Steelers vs. Browns score: Pittsburgh powers past Cleveland in Ben Roethlisberger’s likely final home game
The Steelers sent Ben Roethlisberger out as a winner in what was likely his final game at Heinz Field. Pittsburgh’s 26-14 win over the Browns on Monday night also served as retribution for the Steelers, who 358 days earlier fell to Cleveland in the AFC wild card round.
T.J. Watt led the Steelers’ dominant defensive effort with four sacks, while Najee Harris’ 188 rushing yards and a touchdown spearheaded Pittsburgh’s offensive attack. Watt is now a sack from tying Michael Strahan’s NFL record, while Harris broke Franco Harris’ 49-year-old franchise rookie rushing record.
The win kept Pittsburgh (8-7-1) alive in the AFC wild card race with one week left in the regular season. The loss ensured that Cleveland (7-9) would finish the season with a losing record a year after winning its first playoff game in 26 years.
Ahead 19-7, the Steelers received a scare when the Browns scored on Baker Mayfield’s 1-yard touchdown pass to Harrison Bryant with 1:10 left. But the Browns’ threat was short-lived after Minkah Fitzpatrick recovered the ensuing onside kick. Three plays later, Harris put the game on ice with his 37-yard touchdown run down the far sideline.
The Steelers struck first on Roethlisberger’s 5-yard touchdown pass to Diontae Johnson less than five minutes into the second quarter. The drive was extended after Browns defensive end Jadeveon Clowney was penalized 15 yards after he threw Chase Claypool’s shoe on a third-and-10 play.
From there, the Steelers received field goals of 22, 30, 50 and 48 yards from Chris Boswell, as Pittsburgh led 10-0 at halftime and 16-7 with about 10 minutes remaining. Led by Watt’s four sacks, the Steelers’ defense bewildered Mayfield and the Browns’ offense. Pittsburgh sacked Mayfield nine times while setting up Boswell’s second field goal on Arthur Maulet’s second-quarter interception.
Boswell added two more field goals to the Steelers’ tally before the Browns capped off a 17-play drive with Bryant’s touchdown reception. Cleveland was unable to complete the comeback, however, as Harris rumbled for the game-clinching score three plays after Bryant’s score.
The win gives Roethlisberger a 92-32 all-time record at Heinz Field as the Steelers’ quarterback. Roethlisberger improved to 26-3-1 against the Browns, who famously passed on the Findlay, Ohio, native in the 2004 NFL Draft.
Here are some takeaways from Monday night’s Steelers win:
Why the Steelers won
No surprise, if you’ve watched them at any point this season: defense, defense, defense. Roethlisberger may have been the man in the spotlight on Monday, playing what even he deemed his last game at Heinz Field, but this one belonged to the Steel City “D.” With four sacks on a night Pittsburgh totaled nine, Watt pulled within one sack of tying the all-time single-season record, confirmed himself as Defensive Player of the Year front-runner and ensured Mayfield never felt comfortable in the pocket. Alex Highsmith and Cameron Heyward were among others feasting up front, while Tre Norwood and Ahkello Witherspoon each picked off Mayfield to keep Kevin Stefanski’s offense out of sync.
When they had the ball, Harris powered all of their best drives, finishing with 188 rushing yards and steadily gashing Cleveland, including with a dagger of a 37-yard score in the final minute. As for Roethlisberger, he was predictably ugly, struggling to push the ball downfield, but at least helped Pittsburgh win the time-of-possession battle to go out on a high note.
Why the Browns lost
Stefanski’s offense absolutely stinks. Harsh? No. A year after literally winning Coach of the Year, his entire unit buckled against the Steelers’ front. The line had no answers for Pittsburgh’s pass rush. The play-calling inexplicably limited Nick Chubb, who actually gave them a chance when he touched the ball. And worst of all, Mayfield all but begged Cleveland to seek a QB upgrade this offseason, badly and routinely misfiring until the game was already out of reach. Jadeveon Clowney had two sacks, including a near-safety, and Greg Newsome was among other defenders to show physicality and keep Pittsburgh within reach. But their defensive efforts fell short against the run and, frankly, didn’t matter much anyway considering how little life they got when the ball was in their own hands.
Turning point
You might say, “Kickoff,” because that’s when the Browns apparently decided they weren’t going to feature their best player, Chubb, and take the burden off Mayfield. But if you wanna get specific, let’s go with Cleveland’s first drive of the second half. After struggling mightily to move or keep the ball through the first two quarters, Stefanski’s squad fed Chubb twice to set up a third-and-3 at their own 42. But then Heyward sacked Mayfield, forcing a three-and-out punt, and the Steelers responded with a field goal to extend their lead to 10. Not insurmountable, by any means, but in this ugly game, it felt like it.
Play of the game
Harris was the offensive MVP for the Steelers on Ben’s Pittsburgh farewell tour, in large part because of tough runs like this:
2021 NFL season, Week 17: What we learned from Steelers’ win over Browns on Monday night
Big Ben’s sendoff wasn’t exactly stellar. Pittsburgh’s offense took on the appearance it has maintained for much of 2021, one of short, often incomplete passes and a steady dose of Najee Harris touches.
The difference Monday night: Harris exploded, rushing 28 times for 188 yards (with 37 coming on one final touchdown run to ice the game) and a trip to the end zone. He saw and caught three targets for 18 yards, passing Jonathan Taylor for the NFL lead in total touches.
Without him, the Steelers might have been looking at a different result, because Ben Roethlisberger wasn’t sharp.
The quarterback play was ugly on both sides, with Baker Mayfield once again struggling (more on that later) and the two quarterbacks combining to complete just 40 of 84 pass attempts, and Roethlisberger certainly didn’t light up the scoreboard in a fairy tale departure.
But he did get a chance to kneel out the remaining clock, which certainly satisfied the national television stage’s desire for a Hollywood ending. A lap around the field followed a teary interview, closing with a series of embraces with his family near the Steelers tunnel.
A Hall of Fame career will soon end, and Roethlisberger closed out his time at Heinz Field with one final triumph over a team he’s long dominated.
Monday night felt like an audition tape for Baker Mayfield. The Browns have little else to play for in the final two weeks after being eliminated from playoff contention on Sunday, but they didn’t exactly lay down on prime time. Mayfield struggled again, missing throws and getting a little gun-shy following his fifth interception thrown in the last five and a half quarters of football. But instead of turning to Nick Chubb, Kevin Stefanski opted to have Mayfield throw the ball 38 times.
He put his already beaten-up quarterback in the line of fire, resulting in nine sacks, including four for T.J. Watt, who turned rookie tackle James Hudson into a human turnstile by the final quarter. Mayfield predictably had a rough go, and his receivers certainly didn’t help him, dropping at least five passes (by my count), with the final drop resulting in Mayfield’s second interception of the night.
He had at least four additional passes batted down at the line by Pittsburgh’s defensive front, prompting Browns fans to beg for some designed rollouts (which also didn’t work well when called).
The whole scene felt a lot like a test in an otherwise meaningless game, with Stefanski sending Mayfield out to prove his worth to the franchise near the end of a massively disappointing season and essentially throwing him to the wolves without much support from Chubb, who finished with 12 carries for 58 yards. Stefanski said afterward Chubb was dealing with a rib issue, explaining his series-long absences, but Stefanski did something similar with Chubb a week earlier in Green Bay.
The whole situation has grown from disappointing to strange, and with one week left, it could get even stranger.
Kevin Stefanski should take a few weeks off, then commit to a long, critical look at his own performance in 2021. As alluded to in the previous point, Stefanski’s consistently perplexing decision to repeatedly drop an injured Mayfield back to throw on first and second down set the Browns back plenty on Monday night and gave Pittsburgh all the reason in the world to pin their ears back and hunt the quarterback on third down. It’s the latest development in what has frankly been a subpar play-calling season for Stefanski, who was hailed as an creative mastermind a year earlier en route to winning AP NFL Coach of the Year and has since proven to be a coach who’s often too in love with throwing the football, neglecting his star running back to the detriment of his team.
His situational play-calling has been curious at times and downright bad in others (see: Week 16 at Green Bay), and while Mayfield certainly deserves criticism for his poor play in 2021, so does Stefanski for his in-game ability. He can fix that with an offseason of reflection and self-examination. He just has to be willing to do so.
Harris has a bright future if he doesn’t have to carry the Steelers by himself. Harris runs hard and rumbled through plenty of Browns defenders on Monday night, fighting through multiple tacklers for extra yards to keep an otherwise stagnant Steelers offense moving.
He’s a stud, the same star runner he was at Alabama, and he’ll continue to develop into a key playmaker for Pittsburgh with time.
The only massive hurdle the Steelers still need to clear is finding a way to not put the entire offensive load on his shoulders and eventually running him into the ground. That starts with improving offensive line play — it played well Monday night, providing some hope — and then the responsibility will shift to offensive coordinator Matt Canada (if he’s still around), who has far too often been content with dialing up passes well short of the sticks on third down and has played the perimeter too much for the Steelers fans’ liking. Pittsburgh has playmakers beyond Harris, but it needs to use them better than it has in 2021.
Roethlisberger’s declining play hasn’t helped at times, of course, but it’s not just an aging quarterback’s fault. Harris’ future could depend upon it.
Turn your eyes toward T.J. Watt, NFL record keepers.
Watt went off on Monday night, capitalizing on a favorable matchup with rookie right tackle Hudson by repeatedly beating him around the edge with power and strength, crushing Mayfield three times and chasing him down to force him to slide for a total of four sacks.
He boosted his already high sack total to just one shy of the all-time single-season record and gets one more game to try to pass Michael Strahan’s mark of 22.5 for the most in one year.
Yes, purists, Strahan hit his total in 16 games, while Watt will have a chance to do so in a 17-game season, but consider this: Watt has only played in 14 games this season. How’s that for your asterisk?
Next Gen Stat of the game: Najee Harris rushed seven times for 57 yards and one touchdown against stacked boxes, averaging 8.1 yards per such attempt.
NFL Research: In three prime-time games this year, T.J. Watt has 9.0 sacks. Aaron Donald (7.0 in six games) had more in prime time this season entering Monday night, but Watt’s explosion for four sacks (including one credited to him on a Baker Mayfield slide) propelled the edge rusher past the three-time Defensive Player of the Year.
Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger goes out a winner at Heinz Field: ‘This is the best place to play’
Eighteen seasons of emotion, with a pair of Super Bowl victories, statistical splendor and Pro Bowl selections all mixed in, were crammed into one Monday night in Pittsburgh.
Awash in memories, Ben Roethlisberger was able to walk away from Heinz Field a winner, kneel out a victory and take a victory lap following his Pittsburgh Steelers’ 26-14 triumph over the Cleveland Browns on Monday Night Football.
“Um, you know what, it’s funny because, probably not the way you wanted it, other than the win,” Roethlisberger, holding back tears, told ESPN’s Lisa Salters after the game when asked how his final game at Heinz Field went. “And that’s all that really matters.
That’s kind of been the story of my career. It’s not always pretty, but we find a way. Man, did our defense step up tonight and the guys, it was just so much fun to be out here. These are the best fans in sports and this is the best place to play.”
Ahead of Monday’s game, Roethlisberger let it be known that everything pointed to this being his final home game at Heinz Field and though Big Ben’s performance was hardly a reminder of his past magnificence, the final result certainly was.
Few in NFL history have been more successful than Roethlisberger on his homefield.
Roethlisberger has 164 wins as a starter, which are the fifth-most in NFL history, but the most for a quarterback to spend his entire career with one team. An abundance of them came in the friendly confines of Heinz Field, where he’s gone 92-31, those 92 victories the fourth-most home victories with one team for a quarterback in league chronicle, per NFL Research.
Indeed, in a career full of success, the home cooking tasted good for Roethlisberger and the Steelers far more often than not.
Even in 2021 as the Steelers sit at 8-7-1, Roethlisberger and his squad went 6-2 at home with a six-game winning streak to end it.
And it ended with a win over the Browns, who Roethlisberger has dominated to the tune of a perfect 13-0 tally at home through his career in the regular season (13-1 including last season’s playoff loss).
Cleveland Browns 14-26 Pittsburgh Steelers: Ben Roethlisberger wins his last home game to keep Pittsburgh’s playoff hopes alive
Harris, meanwhile, rushed for a career-best 188 yards on 28 carries, breaking the Steelers franchise’s single-season rookie rushing record, his 1,172 yards passing Hall of Famer Franco Harris’ 1,055 in 1972. Harris iced Pittsburgh’s win by breaking free for a 37-yard rushing touchdown in the final minute.
Roethlisberger threw a five-yard touchdown pass to Diontae Johnson in the second quarter but, if this was indeed to be the 39-year-old’s last ever game in front of his home fans at Heinz Field, it was far from his best outing as he completed just 24 of his 46 attempts for a season-low mark of 123 yards.
The two-time Super Bowl winner with the Steelers, who turns 40 in March, has not officially announced his retirement from the NFL, but in the build-up to this game he did say “that all signs are pointing to this could be it”. The quarterback moved into fifth place on the NFL’s all-time passing yards list on December 19 and he owns most of Pittsburgh’s franchise passing records, including for completions (5,386), yards (63,721) and touchdowns (416).
Browns QB Baker Mayfield, meanwhile, endured a tough evening, going 16 of 38 for 185 yards, being sacked nine times, along with throwing two touchdowns – to David Njoku and Harrison Bryant – and two interceptions.
Chris Boswell was successful with four field goal attempts to see the Steelers open up a 19-7 lead inside the final six minutes of the contest. Though the Browns made it a five-point game with little over a minute left after Mayfield’s second scoring strike of the day, any hope of a remarkable comeback was soon quashed as Pittsburgh recovered the ensuing onside kick and Harris went off to the races three plays later.
With victory, the Steelers (8-7-1) are guaranteed again to finish the season .500 or above. They’ve still yet to return a losing record in any of head coach Mike Tomlin’s 15 seasons in charge of the team.
Steelers top Browns in Big Ben’s likely home farewell to stay in playoff hunt
Pittsburgh (8-7-1) needs a win at Baltimore next week combined with a loss by Indianapolis to Jacksonville to reach the playoffs for the 12th time in Roethlisberger’s 18 seasons.
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He hardly did it alone. Rookie Najee Harris ran for a career-best 188 yards and a touchdown, Chris Boswell kicked four field goals and TJ Watt sacked Baker Mayfield four times to give him 21 and a half on the season, one short of the NFL record set by Hall of Famer Michael Strahan in 2001.
Pittsburgh’s defense sacked Mayfield nine times in all as Cleveland (7-9) – which was eliminated from postseason contention on Sunday – inexplicably put the game on Mayfield’s tattered shoulders rather than feed running back Nick Chubb against the NFL’s worst rush defense.
Ben Roethlisberger’s Steelers legacy includes draft slight, broken nose and competitive drive
It was Whipple’s original evaluation of the 2004 quarterback class, and though Roethlisberger was ranked highly coming out of Miami (Ohio), he wasn’t the highest. That infuriated the young signal-caller.
“He saw the reports on my desk one day, was looking through them,” said Whipple, the former Steelers quarterbacks coach who’s now offensive coordinator at Nebraska. “That’s typical Ben when he was young. I told him, ‘Yeah, if you would’ve stayed one more year, you’d have broken all the NCAA records, you would’ve been the first pick in the draft and gone to the 49ers,’ which was his team anyways.
“He got mad because I had Eli [Manning] ranked higher than him, only because I said Eli’s brother [Peyton] is an NFL player and Player of the Year. [Roethlisberger] always had this underlying challenge with Eli.”
Roethlisberger didn’t have an unspoken rivalry only with the younger Manning. He felt personally challenged by everyone, constantly striving to convince those who knew him or watched him that he was the best. At everything.
In his 18th year as Steelers quarterback, Roethlisberger admits “all signs” point to one final regular-season game at Heinz Field on Monday night against the Cleveland Browns (8:15 p.m. ET, ESPN). He no longer has to prove himself, the fruits of his labor tangibly evident in two Super Bowl trophies, six Pro Bowls and more than 60,000 passing yards and 400 regular-season touchdown throws.
Roethlisberger could have stopped playing years ago but kept pushing himself, motivated each season by the possibility of another Vince Lombardi Trophy.
“He only plays the game for one reason: to win Super Bowls,” said Charlie Batch, Roethlisberger’s backup from 2004 to 2012. “Money’s great, but when you made it and you have enough that you don’t have to worry about it, you’re only coming back for one reason.”