JACKSONVILLE — Ben Roethlisberger slays the Jacksonville dragon with his hard-nosed play.
To cap a brilliant fourth quarter, Roethlisberger stretched the nose of the football past the goal line on a diving 1-yard touchdown with 3 seconds left to shock the Jaguars, 20-16 on Sunday.
After an awful stretch of play for much of the game, Roethlisberger and the Steelers offense was unbelievable on two scoring drives spanning 148 yards to clinch the game.
The image of Roethlisberger diving to shake a Myles Jack tackling attempt is a snapshot of a gutsy six-game winning streak and a serious playoff push.
The goal-line play looked something like a shovel option play, and when Roethlisberger didn’t like his options, he ran for it, knowing the Steelers had one timeout saved from the previous defensive stop.
Inside the two-minute drill, Pittsburgh stuffed Jacksonville’s third-and-5 rushing attempt.
How Roethlisberger got a 300-yard game out of this is unreal. Through the first 43 minutes, Roethlisberger had 66 passing yards and three interceptions on 11-of-24 passing. He ended it with 314 yards and two touchdowns — a 78-yard bomb to Antonio Brown late in the third and a beautiful back-of-end-zone strike to a leaping Vance McDonald for 11 yards.
The Jacksonville hangover looked real, and it had Roethlisberger and the Steelers navigating quicksand for much of what was a very winnable game.
Turns out it was.
That doesn’t change Jacksonville’s ability to control the pace on Pittsburgh with rangy defenders and a stout running game. But Pittsburgh was at its gutsy best late.
After seven turnovers in two matchups with Jacksonville last year, Roethlisberger entered this matchup as one of the league’s hottest quarterbacks, armed with motivation to quiet Jaguars cornerback Jalen Ramsey, who called him “decent at best” in the offseason.
There’s something about the presence of Ramsey and the Jags defense that makes Roethlisberger look indecisive at times. That’s been the case in two regular season matchups, with Roethlisberger and Brown trying the same slant routes, and Ramsey making the same play for an interception over the top. In his last two regular season games against Jacksonville, Roethlisberger has one touchdown and six interceptions when targeting Brown. The offense converted one of its first nine third downs and got in scoring range for the first time thanks to two Jacksonville penalties. James Conner had two bad drops.
Somehow, the Steelers overcame all of that. JuJu Smith-Schuster and Brown each had 100-yard games, making key catches in the fourth quarter. Roethlisberger found his rhythm late.
The defense had two goals: Stop the run, and don’t let Blake Bortles get out on bootlegs.
They did those two things mostly well. Bortles was rarely a threat. The Steelers sacked him five times for a loss of 40 yards. The Jacksonville offense managed one touchdown.
At least for most of the game Bortles didn’t need to be great because of a running game that dominated the first half with 141 yards, holding onto the ball for nearly 23 minutes.
But the Steelers stuffed the run in the second half, which helped put Pittsburgh in position to win.