Kovacevic: It was hardly perfect ... but man, these Steelers have game-changers

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The millisecond the football left Ben Roethlisberger's fingertips, a scientific study might as well have been underway.

He'd taken the snap at the Steelers' 33-yard marker, he'd spotted Chase Claypool several strides across the midfield stripe, and he'd let loose with a pass that a quarterback should reasonably release ... well, never.

Unless, of course, this occurs:

My goodness.

Yeah, I had the same question you've likely got right now: Why?

So I asked.

"Yeah, you know, he's shown a lot in camp so far, that he can be trusted," Roethlisberger replied without hesitation. "He's where he's supposed to be. He makes plays. I kind of threw it up there, it's a one-on-one ball, and he made an unbelievable catch. The fact that he went up on a defender, kept two feet in bounds ... that's a big play for us."

How big?

So much for science.

The kid makes plays. Big plays. A lot of them do.

It wasn't perfect, and it wasn't pretty, this 26-16 season-opening sinking of the Giants here at MetLife Stadium on this Monday night that saw a September chill wrapped in the colder, coronavirus reality of 82,500 empty seats. And that's to say nothing of the undercurrent of emotion involved in both teams' statements on racial injustice leading hard into the kickoff.

In such a setting, it never had a chance to be, as Mike Tomlin had strikingly foretold to his players in the group meeting the previous night at their New Jersey hotel.

"We're thankful for the opportunity to play. We don't take that for granted with this environment we're in," he spoke before taking questions from any of us. "It was an honor to be in here tonight and to perform for Steelers Nation on Monday Night Football. We were excited about this regardless of anything else. I thought we could have played better. There was some sloppiness that was kind of reflective of where we are. A lot of that was reasonable to expect."

Which again, he'd warned his players would happen. Albeit with the expectation they'd still have to fight through it, still have to make plays.

If I'm left with one impression above all from this, even more than the very necessary victory over a very beatable opponent, it's that they achieved a ton of both: They fought rabidly and relentlessly and, my goodness, did they ever make some plays. Game-changing plays. By game-changing players with the capability of repeating those plays.

Asked about those, Tomlin offered, without naming names, "I thought that they showed their mettle. I think they were physically tough and mentally tough."

My mettle detector's still going off ...

Joe Judge and the New York staff weren't going to let T.J. Watt beat them. Except that he did.

Watt was getting double-teamed or chipped every other snap. Although all concerned had expressed equal worry about the damage that could be done by either of the Steelers' bookend edge-rushers, it was Watt who had the heavy attention while Bud Dupree ... wait, I'll get to him.

Doesn't matter with Watt. He's the NFL's preeminent playmaker, and I'll not hear an argument to counter it. Aaron Donald's the premier player, but he can't match Watt for pure playmaking in the sense that Watt will record sacks, force fumbles and even pull down the occasional pick as athletic as this one early in the second quarter.

Hear the man.

"Yeah it was a tight end, DT look, a tight end wing set, and I was flat-footed," Watt explained. "I was trying to play the run and, as I was transitioning to my pass rush, I saw the quarterback kind of looking my way. So I kind of dropped back instead of rushing, and the ball came my way, and I picked it off."

Get that? He read run, adapted to pass, then still didn't rush the passer because he anticipated the pass could come his way. That, my friends, isn't normal. And neither is reaching up and pickle-stabbing a ball that was intended to go a lot farther down the field than his hands.

Special play by a special player. 

And it came in New York territory with the Giants up, 10-3, leading to this:

That's Ben to JuJu Smith-Schuster, and please trust from the press box perspective that no video will do this justice. The second-deck arc. The timing. The awareness from anyone in house watching that it was six points the moment it left his hand was unlike any touchdown I'd seen in far too long.

For all the fuss over having a 38-year-old quarterback, show me the young stud NFL quarterback who pulls that off.

Ben wasn't at his sharpest, as he'd acknowledge, but there's no shame after a full year off in completing 21 of 32 passes for 229 yards, with three TDs, zero picks and two sacks. It was wonderful to see him back, better yet to see him strengthen as the evening went along. As playmakers go on this roster, no one's more important than this one. And he's still got it.

Not to omit his help up there.

Thumb back up and isolate on Benny Snell, who'd rush for 113 yards on 19 carries after yet another James Conner injury, smartly picking up the safety blitz by Jabrill Peppers. If he doesn't, that sequence is doomed from the snap.

If that weren't impressive enough, check Snell's response when asked which he enjoyed more, all those yards or burying that blitz: "I appreciate my O-linemen, making the holes and making things possible."

Double-tap to the temple there. That's a young running back who knows where he gets fed.

Oh, and he also, unquestionably, should start next Sunday against the Broncos, regardless of Conner's status.

More mettle ...

That's James Washington performing a muscular miracle to cross the New York goal line in the second quarter for a 16-10 lead.

I won't insult anyone by trying to affix more adjectives to it, but I'll remind that this is the son of a farmer, raised on real labor, who still goes back home each summer to Merkel, Texas, to work real fields. He just bought a 26-acre property this summer, in fact.

Tomlin did find football terminology for it: "You know, that's a guy that's got a nose for the end zone. Hopefully, that can be reflective of all of our guys but, just in that moment, that's a guy rising up and making a necessary play and doing what he has to do to deliver for his teammates. The strength of us is displayed in individual efforts like that one."

Can't repeat this often enough: Do not underestimate this player's ceiling.

Because lots of folks once did that with this guy ...

That's Cam Heyward's first career interception, converting an otherwise graceful 19-play drive Jones conducted into complete nothingness. 

But that began, as did so much for the Steelers on this night, with the fire of Dupree, the most visible, most effective player on either side. Here again, it's hard to paint a proper picture of Dupree's impact, though I'll start by stressing it went well beyond the four tackles on his ledger. He had Jones running for his life. He had Jones, palpably up there, losing his mind in throwing against his body toward no one when all the Giants needed was to ensure a field goal.

"I just wanted to make a play for my team," Heyward told us. "I saw Bud just laying Jones down, and I just tried to make a smart play, you know, flow to the ball. I didn't want him to be able to throw across his body. Sometimes you see that a lot in the goal line and red zones." 

That guy's not so bad, either. 

But no play topped this ...

Shortly after the Heyward pick, Snell burst ahead for 21 yards across midfield, but had the ball punched out from behind. He was about to go from GOAT to goat.

But JuJu, who'd already thrown two seismic running blocks earlier, tailed Snell right up the sideline. And when he saw the ball loose within a sea of blue shirts, he flew in there to fall on it, then fought to hang on. 

I'm trying to find a nice way to say this, but that's rare air for a wide receiver.

It's rare, too, that one hears what happens in such scrums, so I asked JuJu precisely that, and you'll want to watch his full answer:

That's the fight. That's the big play.

Don't sweat the details. Don't regret that all of New York's football teams are terrible at football. These are the two tangibles that'll take a team somewhere significant.