Of all the games this season, the sixteenth and final was probably the signature game for the Steelers 2009 season. The offense started strong, and things were looking great after three quarters. Two fourth quarter touchdowns later, we were in danger of losing the game. There were bad play calls on offense and blown coverages on defense. At the end of the day, we did what we needed to do, with Ben fighting through a shoulder injury where he could barely lift his throwing arm to complete two big passes on the final drive.
30
24
The Steelers get the ball first and come out with a 5-wide set. Predictably, they throw a WR screen to Ward. The drive looks ready to go the way of the dinosaurs, but Mike Wallace puts the team on his back and converts a third and long. 007 tries to go deep off play-action, but the Dolphins strategy was to knock all our receivers to the ground. It worked and Ben got sacked. Ben comes right back and finds Heath against a linebacker on an out-post and Heath rumbles down the sidelines for 31 yards. Mendenhall carries us down to the 5, where Ben hits Tone on a slant for the score.
7-0
Apparently, Tony Sporano told the Miami offense that they were playing for their playoff lives, because they came out looking like a football team. Mixing runs and passes, Henne and Williams take care of business.
7-7
Ben comes up just short on a scramble on 3rd down, and with nothing to lose, Tomlin keeps his foot on the gas and calls the QB sneak. First down. 007 wastes no time and goes downtown. Guess who's wide open behind the defense?
That's six baby.
14-7
The Steelers stick with their "don't kick it to Ginn" strategy and the Fish get the ball at the 30.
Second Quarter
Pat White comes into the game to run the Wildcat, and alternates plays with Henne to keep the Steelers defense off balance. The Fish get down to the 12, but two clogged runs later, they're forced to throw. Henne throws behind Brian Hartline, and Willie Gay is able to make his first pass break-up of the year. Field goal.
14-10
Willie Parker, in possibly his last game with the team, got the call on the next series, and looked surprisingly fresh. After taking us across midfield, Ben looks to go for the kill shot, but his arm gets hit. The refs call it a fumble and Coach challenges. Score one for Tomlin. Ben's arm was going forward. Mendenhall Raises Hell on the next play, taking a swing pass down the sidelines to the 6. Arians craps his pants and the Steelers have to settle for a field goal.
17-10
A lot of things happened in this game that we had been waiting all season to see. The first of those was for a cornerback to undercut a route. Deshea steps up and undercuts an out-route, and gets 3 feet in, for the first INT by a Steelers CB this year.
Arians decides to give it right back by having Tone throw on a double-pass play. Tone throws across the field for Mendenhall one-on-one with a linebacker. In theory a good matchup until the safety comes over the top for an easy pick. Ryan Clark should take notes. Eye on the ball. Despite the terrible play call, Tone actually threw a pretty good pass.
Henne looks poised to drive the Fish back down the field, completing six in a row to move them across midfield.
Two Minute Warning
Woodley mentioned during the week how he had been waiting since his days at Michigan for a chance to actually hit Henne. He was getting close the first few drives, and made it count in the last two minutes. He racked up two sacks in a span of 5 plays, including one where he dominated a double-team.
Woodley's dominance forces a punt before the end of the half.
Halftime
Jimmy Buffett and Ricky Williams rock the gange in the locker room.
Chad Henne got a contact high and was out for the rest of the game.
Williams was just irrelevant.
Third Quarter
Pat White comes in and does his best Goomba impression and gets flattened by Timmons.
With a chance to put the Fins away, the Steelers pull out the motif offense. Run-run-pass-punt.
White is able to pick up a first down with his feet, and the Fins punter booms a 58-yarder to flip the field on us.
The Steelers catch a break on a facemask penalty but have to use two timeouts because Ben has no protection when the Fins were blitzing. Raise Some breaks through the Fins defense and takes it down to the 6. After a run and a pass short of the end zone, Ben scrambles out of pressure and finds Heath wide open in the back of the end zone.
24-10
Once again, the touchdown wasn't on the called play. Heath was running an out to the sidelines, but broke off his route when he saw Ben scrambling and came back to the middle of the field to make the play.
The Fins went back to the ground on the next drive. White scrambled out of the pocket on 3rd down and got hit by Ike Taylor along the sidelines. It was a completely legal hit, but White was out cold. He was carted off the field. We hate seeing people get hurt, and we wish Pat all the best and a speedy recovery.
Logan rips off a good return and the Steelers take advantage of the good field position by going after the Fins weak secondary. Tone draws a pass interference call to move the Steelers into field goal range. Ben converts a 3rd down to Hines to get us down inside the 10.
Fourth Quarter
With first and 10 from the 11, the Steelers run 3 plays, none of which attempt to put the ball in the end zone. Field goal.
27-10
When you heard Tyler Thigpen was coming in, the first thing that probably flashed through your mind was "Oh shit, he threw the ball all over the place last year for KC. He was good out of the shotgun, spread formation."
The blitzkrieg began on the next drive, as Thigpen completed passes of 8 and 14, coupled with two Steelers penalties, giving the Fins the ball in the red zone. They ran a reverse to Brian Hartline, who beat Ryan Clark to the corner of the end zone.
27-17
Things were starting to get tense in Steelers nation as you could feel the momentum shifting. Ben got sacked on first down, and could never get it back. Colon got called for two holding penalties that were declined. Punt.
Thigpen came back, hitting his tight end for 27 yards to get within striking distance. Two plays later, he took a shot downfield for Davone Bess who had left Deshea in his tracks. No safety help.
We don't even need to make a joke about this picture.
27-24
With our playoff lives starting to slip away, you knew the Steelers needed to come out with a drive that would put points on the board. The sad thing is, Bruce Arians didn't. Motif offense.
Run-run-
-sack and fumble
Miami takes over at the 13 with a chance to at least tie the game. But Coach Dad must have given the boys a big-time talking-to before they came out because they were inspired. Nick Eason eats Pro Bowler Jake Long's second breakfast and lunch, dropping Ricky Williams for a 3 yard loss. Thigpen looks for Ginn who is blanketed by Ike Taylor and Ryan Clark. Clark, actually looking at the ball for once, makes the interception.
Ben had hurt his throwing arm/shoulder on the sack, but rather than send in a back-up, Ben toughs it out and comes back in. What a player.
After throwing two passes and having his arm look like a rag doll, Parker comes into the game and just ices it. With 4:41 on the clock, FWP goes for 7, 4, and 4. Ben throws again to Hines to move the sticks and wind some more clock. Parker rips off a 15-yarder before the two minute warning.
Two Minute Warning
Seemingly needing one first down to win the game, the Steelers go to Parker again who explodes down the sideline for 34 yards but goes out of bounds, stopping the clock. A penalty on the next play stops the clock again. Miami uses their second timeout after stopping FWP on second down.
Tense times, as you hoped and prayed Arians would keep it on the ground on 3rd down. He runs a draw to Parker who takes it to the end zone, but Hines gets called for holding, nullifying the play. After another draw to Parker, which might be his last carry in a Steelers jersey, it's Jeff Reed time.
30-24
With 40 seconds to play and no timeouts, Miami was technically still in the game. Thankfully, Thigpen isn't a seasoned quarterback and has been sitting on the bench all year. He air mails one over Davone Bess and right into the waiting hands of Ike Taylor. Great way to finish the season.
Victory formation.
Game. Season.
Players of the Game:
Offensive Game Ball- Rashard Mendenhall
Defensive Game Ball- LaMarr Woodley
Honorable Mentions:
Ike Taylor
Lawrence Timmons
Willie Parker
Hines Ward
Heath Miller
Mike Wallace
Ben Roethlisberger
Mr. Yuck Sticker of the Game
New England and Cincinnati mailing it in
We're not going to raise a big stink over this and say the league should penalize teams who phone it in the last week of the season. If you had a good enough year that you can afford to rest players, you've earned that right. The thing that really hurts is knowing that we would have made the playoffs if we could have beaten one of Oakland, Kansas City, or Cleveland.
Final Thoughts
- We'll have a much longer post at some point wrapping up the whole 2009 season.
- RB stat line: Mendenhall 20 carries, 96 yards; Parker 12 carries, 91 yards. That's pretty much a perfect distribution. Imagine if we had been giving them 20 and 10 all year. Or even better, 25 and 15.
- Word from the Twitterverse is that the new partial owners of the team would like to see a "different direction" with the offense, meaning that Arians will likely get canned. Thanks to Jim Wexell for that one.
- At least the Madden curse is off of Polamalu now.
- It's never a good thing to have to count on other teams to win or lose to get you into the playoffs.
- Besides Cincinnati, we beat the six best teams on our schedule, and lost to 4 of the worst.
- Officially, you can now talk about the "D" word. That being "draft," obviously.
- In all honesty, we closed out the season in the best possible way, with three wins. Yes, we didn't make the playoffs and we didn't achieve up to the expectations we had coming into the season. However, that doesn't mean that all is lost from 2009. Ben, Tone, and Heath all had career years. Ben broke a slew of passing records. He has grown into a great quarterback and is ready to lead the team for years to come. Hopefully we can rectify some things in front of him so he doesn't get killed in the pocket.
- We'd like to thank all of you who have been following us all season. We'll still be around in the off season and we hope you'll check back. As always, you can stay up to date with the latest from us by following us on Twitter.
- Go Steelers!
