Tim Benz: Steelers better remember recent history against Raiders as they celebrate fabled past
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Fortunately, the NFL scheduling format allowed for the Pittsburgh Steelers to host the Las Vegas Raiders this year. It’s also fortunate that the NFL schedule makers placed the Raiders in Pittsburgh during Christmas week to reprise the matchup that led to the Immaculate Reception 50 years ago.
Fortunate from a Pittsburgh point of view anyway. We’ll be lapping up a week’s worth of Stiller nostalgia like it’s Black and Gold eggnog all the way up until kickoff Saturday night.
Meanwhile, I’m sure the Raiders would’ve been happy without being dance partners in restaging the golden anniversary of the seminal moment in Steelers history at the expense of their franchise’s forefathers on Dec. 23, 1972.
No. 1: “Immaculate Reception” (Dec. 23, 1972) @Steelers @FrancoHarrisHOF #NFL100
: NFL 100 Greatest Plays on @NFLNetwork pic.twitter.com/keVjFnmpK9
— NFL (@NFL) September 21, 2019
Whether Raiders fans identify with the team from its days in Oakland, Los Angeles or Las Vegas, watching that play probably feels like the “Ludovico Technique” scene from “A Clockwork Orange” at this point.
But there’s one problem with having the Raiders as the Steelers’ opponent for the “Immaculate Commemoration.”
And that is …. um, well … having to actually play the Raiders.
That’s been its own brand of torture for the Steelers over the last 15 years or so. Since 2006, the Steelers are 2-6 against the Raiders. That includes a 26-17 defeat in Pittsburgh last season.
Many of those defeats have come in years when the Steelers were favored to win the game and ended up with better records than the Raiders. Yet they managed to lose those games, proving very costly in eventual failed quests for the playoffs.
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In 2012 and 2013, 8-8 Steelers outfits lost road games to 4-12 editions of the Silver and Black.
In 2009, Mike Tomlin’s defending Super Bowl championship team finished 9-7 with a loss to a 5-11 edition of the Raiders at Heinz Field. During Bill Cowher’s final season of 2006, another 8-8 Steelers team dropped a 20-13 decision to Art Shell’s 2-14 club on the road.
The 2009 and ‘13 Pittsburgh squads would’ve made the playoffs if they had beaten those dreadful Oakland teams. In 2018, a 7-4-1 Steelers team dropped a 24-21 decision to a 2-10 Raiders club in Oakland and eventually missed the playoffs by half a game.
You know the checkered history by now. That 2018 game had “X-ray gate.” Jeannette’s Terrelle Pryor scorched them in ‘13 with a 93-yard touchdown run. Seton La-Salle’s Bruce Gradkowski beat them with a game-winning TD pass in ‘09 with nine seconds left.
Steelers safety Terrell Edmunds has been part of two losses to the Raiders. He said there has been a theme throughout the years as to why the Steelers have come up short against their historical rivals.
“They keep beating us at the end of the game,” Edmunds said. “They beat us on the last play sometimes. That’s what has been happening.”
Edmunds is on the nose. Of those six Raiders victories since ‘06, four of them have been by three points and one loss (‘06) was by a touchdown. The only victory in that batch that was by more than one score was last year’s 26-17 result in Pittsburgh. But even that game was within six points with just under five minutes remaining.
On Monday, Steelers safety Minkah Fitzpatrick recalled getting burned on a difference-making fourth quarter play — a Henry Ruggs’ 61-yard touchdown reception from quarterback Derek Carr.
¡El arcoíris que le puso Derek Carr a Henry Ruggs para aumentar la ventaja de los @Raiders! ⁰⁰ @FOXSportsMX ⁰⁰#NFLMX #RaiderNation pic.twitter.com/xvy4mmDlzp
— NFL México (@nflmx) September 19, 2021
“I got caught with my eyes in the wrong spot. In the backfield,” Fitzpatrick said Monday. “A big play went over my head. Just not allowing that big play. Stopping that is going to be big for us.”
One thing the Steelers have to figure out is a way to make life more difficult on Carr. He is 2-1 against Pittsburgh, with a passer rating of 113.9. In those three games, he has totaled 1,005 yards, eight touchdowns and one interception. That’s despite being sacked six times.
“They have a lot of good balance,” Steelers linebacker Alex Highsmith said Monday. “Derek Carr is a very good quarterback. Davante Adams is one of the best in the game at the receiver position. They are very versatile on offense. But it comes with stopping the run first. So we have to do that.”
Both clubs scratched their way into the playoffs on the last day of regular season competition a year ago. Both teams lost in the first round of the postseason. Unless fans of the teams believe in holiday miracles, the stakes aren’t very high for either side in the game this year.
In 2022, both franchises are 6-8. The NFL playoff simulator has the Steelers with a less than 1% chance of making the playoffs. Vegas is sitting at 6%. So, for the Steelers, this game is about avoiding a ninth loss and clinching a losing season for the first time since 2003. For the Raiders, this is about spoiling the Steelers’ good time.
Again.
Unless the Steelers defense can figure out how to slow down Carr and contain the NFL’s leading rusher in Josh Jacobs and the league’s fourth-leading receiver in Adams, they will.