There's probably little in life that Payton Wilson can hear over the roar of his own extraordinary engine, so yeah, I'll believe him when he'll insist he rarely reacts to anything that emanates from a football crowd.
"Almost never," as he'd clarify for me. "But I did this time."
So did everyone else, I'd bet, within a 40-mile radius of Acrisure Stadium upon seeing this:
Press play. Listen to that.
It was the third quarter of the Steelers' eventual 28-15 thorough thrashing of the Dolphins, it was the culmination of a string of sizzling sequences, and it resulted in what simply had to be the single loudest sound in this place all season.
And yeah, a whole lot louder than all that richly deserved chanting and booing that'd engulfed the scene in the previous home game.
"So loud," Wilson would add. "Crazy."
"It was incredible," Alex Highsmith, the other player in pursuit of Tua Tagovailoa up there, would tell me. "The fans were incredible all night, but that was something special."
"Amazing," Calvin Austin would tell me. "We all felt it."
"Pure football," Mason McCormick would essentially echo. "These people, man ... they love their football. And honestly, I kinda think they liked this cold, too."
Well ... I'm not sure if temps in the teens and single-digit windchills are welcome anywhere, but the point certainly stood, particularly from someone hailing from South Dakota.
Otherwise, if only intangibly, it was the warmest reception imaginable.
"The crowd was awesome, man," Pat Freiermuth would tell me. "It was cold, and they were right with us the whole way. We fed off that. It went both ways. Awesome. Just awesome."
That's all I've got on this. A justifiably big deal had been made of when it soured, including by me, and, with an aim of full fairness, I'm making just as big a deal about this.
And hey, given the across-the-board improvement in virtually every football facet over these past couple weeks, maybe their voices were heard the last time, too.
Onward ...
• Tommy Shaw's voice was cheered again, as well:
In the third quarter, to boot, possibly unprecedented. And, not coincidentally, while the Steelers were out-yarding the Dolphins, 163 to, uh, minus-10.
• Kenny Gainwell was the undeniable player of the game with 80 yards on 13 carries, Jaylen Warren was an admirable participant after being ill all day, but the strongest trait they showed was withstanding some brutal early hits from the Miami defense ... and giving it back.
"We talked about it, all three of us," Warren would tell me, referring also to Kaleb Johnson. "They could do that for a couple quarters, maybe, but they'd never keep that up."
They didn't. By the time Jonnu Smith lined up at running back in the third quarter and trotted an untouched 12 yards for a touchdown, it looked like the Dolphins had begun boarding the bus.
I mentioned this to Warren and got a big smile back.
Did that with Smith, too, and got the same.
• Every time I rip the running game, I begin with the offensive line. So before I breathe another syllable about the bullish backs this week, I'll laud this line, which more than held its own with both run-blocking and pass-blocking, and lay it on even thicker for Dylan Cook, who I liked at tackle back in Latrobe and who's looked ... OK, I'll just say it ... a lot steadier than anything seen from Broderick Jones for a couple years now.
"It wasn't perfect out there," McCormick would tell me. "But there's been improvement, for sure. This one felt good. It did."
• It should. And for all the right reasons, chiefly that the Steelers are now 8-6, still control their own destiny atop the AFC North, and still align with earning a playoff home game as the conference's fourth seed. But also that they stacked two solid showings for the first time in forever, and performed, in general, better than in any game all season. Even better than Dublin.
My goodness, they prevailed on the time-of-possession clock for the first time all season, 33:33 to the Dolphins' 26:27. Wasn't sure I'd ever see that again.
• That's always important, doubly so when the defense dresses without T.J. Watt, Derrick Harmon and James Pierre. But all that group achieved short-handed was to limit De'Von Achane, the NFL's hottest running back and the individual most responsible for Miami's four-game winning streak that preceded this, to 60 yards on the ground, no gain longer than 15.
"We wanted to be physical, with him and everybody on that side," Patrick Queen would tell me after his game-high 11 tackles. "We knew how they've been running the ball."
• Liked this line from Mike Tomlin, who'd move into 10th all-time in NFL coaching victories with 191: "Certainly, we wanted to engineer victory, but we wanted to do it in a certain way. That was a hot football team, and they'd rode their running game over the last month, so we needed to stop the run, and we needed to run the ball ourselves in an effort to flip that component."
That should be this team's identity. Should've been that all along, actually.
• What DK Metcalf's long lacked in volume, he's always made up with football violence. And I love it. All that's needed in a playoff game is one of those crime scenes, and he's capable.
• Metcalf embarrassing Minkah Fitzpatrick will be more displayed and discussed by far, but Aaron Rodgers' bullet to get him that ball was ... wow. He's so back: 23 of 27 for 224 yards, two touchdowns, zero picks, 14 consecutive completions at one point, and his highest completion percentage -- 85.1 -- since 2014.
• But never mind all that when there's this:
I'll help the audio: "You still talkin' s---? Down 21-3?"
Remember that dopey commentator who'd spent all freaking spring and summer fretting over whether this guy'd fit in here? Or what his motivation to keep playing might be?
"Keep playing, yeah," he'd say of the Steelers being in contention. "Been a while since I've been a part of stuff like this."
• The Dolphins, alas, now won't be part of the playoffs, putting Mike McDaniel's job in some perceived jeopardy. His stark assessment of this loss: "Flat-out, their team was better than our team."
I can find 65,663 citizens to concur. Happily, at that.
THE ASYLUM
DK: Steelers, city kiss and make up ... in style
There's probably little in life that Payton Wilson can hear over the roar of his own extraordinary engine, so yeah, I'll believe him when he'll insist he rarely reacts to anything that emanates from a football crowd.
"Almost never," as he'd clarify for me. "But I did this time."
So did everyone else, I'd bet, within a 40-mile radius of Acrisure Stadium upon seeing this:
Press play. Listen to that.
It was the third quarter of the Steelers' eventual 28-15 thorough thrashing of the Dolphins, it was the culmination of a string of sizzling sequences, and it resulted in what simply had to be the single loudest sound in this place all season.
And yeah, a whole lot louder than all that richly deserved chanting and booing that'd engulfed the scene in the previous home game.
"So loud," Wilson would add. "Crazy."
"It was incredible," Alex Highsmith, the other player in pursuit of Tua Tagovailoa up there, would tell me. "The fans were incredible all night, but that was something special."
"Amazing," Calvin Austin would tell me. "We all felt it."
"Pure football," Mason McCormick would essentially echo. "These people, man ... they love their football. And honestly, I kinda think they liked this cold, too."
Well ... I'm not sure if temps in the teens and single-digit windchills are welcome anywhere, but the point certainly stood, particularly from someone hailing from South Dakota.
Otherwise, if only intangibly, it was the warmest reception imaginable.
"The crowd was awesome, man," Pat Freiermuth would tell me. "It was cold, and they were right with us the whole way. We fed off that. It went both ways. Awesome. Just awesome."
That's all I've got on this. A justifiably big deal had been made of when it soured, including by me, and, with an aim of full fairness, I'm making just as big a deal about this.
And hey, given the across-the-board improvement in virtually every football facet over these past couple weeks, maybe their voices were heard the last time, too.
Onward ...
• Tommy Shaw's voice was cheered again, as well:
In the third quarter, to boot, possibly unprecedented. And, not coincidentally, while the Steelers were out-yarding the Dolphins, 163 to, uh, minus-10.
• Kenny Gainwell was the undeniable player of the game with 80 yards on 13 carries, Jaylen Warren was an admirable participant after being ill all day, but the strongest trait they showed was withstanding some brutal early hits from the Miami defense ... and giving it back.
"We talked about it, all three of us," Warren would tell me, referring also to Kaleb Johnson. "They could do that for a couple quarters, maybe, but they'd never keep that up."
They didn't. By the time Jonnu Smith lined up at running back in the third quarter and trotted an untouched 12 yards for a touchdown, it looked like the Dolphins had begun boarding the bus.
I mentioned this to Warren and got a big smile back.
Did that with Smith, too, and got the same.
• Every time I rip the running game, I begin with the offensive line. So before I breathe another syllable about the bullish backs this week, I'll laud this line, which more than held its own with both run-blocking and pass-blocking, and lay it on even thicker for Dylan Cook, who I liked at tackle back in Latrobe and who's looked ... OK, I'll just say it ... a lot steadier than anything seen from Broderick Jones for a couple years now.
"It wasn't perfect out there," McCormick would tell me. "But there's been improvement, for sure. This one felt good. It did."
• It should. And for all the right reasons, chiefly that the Steelers are now 8-6, still control their own destiny atop the AFC North, and still align with earning a playoff home game as the conference's fourth seed. But also that they stacked two solid showings for the first time in forever, and performed, in general, better than in any game all season. Even better than Dublin.
My goodness, they prevailed on the time-of-possession clock for the first time all season, 33:33 to the Dolphins' 26:27. Wasn't sure I'd ever see that again.
• That's always important, doubly so when the defense dresses without T.J. Watt, Derrick Harmon and James Pierre. But all that group achieved short-handed was to limit De'Von Achane, the NFL's hottest running back and the individual most responsible for Miami's four-game winning streak that preceded this, to 60 yards on the ground, no gain longer than 15.
"We wanted to be physical, with him and everybody on that side," Patrick Queen would tell me after his game-high 11 tackles. "We knew how they've been running the ball."
• Liked this line from Mike Tomlin, who'd move into 10th all-time in NFL coaching victories with 191: "Certainly, we wanted to engineer victory, but we wanted to do it in a certain way. That was a hot football team, and they'd rode their running game over the last month, so we needed to stop the run, and we needed to run the ball ourselves in an effort to flip that component."
That should be this team's identity. Should've been that all along, actually.
• What DK Metcalf's long lacked in volume, he's always made up with football violence. And I love it. All that's needed in a playoff game is one of those crime scenes, and he's capable.
• Metcalf embarrassing Minkah Fitzpatrick will be more displayed and discussed by far, but Aaron Rodgers' bullet to get him that ball was ... wow. He's so back: 23 of 27 for 224 yards, two touchdowns, zero picks, 14 consecutive completions at one point, and his highest completion percentage -- 85.1 -- since 2014.
• But never mind all that when there's this:
I'll help the audio: "You still talkin' s---? Down 21-3?"
Remember that dopey commentator who'd spent all freaking spring and summer fretting over whether this guy'd fit in here? Or what his motivation to keep playing might be?
"Keep playing, yeah," he'd say of the Steelers being in contention. "Been a while since I've been a part of stuff like this."
• The Dolphins, alas, now won't be part of the playoffs, putting Mike McDaniel's job in some perceived jeopardy. His stark assessment of this loss: "Flat-out, their team was better than our team."
I can find 65,663 citizens to concur. Happily, at that.
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