Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2016 i Steelers Digest

For a team that got into the playoffs on something of a reprieve, and won its first playoff game after watching its quarterback go down and a 15-point lead disappear, the Steelers’ luck ran out in Denver. But they have only themselves to blame for squandering several opportunities to beat the Broncos. 1) On fourth-and-1 in the first quarter, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin opted against attempting a 49-yard field goal into a gusting crosswind. Instead, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger dropped back and went for it all. His long pass hit Markus Wheaton in the chest in the end zone, but the ball bounced to the ground and the Steelers came away without any points. 2) With a 7-6 lead, the Steelers were poised to separate from the Broncos following Darrius Heyward-Bey’s…

James Harrison has been through the good and the bad. He has won two Super Bowls. He has lost in the AFC Championship Game and in a Super Bowl. He knows how hard it is to get there, and how tough it is to get back. And he knows, the closer you get to that goal, the tougher it is to lose. The disappointment of the loss to the Denver Broncos in the AFC Divisional playoff game is something he knows younger players on the team have to get past, but at the same time he wants to make sure they use it as motivation. There is a simple message he would deliver, one that every player should take to heart. “Just think about everything you went through to get…

Last year former Steelers guard Alan Faneca was in Canton, Ohio, for Jerome Bettis’ Hall of Fame Enshrinement. The question now is, will he return to Canton this year as a member of the Class of 2016? The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced the Gold Jacket finalists for the Class of 2016, and both Faneca and linebacker Kevin Greene are among the 15 finalists. Faneca was the Steelers’ first-round draft pick in 1998 and played 10 seasons for the black and gold, and 13 overall in the NFL. He was a member of the Super Bowl XL championship team, and was selected to nine Pro Bowls. Faneca was a six-time All-Pro selection and was named to the Steelers All-Time Team in 2007 and the NFL 2000’s All-Decade Team. “He…

Opening Statement: This week starts a tremendous undertaking for us in assessing and evaluating all elements of our 2015 journey, and we do that on a lot of fronts: staff evaluations, player evaluations, schematic evaluations. We look at every aspect of our program over the course of a 12-month calendar that we just finished, whether that’s offseason strength training and conditioning, equipment, use of technology, etc. The longer I am on the job, the more respect I have for what we are just beginning to do, and the clearer I see it, in that it’s a tremendous part of what we do to evaluate what we’ve done, its effectiveness, its usefulness, and really to kind of sow the seeds and lay a foundation for 2016 in the midst of that.…

WHAT WENT RIGHT • Call it just a bit of delayed gratification. On Cleveland’s opening series — on the third play that was a third-and-5 after the recovery of Antonio Brown’s fumble — an Austin Davis pass his Mike Mitchell in the chest, but he dropped the ball. The Browns elected to go for it on fourth down, and Gary Barnidge was tackled short of the line to gain after catching a short pass. • It didn’t take long for Ben Roethlisberger to go back to Antonio Brown, and it didn’t take Brown long to deliver after losing a fumble on the Steelers’ opening possession. It was an eight-play, 70-yard drive, and Brown caught three passes for 59 of those yards, with Heath Miller catching the 2-yard pass for the…

Antonio Brown joined some pretty impressive company when his teammates voted him the 2015 Steelers Most Valuable Player, becoming the fourth player to win MVP honors three times. The others who have done so are two Hall of Famers in Jerome Bettis and Rod Woodson, and the Steelers’ all-time leading receiver, Hines Ward. “It’s a tremendous honor to be mentioned with those three guys, and to win this,” said Brown. “It tells what I mean to my teammates and speaks volumes about what they think about me. It’s a great individual award, but it’s always about the team. “I am a guy who likes to lead by example. Putting in the extra work, fine-tuning my game with the details, and buying in to what people don’t want to do, the…

Mike Mitchell has heard the criticism, much of it on social media, and while the veteran safety understands it to an extent, it still surprises him. “Based on some of the things I still hear, I wonder how they could still say that,” said Mitchell. “Some people will tweet, ‘He is always celebrating,’ or ‘I have never seen him make a play.’ I don’t know how you could make that statement.” His hits, some of the most punishing and physical ones you will see, do in fact come with celebrations at times. But for Mitchell it’s never about trying to show up an opponent, it’s never about disrespecting the game. It’s about passion. It’s about loving what he is doing. It’s about just enjoying the moment, enjoying what he works…

It was a playoff win for the ages. But the Steelers paid a heavy price. They defeated the Cincinnati Bengals, 18-16, in a dramatic, back-and-forth struggle that wasn’t decided until Chris Boswell kicked a 35-yard field goal with 14 seconds left. However, the Steelers lost their Most Valuable Player, Antonio Brown. Their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, was left with a shoulder injury that endangered his appearance in the next round of the playoffs in Denver. Both were injured by Vontaze Burfict, the same player who knocked Le’Veon Bell out for the season with a questionable hit to his knee during the regular season. It was the second consecutive season in which a Bengals defender ended Bell’s season with a questionable hit. The hit on Roethlisberger was clean — until Burfict got…

Receiver Antonio Brown and guard David DeCastro earned one of the top honors a player can receive. Brown and DeCastro both were named To Associated Press All-Pro Team as first-team selections. Brown, who also was named AP All-Pro in 2014, finished the regular season as the NFL’s leading receiver with a career-high 1,834 yards and tied for first in the NFL with a career-high 136 receptions. He became the first player in Steelers history with back-to-back seasons with at least 1,700 yards from scrimmage and led the NFL with 2,074 combined yards (including rushing, receiving and returns). Brown is the first player in NFL history with two 125-reception seasons. Brown had 129 receptions in 2014 and 136 receptions in 2015. Brown joined Hines Ward as only the second Steelers player…

Player of the Month How you play down the stretch is always a key, and for two Steelers players their performance in the final five games was something that definitely stood out and they were recognized for it. Receiver Antonio Brown was named the AFC Offensive Player of the Month for December/January, while kicker Chris Boswell was named AFC Special Teams Player of the Month for the same time frame There’s not much more you can say about Brown, who is a back-to-back winner of Player of the Month after taking the honor in November as well. It’s the third time in his career he won the honor, winning in December of 2014 as well. Brown led the NFL with 51 receptions for 642 yards during the span, including an…