JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- This game won't go down in the annals of Steelers' history as one of the great ones. But it was a necessary one.
And the Steelers made it through relatively unscathed.
With a critical game coming up Thursday night against the Ravens, many looked at Sunday's game here at TIAA Bank Stadium as a game in which the Steelers could stumble, overlooking the Jaguars as they focused on the quick turnaround to play Baltimore.
That didn't happen.
The Steelers intercepted rookie quarterback Jake Luton four times -- two each by safeties Minkah Fitzpatrick and Terrell Edmunds -- scoring 27 unanswered points in a 27-3 shellacking of the Jaguars here before a largely pro-Steelers crowd.
The win improved the Steelers' record to 10-0 and with just six regular season games remaining, talk of an unbeaten season is starting to pick up -- at least outside the team's locker room. The Steelers? They're just concerned about the task at hand.
"We don’t talk about it at all," said Fitzpatrick. "The media and everybody else will talk about it. I think Ben (Roethlisberger) said it before, we’re not worried about 16-0, we’re worried about 1-0. We have a great team in Baltimore on Thursday, and they’re looking to knock us off. We already beat them one time, and I think they’re going to give us their A-plus-plus game, so we’ve got to go out there and play 1-0. When you start thinking too much about the future, you stop preparing the way you’re supposed to be preparing, doing what you’re supposed to be doing.”
It would have been understandable if the Steelers overlooked the Jaguars (1-9) just a little. Jacksonville had Luton, a sixth-round draft pick, making just his third-career start. And after welcoming the Bengals' Joe Burrow, the top pick in this year's draft, to the NFL in harsh fashion a week ago in a 36-10 victory over Cincinnati, the Steelers figured to give Luton fits.
It took a while, as the Steelers started a little slowly, but eventually, the dam broke loose on Luton, who completed just 16 of 37 passes for 151 yards and the four interceptions while being sacked twice and hit seven times.
It wasn't necessarily a vintage defensive game, but it was highly effective.
The Jaguars strung together three first downs on their opening possession, going 52 yards before kicking a field goal to take a 3-0 lead. They had just two other possessions in the game in which they had more than one first down. That came in the second quarter when, after failing to do much offensively in the first quarter -- Chris Boswell missed a 45-yard field goal -- the Steelers grabbed a 10-3 lead on a 44-yard Boswell field goal and this pretty 31-yard touchdown pass from Ben Roethlisberger to rookie Chase Claypool.
That was Claypool's 10th touchdown of the season in his 10th game. He became just the fourth player -- and first receiver -- in the Super Bowl era to score 10 touchdowns in his first 10 games.
Trailing 10-3, the Jaguars put together what would be their best drive of the game, moving from their own 25 to the Pittsburgh 11 -- aided by an unnecessary roughness penalty on cornerback Steven Nelson for shoving wide receiver D.J. Chark.
But on second-and-9 from the 11, Luton dropped back to pass and nose tackle Tyson Alualu, a former first-round draft pick of the Jaguars, got his hand up, deflecting the ball into the air.
Fitzpatrick closed on it like a bluegill on a piece of bread, picking it off and returning the ball 37 yards to the Pittsburgh 39.
"The guys are playing hard and playing fast and collectively well," said Mike Tomlin, whose team had four interceptions in a game for the first time since Nov. 16, 2017 against the Titans. "We are getting turnovers. The catalyst for it all is the guys are playing extremely hard and fast, that is as a collective. I think that creates the frenzy that provides the wave that we ride.”
The Steelers made the Jaguars pay dearly for that mistake. Not only did Jacksonville not score on its deepest penetration of the game, the Steelers tacked on another touchdown off of the miscue just before the half.
Diontae Johnson, who had 12 receptions for 111 yards, made this juggling catch of a back-shoulder throw from Roethlisberger at the Jacksonville 1 to set up touchdown run by Benny Snell that gave the Steelers a 17-3 halftime lead.
"He's a heck of a football player," Roethlisberger said of Johnson, who was targeted a career-high 16 times in the game. "I believe in him."
With an already banged-up secondary -- the Jaguars were playing without starters C.J. Henderson and Sidney Jones -- the Steelers kept on throwing, though not always with the success they would have liked.
Roethlisberger was 32-of-46 for 267 yards and two touchdowns, but he threw an interception on the final play of the first half from the Jacksonville 24 after an interception by Edmunds got the ball back with 29 seconds remaining in the second quarter.
"They're fun to watch. They're getting turnovers for us," said Roethlisberger of the team's defense. "I hate that we turned the ball over once. That's on me. The turnover differential, the way they get after it, it's just fun to watch."
The Steelers didn't have a sack in the first half, as Luton was largely getting rid of the ball before the pressure could get to him. That changed in the second half, as Stephon Tuitt and Bud Dupree sacked the rookie, with both coming on third down to get the Steelers off the field.
It was that kind of day for Luton, who posted a 15.5 passer rating.
"I thought it was a tough day for him," said Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone. "(It was) probably a little bit of everything. They're playing a defense -- they're mixing it up a bunch, pressuring enough, so there's a lot of things going on out there. It was a tough day."
It could have been far worse. With Jacksonville's offense not putting up much of a fight -- the Jaguars had just 206 total yards of offense -- the Steelers didn't necessarily take full advantage.
While Roethlisberger and the passing game produced in spurts and the running game picked up 106 yards, including 89 yards on 13 carries by James Conner, the Steelers posted just two first downs in the third quarter before scoring on back-to-back possessions in the fourth quarter to put the game away.
The first score was on Boswell's second field goal early in the fourth quarter, Roethlisberger then turned Edmunds' second interception of the game into another touchdown, this one a 20-yard pass to tight end Eric Ebron that made it 27-3, allowing Tomlin to pull many starters for the final six minutes.
Edmunds, who had just one interception in his first two seasons, made perhaps the defensive play of the game with his second pick. He reached up with one hand to tip the Luton pass before grabbing the ball with both hands at the Steelers' 43.
Now, it's on to the Ravens. The Steelers beat Baltimore, 28-24, at M&T Bank Stadium Nov. 1. And with the Ravens (6-4) losing to the Titans, 30-24, in overtime Sunday, a Steelers win in this one would put Baltimore's hopes of catching the Steelers in serious jeopardy.
"It definitely gets our attention for the long haul," said Edmunds of the Ravens' loss. "Right now, we've just got to focus on 1-0, because we know they're going to come in with a chip on their shoulder. They're coming off a loss. So, we've got to come out and play our game because we know they're going to try to knock us down now. We've just got to come out and play how we play."
The Steelers will likely need to play better in that game than they did this one. While they took care of business against a 1-win team, the Ravens figure to be in desperation mode.
"We did the job today. We checked the boxes," Tomlin said. "It wasn’t perfect, but nothing is perfect about us except our record and we talked openly about that last night. We just want to wear it the proper way. We wanted to step into stadiums and be prepared to fight and compete every week and understand we are going to get people’s best shot. I like the general attitude of the group today. We were able to get the job done and we will get ready for our short week. Man, we are back into the AFC North in the hot kitchen on Thursday night and we are honored to do that and entertain on that special day and be a part of that."
