Walking the plank
PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Steelers were without two of their most reliable players, the injured Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu, in what seemingly was a troubling development for a long-slumping team.
On a day the Steelers played a team without an offense, it hardly mattered.
The Steelers haven't had many moments this season when their defense played the way it did during their Super Bowl run last season — dictating the tempo, creating mistakes and indecision by the opposing quarterback and scoring opportunities for their own offense.
When the going-nowhere Tampa Bay Buccaneers and their barely-move-the-ball offense led by rookie quarterback Bruce Gradkowski showed up at Heinz Field after losing by 28 points to Dallas in its previous game, the Steelers (5-7) were convinced this was exactly what they needed to bounce back from a 27-0 loss at Baltimore.
Too bad for the Steelers their 20-3 victory over the Buccaneers on Sunday did little other than give them the opportunity to salvage a winning record out of a long-since-lost-season. And, at least for a few hours, provide a pleasant reminder of what it was like during that eight-game winning streak that ended their Super Bowl championship season.
"This was how we needed to play after playing bad last week," linebacker Joey Porter said. "We just wanted to come out there and get a win, no matter how we did it."
Their own offense generated little on its own, with Ben Roethlisberger completing fewer than half of his 25 passes and the running game averaging only 2.5 yards per carry. Instead, the Steelers sat back and waited for Tampa Bay (3-9) to make mistakes — and there were plenty of them, with three Gradkowski-thrown interceptions and a fumble.
"It's really frustrating," Bucs running back Cadillac Williams said. "It's basically been going on all season. It's like one possession, we look like a good offense, and the next possession we look like we don't know what the heck we're doing."
Defensively, the Bucs forced only one turnover from a Steelers team that began the game with a league-high 30.
"They like to run the ball and we stopped that," linebacker Larry Foote said. "So we knew they were going to do the West Coast offense with a lot of 1-2 (step drops) and a lot of slants and stuff. We knew it was coming and we jumped a lot of those things."
The Bucs were limited to one sustained drive, to the Steelers' 3 in the third quarter with Pittsburgh up 10-0. But Gradkowski, who grew up in Pittsburgh, overthrew the 6-foot-5 Maurice Stovall on a fade pattern, allowing Bryant McFadden to make the interception on what coach Jon Gruden called "a bad throw."
"We had takeaways, and we haven't been getting takeaways," Steelers coach Bill Cowher said.
The Steelers responded with their best drive, with Roethlisberger needing five plays to lead an 80-yard possession that ended with his 16-yard TD pass to tight end Heath Miller and a 17-0 lead. Earlier, Roethlisberger took advantage of a Gradkowski-thrown interception by Larry Foote to throw a 2-yard scoring pass to another tight end, Jerame Tuman, for the game's first touchdown.
Gradkowski was 20-of-34 for 175 yards with three interceptions despite opposing a Steelers defense that was without its best player, Polamalu (knee). The Steelers also sacked Gradkowski five times.
Cowher wasn't satisfied with his own offense's efficiency, a repeated occurrence this season, saying, "It takes us too long to get on track."
Like until December, maybe?
Still, the Steelers had more than enough to beat a Tampa Bay team that avoided its second shutout loss of the season only when Matt Bryant kicked a 27-yard field goal on the final play.
"We wish we could have put a few more on the board," Roethlisberger said. "The defense got us the ball a lot, a lot of turnovers. We need to capitalize more on them."
Notes: The Steelers play two home games in five days, facing the Browns (4-8) on Thursday night. They may be without Ward, Polamalu, S Ryan Clark (groin) and WR Cedrick Wilson (ankle). ... Steelers K Jeff Reed's 50-yard field goal was the longest in an NFL game at grass-barren Heinz Field, which opened in 2001.
