"The defense has been phenomenal. It's been inspiring to watch them."
This was Alejandro Villanueva. He's an honorable man, and I don't mean that just by how he's lived his life, both in football and through three tours of Army combat in Afghanistan. I mean it also in that he's a truth-teller. He speaks fearlessly and filter-free.
In this case, with the Steelers surviving the Rams, 17-12, on the eve of this Veterans Day at Heinz Field, you'd better believe he'd stay my go-to for what was really real about this.
And sitting on the stool in front of his stall, hands clasped and staring downward as if immersed in thought, he pardoned my interruptions and began with what's above. Which was perfect. The defense was phenomenal. The defense was inspiring. Two picks. Four sacks. Fumble recovery for a touchdown. Minkah Fitzpatrick. Joe Haden. T.J. Watt. Everyone involved.
It's special. What we're witnessing right now, all of us, is precisely that.
That's when Villanueva got to the really real.
"As an offense ... look, we've had a lot of injuries. Important injuries," he'd proceed. And it's telling that he'd address the losses of Ben Roethlisberger, James Conner, Ramon Foster and other vital pieces to his side of the ball. Not many can do that without it sounding like excuse-making. He can. "So we're out there, working hard, trying to get better each week. It's been a lot of learning, a lot of drinking from the fire hose."
And Q, a sip of success. Because the fact is, for all else that went awry this patchwork, popgun offense, when it was most needed, with the Steelers up by two points midway through the fourth quarter, the offense did methodically march 65 yards on 14 plays spanning eight long minutes ... for a field goal.
Yeah, a field goal. Modest stuff. But it brought a five-point lead that forced the Rams into fighting toward a touchdown and, probably more pivotal, offered the Steelers' exhausted defense an opportunity to sit among the oxygen masks.
"That was huge for us," Watt would tell me. "What the offense did for us there, I can't even tell you how huge."
I broached this with the truth-teller.
"I guess," Villanueva would come back. "We made the necessary plays. We did enough to win."
But as he reached down to begin scissoring the reams of tape from his ankles, he shook his head.
"We can't be satisfied, though. We can't be happy with the performance. We've got to do better, and we know that."
They really do. Maybe more than most might realize.
Not to be that guy here, but a defense performing at this level is capable of contending for a Super Bowl in and of itself ... if it's complemented by at least a competent offense. And the burden for being competent, just competent, really shouldn't be that heavy.
_________________________
I'll word it another way: There's no excuse for the Steelers, as a collective, as coaches and players, to not get the most out of both Mason Rudolph and JuJu Smith-Schuster.
And that, of course, includes those two individuals themselves.
This defensive revival is "a blast, man, just a blast," as Terrell Edmunds would tell me after his dynamic, decisive pass defended in the end zone, and he's right. The emotional connection between the 63,627 on hand and their team in the final minutes was a beautiful thing to behold. There's no bond for a Pittsburgh sports fan quite like the generational one with the Steelers' defense.
But there's no such thing as a one-sided formula in football, and this offense currently ranks 19th in the 32-team NFL at 21.4 points per game, 27th in passing yards per game at 207.6, 27th in rushing yards per game at 83.2, 29th in plays of 20-plus yards at 23, 24th with 20 touchdowns ... one gets the idea: They've been awful.
The imbalance is almost mindblowing.
"We've felt it all year," Rudolph acknowledged. "Just the fact that they're playing the like '85 Bears ... forcing turnovers every other series, it seems like. We understand it’s a team game. It's a process. I think we're getting there."
Getting where, though?
One can simply accept that the offense is supposed to be awful without Roethlisberger, or one can wonder why, with the talent they do have, they aren't performing closer to, you know competency.
I prefer the latter, at least until proven otherwise.
Let's start with Rudolph. He's young, he's a first-year starter, and he's got, according to the team that drafted him in the third round, bona fide first-round pedigree. That's the grade the Steelers hung on him coming out of Oklahoma State and, thus, it's their own measure of his potential.
To date, he's done ... OK. Among NFL quarterbacks with 100-plus completions, he's at 18th with a passer rating of 93.0. He's thrown 11 touchdowns against four interceptions, he's averaged 190 yards, and he's engineered 16 plays of 20-plus yards, five of 40-plus.
Which is ... OK. He's hardly been some disaster, regardless of his age.
Also, he's unmistakably getting better, growing more confident.
"We see it, we hear it, we know it," David DeCastro was telling me. "Every game, every series he's out there, he's improving."
To wit:
That's Rudolph's touchdown in this game, and that's a bullet. As artfully as James Washington came down inbounds, it's no more than a match for the throw from his old college bud. There was one spot for that needle to be threaded.
"It's great to see him make those plays and stepping up," Washington would say.
Rudolph had quite a few, actually, in completing 22 of 38 for 224 yards and the TD. He'd find a receiver, even in tight coverage, and he'd trust himself and his arm enough to pull the trigger and give it a try. And remember, this is the shortcoming that'd been most concerning to coaches, teammates and himself. He'd spoken Thursday about the need to force more "50/50 balls," as he labeled them.
He did that on the four flagrant drops, too, three of those potential third-down conversions:
Asked if he achieved more on the "50/50 balls" here, he replied, "Yeah, I think being tougher about it, I think we did a better job at spreading the ball around."
Exactly. Because once that happens, once Washington, Diontae Johnson and Vance McDonald can be found, the double-teaming of JuJu might eventually lighten up a little. One wasn't going to happen for as long as the tiptoe continued.
Washington wound up with a team-high six catches on seven targets for 90 yards. Johnson had four catches for 64 yards, McDonald three for 11. It was something. It was ... OK.
With JuJu ... it's not been OK.
He was targeted six times, he caught three, had no chance at two others, and dropped one for a total of 44 yards, half of which came on this fine comeback 20-yarder in the second quarter:
It marked the second week in a row with just three catches, the fifth time in the season's nine games that he had three or fewer, and his total of 36 catches, ranking 29th in the NFL, are a mere half-dozen more than Johnson. Moreover, he's caught 63.2 percent of his targets, a lower rate than Johnson's 65.2, and he's been limited to 196 yards after the catch, 11 more than Johnson. And I almost forgot the fumble against the Ravens, though the standings didn't.
The trite debate about town is whether or not JuJu's a No. 1 receiver. I hate artificial designations in sports, such as who qualifies as a pitching 'ace' in baseball. But there can't be any question JuJu hasn't done enough, independent of all other circumstances, to separate himself from this conversation or, for that matter, his coverage.
Is it extra coverage?
You bet. And opposing coaches send the strongest signal regarding how seriously they take JuJu through those schemes.
But hey, that's life at this level, and it's a challenge he himself embraced admirably as soon as it was clear Antonio Brown wouldn't be back.
I asked afterward if he's seen progress ...
... and to his considerable credit, he's stayed a consummate pro through what's got to be the first football adversity of his life.
When the big mouth of Jalen Ramsey blurted out early in the week of JuJu, "No disrespect to him, he's not Antonio Brown," JuJu didn't fire back. After this game, when that arose, JuJu initially laughed that Ramsey's field dialogue included "so many cuss words I've never heard before," then responded, "He's right, though: I'm not Antonio Brown. I'll never be Antonio Brown. I'm myself. I'm JuJu Smith-Schuster. I'm not as good as him yet. I think I still have time to proceed to get to his level."
He does. But this offense could use it sooner rather than later. If we're all eager to see Rudolph rise up, it seems eminently fair to hold some expectation for someone who already did.
Show me a reliable quarterback, a first-rate wide receiver, a real rapport and chemistry between those two -- "Getting JuJu the ball is always on top of my to-do list," Rudolph would say -- then mix in a healthy James Conner as soon as Thursday night in Cleveland and, again, there's no excuse for not being bleeping competent.
_________________________
On that critical offensive drive, the Steelers faced fourth-and-1 at the Pittsburgh 34. To repeat, they were up by two. Against the defending NFC champs. With the world's preeminent defensive player, Aaron Donald, lined up at nose tackle.
And Mike Tomlin went for it.
And he made it ...
... thanks to a smartly crafted misdirection route by Nick Vannett, followed by a cool, calm rollout by Rudolph and toss into the arms of Trey Edmunds.
Which, if one knows how to read a silent sigh, might have made this head coach the most relieved human on the planet in that moment:
I loved it.
Not afterward when it was convenient. Beforehand.
Because someone's got to rip these training wheels off at some point. Tomlin, Randy Fichtner and all concerned can't keep walking on eggshells with this quarterback or this offense. There won't always be a wildcat to save them. They've got to work with what they have, and then shove it into situations like this, both to see what they can do and, more ideally, allow them to blossom.
Tomlin's answer when asked about this was tremendous.
"We're just playing to win," he began. "Sometimes you have to take calculated risks. Sometimes it works out like it did in that instance. I'm also the guy who called a play-action pass on the minus six and got a sack for a safety."
Yep. Rudolph was crushed in the end zone for a safety in the fourth quarter. It was intended to be a prayer throw up the left sideline to Johnny Holton. It wasn't a good look for Tomlin or Fichtner, like most of the rest of the offense on the day.
"You win some, you lose some," Tomlin continued. "When the guys are playing with that amount of energy and urgency, as coaches you have to support them. And how we support them is being aggressive."
Rudolph's answer when I asked him about this was just as good:
Best part: "Just go execute the play, just like we do in practice. Let the chips fall where they may."
That's it. That's where this needed to turn toward weeks ago, and maybe it would have had Rudolph not gotten hurt.
Whatever. Get there now. Let the kid throw. Let him force a few to JuJu. Let JuJu feel, without apology or asterisks, the weight of being that No. 1 receiver. Throw with conviction. Run with conviction. Block with conviction.
The way this defense is steamrolling, that's the approach this situation demands.
"It's coming. It's coming," Jaylen Samuels animatedly assured me. "We're moving the ball. You see that, right?"
I do. Only occasionally, but more than before.
"OK, so what happens when we cross the 50 is we're committing penalties, making a drop, running right in a tackle ... we start with first-and-long, second-and-long, and that's where it stalls. But it's coming. We're getting there. We're getting into a groove. Mason's getting into one himself. Let's just build off this."
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers vs. Rams, Heinz Field, Nov. 10, 2019 -- MATT SUNDAY / DKPS