Road Rage in Foxboro

Steelers assert themselves 33-10 over New England

This could not have happened at a better time. Hopefully this just the beginning of reaching a playoff ready peak. The Steelers have had a very good season overall but they have hovered to long in the middle of some offensive production numbers. Time to put the pedal to the metal and this was a nice sign of that.

The first quarter started of a little sluggish. And Mike Vrabel making an outstanding play for a Roethlisberger INT didn't help. That lead to New England punching it in with a Sammy Morris run for a NE TD. 7 to 0 Patriots.

Pittsburgh kind of shook that off and answered with a Jeff Reed d oink to make it Patriots 7 to 3. New England however responded in kind to raise their lead to 10 to 7 in the 2 nd quarter.

The Steelers settled in at that point and put together a TD drive to close the half with a tie game at 10 to 10. It was Ben to Puffy Holmes on a nice throw just inside the front pi line that resulted in the TD.

It was in the 3 rd quarter that Pittsburgh took there first lead with another Jeff Reed field goal. It was now 13 to 10 Steelers. An ensuing kick off proved costly for New England as the return man coughed up a fumble and Pittsburgh pounced on it. It didn't take long for Pittsburgh to cash in on a Ben to Hines TD.

New England ran into more trouble when James Harrison forced a fumble only to have LaMarr Woodley snatch it up. This lead to 3 more Reed points. It was now 23 to 10 Steelers. After seeing 2 fumbles Troy Palomalu decided they should have an INT so he obliged by picking off Matt Cassell. This lead to? You guessed it 3 more from Reed. 26 to 10, Steelers.

Of course Lawrence Timmons did not want to go unnoticed so he also picked off a Cassell throw and nearly took it the distance. Garry Russell drove the last nail in the New England coffin by rumbling in for a TD. Extra point made it 33 to 10, Pittsburgh.

So finally after many years the Steelers win in Foxboro. The stats are somewhat hard to gauge considering the weather was pretty lousy.

Ben was okay on the day but his numbers were so, so. He went 17 for 33 and 179 yards, 2 TD's and 1 INT. Bad day to throw so what can we say and be fair. You would like to see even on a bad day the yards per attempt be marginally higher but let's see what happens over the final stretch.

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With the bad weather coming it was nice to see the rushing game look like a Pittsburgh attack. Willie Parker and Mewelde Moore had a nice tandem effort. Willie had 16 rushes for 87 yards and Moore carried the rock 12 times for 67 yards. Nice day.

The defense played very well except they did give up an unusual amount of yards on the ground. The Patriots ran for 122 yards against them. This was bound to happen at some point. Rarely does a defense go a whole year never surrendering over 100 yards at least once or twice.

The turnovers and the 5 sacks were nice to behold though. All in all the Steelers D made life difficult for their opponent.

Next opponent? The what I believe to be the overrated Cowboys. Nevertheless a good team. More on that later.

by Andy Natalie
ProFootball-fans.com Pittsburgh Steelers Correspondent