BALTIMORE -- If Martians -- as in real Martians from Mars, big antennas, buggy eyes, the whole deal -- had landed in Maryland over the weekend, and they'd learned about football on, say, Saturday night, they'd have been able to come up with this simple three-step scheme to stop the Steelers' offense:
1. Assign as many of the armada as possible to cover Antonio Brown.
2. Rely on a stout defensive front to stuff Le'Veon Bell, and do it without any blitzy stuff so all those extra bodies can be free to follow AB.
3. Safely assume that Mike Tomlin and the rest of the Steelers' coaching staff would be so stubborn, so stupid as to allow those first two to take place for three-quarters of the game without a solitary adjustment.
More far-fetched than science fiction?
Ha!
Mars 21, Steelers 14.
"We stopped the run," the Martians' coach, John Harbaugh, would muse through some intergalactic interpreter. "And we didn't give up any big plays."
Cosmic thinking there, huh?
Seriously, though, give the Ravens and Harbaugh their due, painful as that might be. They've now beaten their archrival three times in a row, including 11 of the past 14 here at M&T Bank Stadium, and they sure haven't done it through superior talent or good fortune. If anything, Baltimore's roster has been ripped apart by injury these past two seasons, while the Steelers are ... or should be ... or might not at all be ... a bona fide Super Bowl contender.
On the Ravens' end, they've earned every bit of the ridiculous sight of the AFC North Division standings showing both teams tied at the top at 4-4.
But the Steelers?
Well, if you really want to get beneath what's gone awry, not just in this game and not just the two losses that preceded it but in far too many losses to far too many losing teams this decade ... let's just take you to their leader.
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