And today they haven't met that standard.

Yeah, I mean, I think that if you're comparing everybody the Kansas City, you could say that about everybody.

But I do feel a lot Mawr confident for the Steelers because of what Ben was able to do in the second half.

I know it's just one half, but it's showing a capability that I didn't know he still had, like he was awesome and passes for more than 10 yards down the field and very impressive and passing for more than 20 yards down the field.

That stuff that I thought was no longer in his game and that stuff you're gonna need.

It was in a situation while you're down.

Uh, 17 points, I think at one point.

So the defense knows you're gonna have to throw the ball and he is completing those passes with confidence.

It's something that I thought was out of their game.

They're gonna have to be able to do that.

And no one's gonna out defense.

The Chiefs like that's not how you gonna win.

You're not gonna win by shutting down the Chiefs, even though we saw the Cardinals seem to do it recently.

If your game plan is, we're gonna stop Patrick Mahomes, you're gonna lose your game.

Plan needs to be that we're going to score with them and try to slow him down and creates a mistake's.

And I think that the Steelers have enough personnel.

If that second half wasn't just an aberration, maybe Ben was saving it.

He's just been saving it all year like I'm not gonna waste this arm in the regular season.

I'm gonna save it until I get my big moment and they need to see it, and now they see it because it seems like it's something he could do.

It just he hasn't done it yet.

I mean, you think you think back early on in the season, right?

You go back to the Philadelphia game, kind of when we started to see Chase Claypool break out and we thought all to ourselves.

Oh, my goodness, this might be the best rookie wide receiver that was drafted.

We saw some of those things from Ben during that time, and then they kind of hit this low.

Probably after the Baltimore Ravens games where we wasn't saying we didn't see that same type of offense, right?

And now when you lose a Bud Dupri, when you lose a Devin Busch on defense, obviously you get Vince Williams back.

We got to see the second half.

Some pressure up front.

You saw the turnover by Mike Hilton.

All of those things were kind of reminiscent of how they were winning games early on this season.

But even when they were doing that, there was always that question in your mind.

What kind of happens when the bottom falls out of this team, you know, and we saw that against the Washington football team in the second half.

We saw that against Buffalo and we saw that against Cincinnati.

I think they have to play all of their guys and truly tryto win this game against the Cleveland Browns, even though they clinched the division, because it's important that they keep this thing going on.

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