Alex Smith and Ben Roethlisberger speak after the game. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

Steelers

Kovacevic: Life beyond the gorgonzola

Oct 16, 2017 • 4:00 am

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The Steelers can do better than this. They oh-for-real can.

And that, my friends ...

"That's the scary part," David DeCastro would offer, by way of completing my sentence Sunday evening in the cramped cement bowels of Arrowhead Stadium, where the Steelers undressed the undefeated Chiefs, 19-13, and, in the process, put to rest the silly notion that Kansas City might be the AFC's best team.

They aren't. As I wrote on the eve of this matchup, they never were. As Super Bowl contenders go, they're as bogus as an Alex Smith 128.5 quarterback rating printed on a $3 bill.

The Steelers are the AFC's best team. At least in terms of what they can do.

And what they can do, with all due respect to all they just achieved here, is better than this.

But sorry, I'm not going to be that prototypical Pittsburgh sports guy who just picks apart all that went wrong and sticks to all of last Sunday's stances, and I'm most definitely not going to get distracted by a complete non-distraction like the word that Martavis Bryant's agent recently asked for a trade. (More on that in a bit.) Because, in the NFL life, a lot of stuff changes week-to-week, and there was marked improvement in meaningful areas here.

I saw way too much to believe otherwise:

A 'GREAT' DEFENSE

That defense, that defense ... just held the NFL's most productive offense without a first down until 1:46 remained in the first half.

I could go over all the other goodies on the stat sheet in this regard -- the Chiefs had 12 total first downs, 251 total yards, 28 total rushing yards, embarrassed totally in every conceivable way -- but I'm going to stick with that first one. Because that's something that just doesn't happen. Oh, it happens when Aliquippa and Clairton are taking knees in the second quarter to avoid getting to 100. But not at the top professional level.

That defense is blossoming into something special.

And, as Mike Mitchell snapped back when irritated by a couple of questions about the Jaguars' 30-9 romp last week at Heinz Field that many peculiarly blamed on the defense, "This isn't something new. This has been building for a while."

He's right. The Steelers, even before this, ranked No. 6 in total defense, No. 1 in passing defense and, uh, No. 28 in rushing defense. So maybe that was the part that was building and, as such, this at least laid a solid foundation.

I loved what Ryan Shazier had to say:

When we got done and I began to walk away, he tugged at my sleeve.

"Hey," he said. "This is a great defense. We know that. This is a great defense."

I admire the approach. I admire even more what they just did. I'm not there yet, but a few more of these and I'm sold. Because it isn't just the James Harrison sack, though the underlying script to that story's just too good to ignore.

It's that Vince Williams logged the game of his life with two sacks, two other tackles for losses, two quarterback hits and a truckload more before exiting with a hip injury. And remember, this guy was the variable on the defense in replacing Lawrence Timmons.

"I'm just blessed to be out there making plays for my brothers," Williams would tell me.

It's that Sean Davis ...

... and Artie Burns are growing before our eyes. They're what's been missing for half a decade, that infusion of youth, energy and dynamism in the secondary. And no, scratch off the list any skepticism about not having faced any quarterbacks. Smith isn't a match for his first five games, but he's a bona fide starter, and he's plenty smart enough to pick apart a mostly younger secondary ... unless that secondary happens to be highly skilled and pretty smart itself.

It's that Cam Heyward, Stephon Tuitt and Javon Hargrave are putting up a 3-4 front unlike any we've seen since the heyday of Aaron Smith, Casey Hampton and Brett Keisel.

And, maybe above all, it's that they're nasty. They assaulted the Chiefs, stole their candy and laughed.

Listen to Kansas City linebacker Derrick Johnson: “Their game plan was very simple: Go punch the Chiefs in the mouth, and see what they can do.”

Listen to Smith, who wound up 19 of 34 for 246 yards and three sacks, when he was asked why he'd become so uncharacteristically animated on the Kansas City sideline: "These guys have gotten the last three now. They've all been hard-fought. They've all been physical. They've been intense. I don't think anybody ... "

At which he point he trailed off.

Translation: He was urging his side to match that nastiness. They couldn't.

I asked Williams, my perpetual point man when seeking the unvarnished truth, if this is what the Steelers' defense can do consistently.

"I'm going to answer you, straight up," Vinnie began. "We're better than this. We are. That's what a lot of people don't understand and what even we're just starting to figure out. When we play as a unit, we're better than this. We've only started to scrape the surface of our potential."

He took a deep breath, then finished.

"We're an amazing team. We really are. Just wait."

'MORE TO COME' FROM OFFENSE

The passing game was imperfect, even in its most poignant moment ...

... but it also was an upgrade over the Jacksonville quagmire, certainly from the quarterback's standpoint.

Heck, just ask him.

"I guess this old cowboy’s got a little bit left in him," Ben Roethlisberger spoke with the final words of his press conference, presumably before riding off into the sunset.

Ben wasn't that good, still not yet expanding his reach to the intermediate routes that have long been his trademark. But he was efficient -- 17 of 25 for 252 yards, a touchdown and one pick that was Antonio Brown's fault -- and he led the offense to a score when it was most welcome.

"He's my quarterback," AB would say.

He spread it around a little, too, with JuJu Smith-Schuster and Le'Veon Bell catching three each, and Bryant catching two, also.

But let's stop pretending, once and for all, here and now, that this offense isn't about running the ball. Bell slammed the point home not once, not twice, but 32 times for 179 yards, with dragged bodies in his wake all afternoon and a Bus-like touchdown to boot:

There's credit to spread on this count, beginning with Ben for setting aside ego to go with the run, but also with superior blocking all-around, none better than DeCastro's unprecedented surge of pulls.

"Ha!" he came back when I brought that up. "Good to show what we big dudes can do once in a while."

Credit Todd Haley, too. Yeah, yeah, I'm not a fan, either, and I was particularly aghast at those two shotgun snaps inside the Kansas City 5 in the second half. But he's the biggest believer in the run, and the scheme on this day involved actual imagination on occasion.

Above all, credit Bell. He's all the way back, and he looked so smooth afterward you'd swear he could carry this kind of load every week.

"Wouldn’t matter to me. I just want wins," Bell replied to a question on that. "I came out of the game healthy, I feel good. So next week, if we do the same thing and that’s the same formula, I’ll be ready.”

The offense isn't there yet. But I'll remind this was expected to be the least of the problems, and there were plenty of reasons for that. Some of those are surfacing.

"We're getting there," Alejandro Villanueva told me. "We're leaving plays out there. I'm leaving plays out there. But you can see now, maybe a little clearer, what it can be."

THE BAND PLAYS ON

Villanueva actually smiled as he spoke that. Not sure I've seen him smile since Latrobe.

Through a half-dozen weeks, this season has been defined primarily by a whole lot of off-the-field gorgonzola, to borrow from the great Myron Cope. Villanueva was part of some of that, if only involuntarily. There was Chicago. Then the water cooler. Then Ben ripping AB. And now, on the night the Steelers finally appeared to put it all together, more nonsense from the Bryant camp.

I'll make this quick: Bryant isn't going anywhere.

He doesn't always do the brightest things, and neither do those representing him. Add this to the list. But I've also got the vibe that this will have zero -- if not sub-zero -- impact on this group. For one, before this news broke and in that locker room, I heard from several of his teammates, including Bell, who were impressed with his recent work, including on this Sunday. For another, I spoke with Martavis myself, and he shared this as his first thought with a smile of his own:

“Man, it’s great to come in here and get a bounce-back win like this. We had a tough loss last week, so we came in here wanting to get better, coming into a hostile environment ... everybody came out and played hard.”

He played hard, too. No pouting. No B.S.

This subject will fill the mill on social media and the talk shows, but there's no smoke there, with all due apologies to the reference. This kid's got everything to lose by not being all-in, his teammates aren't about to be tolerant of any additional foolishness, and you'd better believe Tomlin wouldn't have handed him a helmet at all if he thought there'd be an issue.

In my eyes, this is as good as over.

And so is all the rest of the gorgonzola, for that matter.

On Ben's pick, the one that AB blew by stopping his own route, this was AB's approach to his quarterback on the sideline:

I strongly suggest not lipreading his first word, but the next two were clearly "My bad."

The water cooler never even made it into the picture.

The buzz afterward, of course, was about Harrison cannibalizing his favorite meal, Kansas City left tackle Eric Fisher, yet again for the crunching, clinching sack of Smith. Just like the playoff victory here in January. Just like everyone expects.

"He's James Harrison," Shazier said. "This is what he does."

But there was more to it, almost a feel that the locker room might rally around their eldest in what now certainly feels like it'll be his final NFL season.

Maybe that'll happen. Maybe it won't. Judging by the way Harrison answered my question about the meaning of this sack, he isn't about to become the cuddly mascot the way Jerome Bettis once was on that final ride to Detroit:

But it's a whole lot more upbeat and, yeah, focused, than all the other recent topics.

Let me put this another way: Could it possibly be coincidence that this team, with all its sideshows, has delivered its two best performances of the season in Baltimore and here?

"Probably not," Darrius Heyward-Bey would say when I asked. "You need to have that focus. You need to have everything on football. I mean everything."

Another veteran put it more bluntly: "It's high time we got past all the bulls---."

Gorgonzola, he meant.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY

Steelers vs. Chiefs, Kansas City, Mo., Oct. 15, 2017 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

WHAT'S BREWING

• Check out the first of our new, expanded Wilkes-Barre Watch features, spanning the Penguins' entire system including an on-the-scene report from Sara Civian.

• If you missed it late Sunday night, Matt Gajtka and Christopher Carter represented us on the panel of our news partner WPXI-TV's 'Subway Final Word.'

STEELERS TODAY

• Event: Media availability

• Location: Rooney Sports Complex

• Time: 1:15-2 p.m.

• Our coverage: Lysowski

PENGUINS TODAY

• Event: Practice

• Location: Cranberry Township, Pa.

• Time: 11 a.m.

• Open to fans: Yes

• Parking: Free

• Our coverage: Gajtka