Pittsburgh Steelers vs Denver Broncos: 34 - 27

The game appeared to start out okay for the Pittsburgh Steelers. They recovered a fumble and scored a quick touchdown. And then for the rest of the 1st half, the Steelers just self-destructed on the defensive end. Denver scored 4 touchdowns, one after another. Denver's QB Brock Osweiler was making folks forget about Peyton Manning. The commentators on CBS kept saying that the Steelers were giving the Denver receivers too much space. Osweiler would throw a pass and the Denver receiver would be wide open. I just was mumbling the whole 1st half, "Our defense sucks." The Pittsburgh offense just couldn't keep pace with Denver. I wouldn't say they were playing horrible. They put together a couple long drives, but the results were 3 points versus 7 or 8. The 1st half ended with the Steelers down 27 - 13.

Then the 2nd half started. We stopped the Denver offense a couple times and I was saying to myself, "We've got to get into the end zone. Our defense isn't doing anything today." And then we kept stopping the Denver offense. And our offense did start getting into the end zone. And so I was like, "What is happening?" The defense was playing so well that I wasn't overly worried when Big Ben threw that awful interception with 2:01 left on the game clock. I was a little worried, but not overly so. I had confidence that the defense would hold strong.

How did this happen? The CBS commentators didn't really seem to know why. I went over to ESPN and the folks there didn't seem to know how the Steelers turned their defense around. Maybe Osweiler isn't Manning, which he isn't. Maybe Osweiler's left shoulder injury was hurting his game. Whatever it was, this was a game the Steelers needed. Now we need to win 2 more.

Our defense can't have anymore games like they had in the 1st half. In the playoffs, we're playing 3 straight. We can't take chances falling behind, especially when we'll be playing on the road.