They say you can\u2019t teach an old dog new tricks. But what happens when that old dog and his old tricks begin working again? Ask the Pittsburgh Steelers, as T.J. Watt took us back in time with a vintage performance to help lift Pittsburgh over Atlanta en route to a 20-13 WIN.<\/p>\n
In the first game of the year, Watt accounted for two sacks, three tackles for loss, and the play of the 1:00 window. With the Steelers leading 13-10 midway through the fourth quarter, Watt jumped a screen pass intended for Bijan Robinson and snagged it out of the air. After falling to the ground, he got up and was escorted to the end zone by Jaquan Brisker, Keeanu Benton, and Payton Wilson for his first career pick-six. And if that wasn\u2019t enough for you, Watt is the first player with two sacks and an interception in two different season openers.<\/p>\n
Watt was far from the only defender to have a big day. Alex Highsmith finished the afternoon with a pair of sacks and Cam Heyward batted down three passes at the line of scrimmage. Jaquan Brisker made a splash in his Steelers\u2019 debut, picking off a Cooper Rush pass to set up the Steelers\u2019 only offensive touchdown of the day. Payton Wilson led the team with an astounding 13 tackles, two of which were for loss.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for the Steelers, their offense wasn\u2019t as successful. Atlanta was able to dominate the Steelers\u2019 run offense, limiting Pittsburgh to just 58 yards on 21 carries. And while Aaron Rodgers threw the ball 40 times, he averaged just 5.5 yards per attempt.<\/p>\n
It was a particularly brutal day for DK Metcalf. The Steelers\u2019 top wideout was called for offensive pass interference twice, one of which canceled a third-down conversion. He also dropped a perfect throw from Rodgers over the middle on another third down that prevented a potential conversion, and couldn\u2019t get his feet in bounds on a 4th-and-3.<\/p>\n
The Steelers\u2019 only offensive touchdown came after the aforementioned Brisker interception, where Rodgers extended the play and found Pat Freiermuth in the back of the end zone to put the Steelers up 13-7. Overall, Pittsburgh went just 3-of-13 on third downs and averaged just 4.1 yards per play. Doing so against a Falcons team who was missing its top two edge rushers is a concern.<\/p>\n
If there is a silver lining, it\u2019s that Rodgers was dealing when it came to deep balls, he was just let down by dropped passes. Metcalf\u2019s follies were a big stain on potential yards left out of the box score, as was a potential long touchdown that was dropped by Roman Wilson in the end zone. The accuracy and arm talent is certainly still there with Rodgers, his receivers just need to come through with receptions.<\/p>\n
Week 1 is rarely beautiful, and the Steelers will take a 1-0 start with them on the road next week to face the defending AFC champion New England Patriots, who are looking to avoid an 0-2 start.<\/p>\n
Let us know what you think in the comments. Be sure to bookmark Behind the Steel Curtain for all the latest news, breakdowns, and more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They say you can\u2019t teach an old dog new tricks. But what happens when that old dog and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74,35221],"class_list":["post-285599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-steelers-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285599","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=285599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}