Kovacevic: It's starting to shine through

Stephon Tuitt had, at once, Heinz Field's best and worst vantage points for the Steelers' 26-9 victory Sunday over the Vikings.

Meaning the big man hated like heck having to watch from the sideline, forced there by injury, and yet loved so much of what he saw.

"To see what our guys can do, seeing the ability, the passion, the togetherness," Tuitt was telling me afterward at his stall, "man, can you even imagine what this is going to look like?"

I nodded along. I'm totally with him on this.

"I mean, are you freaking kidding me?"

Oh, I'm with him on that, too.

Pick apart the performance as you will. Film-room football, Monday morning quarterbacking, it's always fair game. And as all concerned acknowledged without prodding, there were issues aplenty. The offense, as Mike Tomlin put it, is still "missing some timing." There were more deep balls from Ben Roethlisberger but also an inordinate amount of misfires. Only 3 of 13 third downs were converted. On defense, though there was still good pressure and good coverage, one unsettling drive in the second half saw the Vikings steamroll down the field led by their journeyman backup quarterback, Case Keenum. And in general, there were 10 more flags for 74 more lost yards, a continuation from Cleveland.

Even Cam Heyward, who outshone anyone on either side, was hard-pressed to come up with positives. And I sure did press:

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We remember Dan Rooney. pic.twitter.com/eMpkaDHZHw

— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) September 17, 2017

Game time. #HereWeGo pic.twitter.com/Rbau2dvvoy

— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) September 17, 2017

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"Each game, I’m getting better and getting more into it," he'd say. "I’m going to get better this week in practice and go back out on Sunday and play hard again."

The offense as a whole isn't at its peak. It isn't close.  That's my point.

Le'Veon Bell missed all of training camp and the preseason. He ran like a flat tire in Cleveland. His story isn't any more sympathetic than Bryant's, so it's not like either is making some heroic comeback. But they're coming back nonetheless. And Bell, after another sluggish start, would wind up with 83 hard yards -- no run longer than 11 -- on 27 carries.

What's more, he, like Bryant, was received warmly by the crowd, something that couldn't have been considered a certainty.

"Truthfully, I didn't really think about it until I ran out and heard the ovation," Bell would say. "It's crazy, it's awesome to get an ovation like that because I get so many mixed reactions from people on Twitter, Instagram and places like that. It was great to know the crowd was behind me."

That guy isn't yet within a solar system of where he'll be. And never mind his richly visible impact already on Antonio Brown, with all the underneath real estate now available to him:

The Minnesota front seven is legitimately really good. Roethlisberger went so far as to call the Vikings' defense "the best I've seen in a long time." That praise was echoed around the room.

But I'm sorry, this is hilarious. That's a linebacker, Eric Kendricks, No. 54, lined up across from AB. Kendricks knows that's not how that's supposed to work, so he tries to pawn responsibility to the nearby safety, Harrison Smith, No. 22. Smith totally blows it, taking an awkward step forward, then running into traffic after he changes gears. That leaves poor Kendricks to chase AB for the width of the field.

It was a 26-yard gain, but it also was a powerful sign of what happens when the Steelers are sending multiple wide receivers -- tight end Jesse James, too -- way downfield.

I asked AB about that sequence, and he smiled.

"I saw the linebacker, but I was supposed to go across, anyway," he said. "That's just a good play."

So was this one, for the Steelers' first touchdown by Bryant:

Watch this one 100 times, and you still won't have a full feel for all of Roethlisberger's possible targets. But you will have a feel for the biting response from Mike Zimmer, Minnesota's coach, when asked what went wrong for the Vikings here: "Well, we lined up incorrectly."

Gee, can't imagine why. Blink and you'll miss it, but AB lines up at the bottom of your screen and curls quickly toward the sideline. Completely uncovered. And James, the tight end, dashes to the right to pull the safety Smith away from Bryant.

I asked AB if he saw progress in the offense:

Progress comes in many forms.

JuJu Smith-Schuster, the rookie with the big attitude and bigger smile, bowled over a Minnesota linebacker with a block on one play, and he scored his first NFL touchdown on another following a fine block from Ramon Foster:

When a reporter asked Tomlin if JuJu's showing had him encouraged, the coach snapped back, "I was encouraged after Week 1."

James Conner, the rookie who was already a local legend before this first NFL home game, broke free for a 9-yarder on his lone carry. And the crowd's reaction was precisely what would be expected here.

"That felt good," Conner told me, and he meant the run. "It felt like getting a little more loose, a little more comfortable."

Even the couple of negatives for the offense were easily explained.

Third-down conversion rate?

"That's a really, really good defense over there," Roethlisberger said. And he's right.

Alejandro Villanueva giving up a sack and a quarterback hit, in addition to his false start?

He was overcome with heat exhaustion, as were a few players in the 84-degree, 58-percent humidity ugliness. I tried to ask Villanueva how he felt afterward and barely got a grunt out of him.

"It was tough out there," Marcus Gilbert told me after he missed most of the fourth quarter for a hamstring cramp of his own. "But we got better from Cleveland, and we're going to get even better."

Roethlisberger echoed that with a little more flair when asked how much more of a curve remains.

"Hopefully, it’s done," he replied without hesitation. "We just got done winning a football game. That’s all that really matters. We’re not BCS-pointing it here. We’re just winning football games. We’re 2-0. We did what we had to do."

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