This untouched touchdown trot that split the Steelers' defense a month ago ...
https://vimeo.com/194290409
... also risked splitting its participants in so many more ways than that.
The Cowboys' Ezekiel Elliot sprinted right up the gut with nine tiny ticks left, turning what could have been, should have been a spectacular comeback into what some Steelers openly, emotionally described as the most devastating defeat of their lives.
Watch it again up there, if you can. Because it means more now than ever.
Watch Lawrence Timmons disappear into the Dallas pile. He's an inside linebacker, the position that's always most pivotal in preventing the run, and he's swarmed right from the snap.
Watch Ryan Shazier, the other inside linebacker. Especially him. He's responsible, more than anyone, for that specific gap that Elliott finds with ease. All he has to do is stay put, let the play develop, then wrap and tackle. But he didn't. He went for the highlight, the big hit. He flung himself into the pack.
And he got pancaked flat on his backside.
Afterward, Heinz Field's home locker room was a wreck. Stuff had been strewn everywhere. One player could be heard letting out a primal screams from the showers. Otherwise, it was silent. Some sat at their stalls for a half-hour, still suited up, still in shock. It was as crushing a scene as I'd covered with the Steelers since that ominous 0-4 start in London four years ago.
It was dangerous, too. Because once those players began getting asked about that particular play, fingers began pointing. Quietly, subtly, but surely, more than a few spoke bitterly about Shazier's choice.
As if it weren't an isolated case with him.
As if it weren't an isolated case with anyone.
____________________
The Steelers beat the snot out of the Giants, 24-14, on this Sunday evening.
I'm guessing you're aware of that. And that it was their third win in a row since the collapse against the Cowboys. And that they stayed tied atop the AFC North with the Ravens at 7-5. And that these Giants, riding a six-game winning streak, weren't exactly the Browns or the banged-up Colts. And that it actually was 24-7 until a hollow late touchdown pass by Eli Manning.
But were you aware that Manning's 195 passing yards marked his fewest in the past 19 games in which he threw 30-plus times?
Or that, in addition to being picked off twice, he had seven other balls batted away?
Or that, in addition to being sacked twice and indirectly flagged for a safety, he was hit three additional times, hurried four times above that, this despite an offensive line that ranked second in the NFL in quarterback protection?
Or that his offense converted only 4 of 11 third downs and a fatal 0 for 3 on fourth downs, this despite having been 6 for 8 in that latter category?
Or that the New York running game barely covered half the grid, with 56 yards on 14 carries?
You're getting this, right?
Beat.
The.
Snot.
And you'll notice that, with due respect to above-the-line showings from a resurgent Ladarius Green, the relentless running of Le'Veon Bell, the really snarly offensive line and the right-off-the-plane kicker Randy Bullock, all of the aforementioned damage done to the Giants' collective nasal cavity was rooted in the defense.
The defense, man.
"The defense is getting it done," Mike Mitchell told me after following up his Indianapolis spectacle with two timely passes swatted away and five tackles. "It feels good, too. It does. It feels like it's all working ..."
He paused a moment, at which point I interjected that it looked like the secondary was feeding off the front seven and vice versa.
"Yeah, it's like that," Mitchell continued. "Hand-in-hand."
It did feel like that. Maybe for the first time all season or even further back.
Ask yourself this: When was the last time it felt like the Steelers' defense could be primarily responsible for winning a game, much less actually did so?
Nope. Me, neither. Certainly not after Dallas.
But that's the byproduct, beyond a doubt, of the hand-in-hand concept. It's the byproduct of the secondary improving and more than holding its own, thus allowing Keith Butler to get back to blitzes, thus allowing the big boys to roam without leashes, thus applying pressure to the quarterback and, boomeranging it all the way back, allowing the secondary to take more chances on the ball than at any point in the past ... what, half-decade?
This wasn't the Steelers' best overall game of 2016, but it sure as Shamarko was the most complete on that side of the ball.
I loved Mike Tomlin's flip-the-script answer to my question on the pressure up front:
https://vimeo.com/194283927
Didn't even hesitate with that one, did he?
Good for him. His fortunes felt as bleak as those of anyone associated with the Steelers a month ago, but he's since been as instrumental as anyone in the defense getting better. Because it's his call, not Butler's, when it comes to who gets a helmet and who uses it. It was the head coach who benched Jarvis Jones and, to a lesser extent, Arthur Moats. He turned instead to a healthy Bud Dupree and an eternal James Harrison because, to recite one of Tomlin's best lines all season, "What are we preserving him for?" He also demoted Robert Golden for Sean Davis, Willie Gay for Artie Burns, bucking his own longstanding precedent of needlessly burying rookies.
I wrote after Dallas that Tomlin's job should be in jeopardy if, one, the Steelers lost at Cleveland the next weekend or, two, they fail to make the playoffs. The first didn't happen, and it's starting to look like the second won't, either, though much football remains:
So to repeat: Good for him. But better yet for the group because they're ultimately the ones who have to bond, then to bring it in all defensive phases.
Check out, as golden examples, the three fourth-down stops Sunday, all in the second half:
https://vimeo.com/194292853
That's Shazier on the pass defensed, which is wonderful work in and of itself. But slow the loop to appreciate that, before he whips laterally to track the tight end, Will Tye, he doesn't do the headless chicken thing this time. He first glances to his right to find that the All-Pro receiver, Odell Beckham Jr., is headed into double-coverage. His head swivels back to spot Tye, and he fires up his athletic engine to do the rest.
But appreciate, too, that Timmons rushed Manning with such ferocity that his throwing arm dramatically speeds up. And that Dupree gets enough of a bull rush on his block to clear Timmons' lane.
"I felt really good about that," Dupree would tell me, but only after I brought it up.
I could actually identify more in this one, but that's hand-in-hand.
https://vimeo.com/194292921
That one up there is the Standard being the Standard, if only because it's well-traveled, 29-year-old, 2010 seventh-round pick Ricardo Mathews getting credit for the sack on Manning. But it's kind of hard to miss that the entire franchise, minus maybe Art Rooney II and a few administrative folks, contributes to the hit. Mathews pushes his man back. Stephon Tuitt pushes two men back. Harrison does that under-the-guy's-armpit move and gets there, too. Arthur Moats shows up to sing the chorus.
But here again, though TV doesn't show it, I can tell you that Manning looks up and sees a black jersey for every white one. There's one such visual at the bottom left of the video, but they were everywhere. Shazier dropped back, too.
That's hand-in-hand.
https://vimeo.com/194280916
The one above might be my favorite, if only because yet again Dupree records a vital second assist. Watch the left edge of the Steelers' line. Dupree punches at the Giants' tackle, Bobby Hart, then whirls around him to force Manning to step up in the pocket.
At the other edge, Harrison pummels back New York's Ereck Flowers, a second-year kid he'd school all day long, then gets held by Flowers -- no flag -- then busts loose to chase Manning to his right. At which point Manning has a really bad idea to throw across his body.
Davis, reading both the covered receiver on the crossing route and Manning's eyes, waits, leaps and picks.
"They did all the work up front," Davis would say when I asked about his part. "All credit to those guys. Look what Eli had to do."
That's really hand-to-hand, from Eli's to the Steelers'.
____________________
There was no big speech that led to any of this. The closest I could come to finding any such thing came from this question I asked Harrison about the newer guys:
https://vimeo.com/194291185
Did you get the money lines there?
"The biggest thing is just doing your job, you know what I'm sayin'?"
Which he followed with the elaboration: "Like I told guys, I want them playing selfish. And I'm not saying selfish like me-me-me. I mean selfish with the fact that you should worry about your job. Don't worry about nothin' else. If all 11 guys worry about their job, it'll spill out to the guy who's supposed to make the play."
That quote, in all candor, could have comprised this whole column.
Harrison's hardly the type to tell locker-room tales, so we'll probably never know, beyond his own words there, if this newfound chemistry emanated from him or one of the other leaders. But it's telling that a player long known as being a 'leader by example' primarily as a euphemism for not wanting to be bothered by it, that he's the one doing this kind of talking, right alongside the vocal leaders such as Mitchell, Gay and even now Heyward.
It's not difficult to see the message has reached the intended targets.
Maybe beginning with the initial intended target:
https://vimeo.com/194283985
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
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