ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. \u2014 That was almost what the Steelers had in mind for a final tune-up.<\/p>\n
Normally, you’re supposed to bring a present for your guest at a housewarming party, but it was the Bills who gave the Steelers a couple of early gifts in their new home. Despite leading much of the game, though, the Steelers couldn’t hold on in a 28-27 loss Thursday night at Highmark Stadium in the preseason finale.<\/p>\n
“Our young guys got to play a ton of ball tonight, and that excites me,” said head coach Mike McCarthy. “I got to see personalities.I got to see guys step up.”<\/p>\n
But the Bills stepped up, too, going 59 yards over 6 plays for the winning drive. They pushed in for a 2-yard touchdown run followed by a 2-point conversion pass with 1:06 left in the game.<\/p>\n
Drew Allar’s final pass attempt intended for Lake McRee fell incomplete with 48 seconds remaining and the Steelers facing 4th-and-7 from their 38. McCarthy told Allar he would’ve loved to see him lead a comeback, but that it was a good learning experience to even be placed in that situation at the NFL level.<\/p>\n
Kaden Wetjen finished the Steelers’ scoring with a flurry in the form of his 45-yard punt return for a touchdown with 11:11 remaining. Wetjen made a career out of weaving and cutting back in his college days at Iowa, and he showed that shiftiness again on the NFL level in the fourth quarter, but he wasn’t the only Steelers rookie to make people miss on his way to the end zone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. \u2014 That was almost what the Steelers had in mind for a final tune-up. Normally,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[89735,564,563,73,75,74,115161,565,6029],"class_list":["post-273796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-brian-batko-content","tag-featured","tag-non-sponsored","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-steelers-at-buffalo-bills-2026-pre-3","tag-sights-and-sounds","tag-xtra-points"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}