Ravens bounce Steelers from AFC playoffs
Mike Tomlin said the Steelers would “proceed without excuses” if they had to play without Le'Veon Bell in the AFC wild-card game against the Baltimore Ravens.
Tomlin lived up to that assessment, but he could have tossed out excuse after excuse and nobody would've blamed him.
A Steelers offense that put up video game-like numbers with Bell in the lineup looked like an old version of Strat-O-Matic football without him, and it resulted in yet another early exit from the playoffs.
Baltimore scored on four consecutive drives and held the Steelers out of the end zone for more than three quarters in advancing to the divisional round with a 30-17 win over the Steelers at Heinz Field.
It was the first time in four tries the Ravens beat the Steelers in the playoffs. It was the Steelers third consecutive playoff loss and the first to a division opponent in the playoffs in franchise history.
Baltimore (11-6) will play top-seeded New England (12-4) on Saturday in Foxborough, Mass., while the Steelers' (11-6) season ends on a low note despite the team winning eight of its past 11 games.
Tomlin refused to make excuses.
“You play who's healthy,” Tomlin said. “We're not going to let that be the story of the game. We've had guys that have missed games every step along the way. Such is life in the NFL.”
But the Steelers haven't been without somebody as dynamic as Bell, and it showed.
“It was really hard,” center Maurkice Pouncey said. “Losing Le'Veon took a lot away from the game plan, but you know what, next man up.”
The Steelers' offense stuttered and then stalled. Sure, they put up 387 yards, and Ben Roethlisberger threw for 334, but they managed only 15 points — their lowest output since putting up 13 in a loss at the Jets on Nov. 9. A special teams safety accounted for the other two points.
The running game was non-existent. Josh Harris rushed for 25 yards and Ben Tate 19.
“I can't say that if I was playing that we would've won the game,” Bell said.
It wouldn't have hurt either.
The Steelers reverted to some of the early-season tendencies that they seemed to get past during a four-game winning streak that brought them the AFC North title. Those included penalties, turnovers, deep passes, red zone woes and allowing pressure on the quarterback.
“I thought we were past it,” safety Mike Mitchell said.
That wasn't the case.
The Steelers were penalized 114 yards; turned the ball over twice; allowed three throws of over 20 yards; converted only 1 of 3 cracks inside the red zone and gave up five sacks.
“If you watch any NFL team and they do the things that we did tonight, there is no way they will win,” Pouncey said. “We didn't score touchdowns in the red zone. We scored three points in the red zone, and that cost us.”
The Steelers offense hadn't played this poorly in a while.
“We have to grow up in that aspect,” guard Ramon Foster said. “It can't be three or four games with big type of things. We have to be consistent. We have to be the same unit every week. It can't be 500 this week and 250 the next. It has to be consistent, and that comes down to execution.”
The re-vamped secondary that played so well the previous two weeks was lit up by Joe Flacco; he threw for 259 yards and a touchdown, Steve Smith Sr. caught five passes for 101 yards, and Justin Tucker kicked field goals of 28, 45 and 52 yards.
The Steelers got three field goals from Shaun Suisham before getting into the end zone four minutes into the fourth quarter when Martavis Bryant caught a 6-yard touchdown pass from Roethlisberger, two plays after Ryan Shazier forced a fumble, to make it 20-15.
“We got a lot of momentum after that,” Bryant said.
It was short-lived momentum.
The Ravens answered with a 23-yard reception by Owen Daniels on third-and-13 that led to a Tucker field goal to make it 23-15.
Terrell Suggs' interception of Roethlisberger on a pass that went through Tate's hands and the ensuing 21-yard touchdown pass to Crockett Gilmore iced the game for the Ravens.
“It's extremely disappointing,” tackle Kelvin Beachum said. “It was a division opponent that we knew that we could take care of and we didn't take care of business today.”
The defense gave up its most points in five games, but it was the offense's inability to score that ultimately did in the Steelers.
Not having Bell and his 2,215 total yards at its disposal hindered the second-ranked offense. Still, the Steelers' offense looked good enough to keep the Ravens off the field for the majority of the first quarter.
The Steelers held the ball for 12 of the first 13 1⁄2 minutes and ran 15 more plays than the Ravens but had only a 45-yard Suisham field goal to show for it.
“They executed better,” Cam Heyward said. “Our defense is based on execution. When 11 don't execute together, then you get in a bind and we weren't able to cover it up.”
Mark Kaboly is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at mkaboly@tribweb.com or via Twitter @MarkKaboly_Trib.
