If you think about all of the things that can be done in a span of three minutes there are many that are rather pedestrian. We can stick just about anything in a microwave and within seconds it becomes edible. Boxing matches feature rounds of three minutes which to the participants can seem like an eternity.
In professional football, three minutes is roughly two percent of an entire game yet what happened in Pittsburgh on Monday night is far greater than just that measly amount of time.
After struggling to defeat Jacksonville in week five of the NFL season the Pittsburgh Steelers were soundly beaten in week six by their rivals from Cleveland. Both sides of the football were struggling. The defense wasn’t creating pressure and couldn’t stop the run consistently while the offense was near the bottom of the league in red zone scoring and was suffering from total dysfunction.
The scene was much the same Monday night as J.J. Watt and the Houston Texans took a 13-0 lead into the second quarter. Watt and company had already pestered Steelers’ quarterback Ben Roethlisberger into fumbling the ball to them and the pressure was seemingly non-stop.
The Steelers were finally able to muster some yards on the shoulders of Roethlisberger and emerging superstar Le’Veon Bell but they had to settle for a Shaun Suisham field goal at the 3:08 mark of the second quarter. With the half winding down, the Steelers took possession again and little did they know what was about to happen. 13-3 Texans
Just two plays into the drive, Roethlisberger found rookie Martavis Bryant in the back of the end zone to pull the Steelers to within three at 13-10 and quite frankly, as poorly as they played, I was OK with the three-point deficit. 13-10 Texans, 1:36 to go in the half
On the ensuing kickoff, the Texans’ Danieal Manning bobbled the ball and was crushed under a mass of black and gold around the five yard line. On the Texans’ second play at their own six, Arian Foster fumbled the ball but it wasn’t called as such. Thankfully, the replay official in New York saw what we did and overturned the ruling on the field.
On the very first play of the Steelers’ next possession, Ben Roethlisberger tossed the ball to Antonio Brown who reversed his field, rolled left and fired a perfect strike to Lance Moore in the end zone. 17-13 Steelers 1:10 left in the half
Again the Steelers kicked off and this time Manning was able to handle it. On the Texans’ first play however, Ryan Fitzpatrick’s pass was picked off by Brett Keisel who had actually tipped the ball first, saw it ricochet and come back to him. He returned it to the Texans’ eight yard line. Steelers Ball :58 to go in the half
After finding Brown for a short gain, Roethlisberger then executed a beautiful throw to Le’Veon Bell who had motioned out of the backfield in the front right corner of the end zone. Steelers 24-13 :14 to go in the half
There it was. Within a span of three minutes, the Steelers had gone from down 13 points to up by 11 points. With that came momentum and a sense that they had most definitely not been familiar with so far in 2014.
Whether this barrage of good fortune, great plays and total euphoria will do anything for this team in the long run I cannot say. In fact none of us can say period because those three minutes masked some pretty average football by the Steelers for the other 57 minutes of the game.
Still, we can’t just dismiss those three minutes because ultimately they could comprise the very moment that this team found itself in 2014 and that could be way better than anything else one can accomplish in the same amount of time.
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