Michael Strahan took a lot of flak -- still does to this day -- because his 2001 single-season sack record is viewed as "tainted" by some because it appeared Packers quarterback Brett Favre took a dive to allow Strahan to touch him down behind the line of scrimmage for the record breaker.
Could the same thing happen to T.J. Watt? Maybe.
The Steelers have asked Elias Sports Bureau to review Watt's first-quarter forced fumble on Ravens quarterback Tyler Huntley on a botched snap for a ruling that could award Watt a second sack in the Steelers' 16-13 overtime win in Baltimore Sunday.
Thing is, they never should have had to do so. It should have been a sack.
Huntley clearly picks the ball up and tries to do something with it. If he throws it downfield, it would have been an incompletion, completion or interception. If he takes off and runs with it and gains yards, those yards count.
But because the statisticians in Baltimore didn't want Watt breaking the record, it counts as an aborted play? That's only in play if the quarterback immediately falls on the loose ball and doesn't try to advance it. Once Huntley gets up off the ground, he's a live player again.
The Steelers expect to find out no later than Wednesday if that play will be changed to a sack. It should be changed, giving Watt 23.5 sacks this season -- and a new record.
Some people will complain about it. They'll call it "tainted" since he had to be awarded the last sack. But the reality is that it should have been a sack immediately and would have been in any other stadium.
• Cam Sutton said Monday he watched Sunday night's Chargers-Raiders came at home alone. Ray-Ray McCloud said he watched it with some other teammates.
But you can bet they all watched it. And judging from the number of comments regarding the game on this site while it was happening, so did all of you.
According to TVSeriesFinale.com, preliminary data shows that the game drew 14.73 million viewers. Since it was a live event, final viewership numbers won't be official until later. They figure to come in much higher.
Sunday Night Football averaged 16.66 million viewers in the 2021 season. That made it the No. 1-ranked TV show in the United States. No. 2 was Thursday Night Football at 13.4 million viewers on average. Monday Night Football was fifth at 11.3 million viewers.
In fact, 75 of the top 100 most-viewed TV shows in 2021 were NFL games. That's why the players make the millions of dollars they get.
• The next time you start complaining or hearing someone complain about Mike Tomlin never having had a losing season, remember the Ravens lost their final six games this season to go from 8-3 and being the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs through 12 weeks to completely out of the playoffs at 8-9.
John Harbaugh is a very good coach. But the losing season was the second of his career. And this season marks the fifth time in the past nine years his team has missed the playoffs. The Ravens also have two playoff wins in the past nine seasons.
Does anyone think Harbaugh should be fired? Didn't think so.
• The Steelers went into the offseason last year prior to the start of free agency with just $6 million in available cap space.
Ben Roethlisberger's contract restructure created additional room, but not enough for the Steelers to fill all the holes they had on their roster.
Some restructures and, later, the release of David DeCastro, created some additional space, but the Steelers weren't buyers on the free agent market. They couldn't afford to be.
They've started rookies at running back, center, left tackle and tight end for most of this season. They had an undrafted player seeing his first NFL playing time at left guard for the past month.
And they made the playoffs. This is what a rebuild looks like for the Steelers, folks. This is why you don't "just blow it up," as so many suggested last spring.
This team, in the middle of a rebuild -- though they'll never use that word -- made the playoffs. That's one of the goals each season.
You can't win the Super Bowl if you don't get into the playoffs. By definition, getting into the playoffs makes you a Super Bowl contender. You're one of the final 14.
Now, that still won't be good enough for some. But this team swept the Ravens and Browns. It beat the Bills in Buffalo in Week 1 and knocked off the top-seeded Titans last month.
There has been some ugly to be sure. But enjoy the playoff game.
This season began with the Browns in Kansas City in Week 1 openly talking about how they were playing the Chiefs in the first of two meetings this season.
Turns out, it is the Steelers who are getting that rematch with the Chiefs. The Browns are all headed golfing -- or, perhaps to make a few more TV commercials.
Things could be worse. The Steelers could be the Colts, who traded a first-round pick in 2022 -- along with a third -- to the Eagles to acquire Carson Wentz. They then paid Wentz $22 million -- to not make the playoffs.
• The home cooking that goes on in many stadiums is the reason why tackles are not an official NFL statistic. And the stat keepers in Baltimore have long been noted for padding tackle stats for the home players.
How so?
Well, look at it this way, in 1997, Ray Lewis was credited with a career-high 184 tackles, 156 of which were solo tackles. As a team, the Ravens had 769 solo tackles and 148 assists.
But if you look at how many plays they had run against them, it was 420 rushes and 338 receptions. That adds up to 758 possible opportunities for solo tackles without even adding the assists -- shared tackles -- into the equation.
Unless there's some different way to count things in Baltimore, you can't have more solo tackles than runs and completions.
That's why the tackle isn't an official stat. There's no uniform measure for what does and doesn't count.
• If Watt does get credit for another sack, it would give him 23.5. Cam Heyward also had 10, giving the Steelers two-straight years with two players reaching double digits. Watt and Stephon Tuitt did it in 2020.
But Watt and Heyward's combined sacks wouldn't be the record for a duo. That belongs to the Vikings' Chris Doleman and Keith Millard. In 1989, Doleman had 21, while Millard had 18.
Watt and Heyward were two of just 17 players who reached double digits in sacks this season. They and the Cardinals' Chandler Jones and Marcus Golden were the only duos to get there on the same team.
It was not enough, however, for a record, even if Watt is award another sack.
• The thing about coaches such as Tomlin, Harbaugh and Sean Payton is that they always give you a chance to win. The talent doesn't always hold up its end of the bargain, sometimes due to injuries or other issues. But those guys are typically in the mix. And that happens for a reason.
Other coaches or teams might have a year or even two where they have a good record. But can they do it consistently? Typically not.
Yes, I'm looking at you Kevin Stefanski.
According to Football Outsiders DVOA ratings, the Browns should have won 9.6 games, the Bengals 8.4, the Ravens 7.4 and the Steelers 7.1.
Sorry folks, that's coaching. This Steelers team, warts and all, outperformed the analytics by 2.5 wins. And they did it playing a difficult schedule without two of their top three defensive linemen.
• Does rushing defense still matter in today's NFL?
I'm beginning to wonder. The Steelers' run defense was, well, atrocious pretty much from Week 6 on. The Seahawks had 144 yards on the ground in that game as the Steelers spent the day in a two-deep zone, daring Seattle to run it and making sure the ball didn't get thrown deep.
From that game on, the Steelers allowed 1,981 rushing yards in their final 12 games. That's an average of 165 yards rushing per game. And they gave up four games of 200 or more yards on the ground, including a season-high 249 to the Ravens on Sunday.
Despite that, they went 7-4-1 in those 12 games. And then went 2-1-1 in the games in which they allowed over 200 yards rushing.
The key is red-zone defense. The Steelers finished fifth in the NFL in red-zone defense, allowing a touchdown 50.8 percent of the time.
If the opponent is posting a bunch of rushing yards but not scoring touchdowns -- or just doesn't have a breakaway running back -- it's better than allowing them to simply throw the ball downfield and give up big plays to the wide receivers.
And, on average, most wide receivers are faster than the average running back. The passing game remains where the big plays come from in today's NFL.
The Steelers are built to get sacks and take the ball away. They did that down the stretch, taking over the NFL sack lead in Week 17 against the Browns and finishing with a league-best 55.
It marked the fifth-consecutive season in which they led the league in sacks. It had never been done twice in a row before they did it.
The Steelers also forced two or more turnovers in four of their final five games, going 3-1 when they did that. The one game they didn't force a single turnover down the stretch came in Week 16 against the Chiefs.
If they want to have a chance to win that game -- and they're currently 12.5-point underdogs -- they have to take the ball away.
• The Chiefs have some issues of their own. Star receiver Tyreek Hill barely played in the team's 28-24 win over the Broncos Saturday night in a game Kansas City needed to win to have a shot at the top seed in the AFC playoffs.
Running back Darrel Williams, subbing for Clyde Edwards-Helaire, who suffered a collar bone injury against the Steelers and hasn't played since, suffered a toe injury in the second quarter and did not return.
All-Pro tight end Travis Kelce limped off the field late in the game against the Broncos.
Those injuries all bear close scrutiny this week.
• The Steelers finished the regular season minus-55 in point differential. That's obviously not good.
In fact, they're one of just two teams out of 14 who made the playoffs with a negative point differential. The other was the Raiders, who were actually worse than the Steelers, posting a negative-65 differential.
But that's not the be-all, end-all. You know who had an awesome point differential? The Colts. They finished at plus-86, which ranked fourth in the AFC and eighth overall.
The Chargers, Broncos, Saints and Seahawks all finished with a positive point differential and failed to make the playoffs.
The Steelers didn't blow anyone out this season and they certainly got blown out themselves a couple of times when they turned the ball over, but mostly they competed in every game.
The players follow Tomlin's lead on that.
"He's always been that inspirational leader, just that overall figure to us. It goes beyond just football. That relationship carries throughout many adversities, whether it's football related, or life related," Sutton said of Tomlin. "He's just always dependable, always reliable, always got us, always a guy willing to sacrifice and be the front leader.
"Just really appreciative of just being behind a guy like that who comes to work every day leaving it all on the line for us. Who doesn't want to follow that?"
