Swarming D Gives Pittsburgh Steelers A Win In Season Finale

NFL News - January 3rd, 2010 - Written by John

The Pittsburgh Steelers may very well end up back in Dolphins Stadium at the end of this season, and they had a pretty good tune-up.

Rashard Mendenhall and Willie Parker both rushed for over 90 yards, the Steeler defense knocked two Miami quarterbacks out of the game, and forced three turnovers in a 30-24 win over the Dolphins. The Steelers were favored by exactly six, according to NFL Betting Lines.

As it knocked Miami out of the playoff race, the win allowed Pittsburgh to keep it's fleeting playoff hopes alive for a couple more hours.

The Super Bowl is in Miami this year, and the Steelers know it will take a miracle to even get a shot at returning to the stadium.

It was hoping the Houston Texans would lose in the finale, which would make it much easier to earn the final wild card berth, but that didn't happen, inspiring a far more tricky chain of events to be needed.

The Steelers need losses to the Baltimore Ravens, Denver Broncos and New York Jets to get in.

But while the loss was unsettling for the Dolphins, the far worse news was the status of quarterback Pat White who was drilled by Ike Taylor as he tried to get out of bounds on a scramble. He was already filling in for Chad Henne, who left with an eye injury, and his plight forced third-stringer Tyler Thigpen to come into the game.

Thigpen threw for 83 yards and a score in relief, and was in when Miami got the game to 27-24, but he threw two interceptions, including the costly one with less than 30 seconds left to go.

White was unconscious when he went head-on with Taylor and was motionless for a few seconds. He managed to move his fingers a few times, but was carted off the field on a stretcher and taken to a nearby hospital.

Ben Roethlisberger was terrific despite nursing a sore hand for most of the second half. He threw for 220 yards and three touchdowns, and took his team down for a field goal with 40 seconds left to force the Dolphins to shoot for a touchdown.

Roethlisberger set the tone early, taking his team 80 yards for a touchdown on the game's opening drive, capped with a five-yard touchdown pass to Santonio Holmes.

The Steelers then kept pouring it on in the first quarter when Roethlisberger launched a deep ball to Mike Wallace from midfield, and it was caught at the goal line. Wallace camped under the pass, and was uninterrupted as he hauled it in and fell into the end zone to make it 14-7.

After trading field goals, Pittsburgh had a golden opportunity to break the game open when DeShea Townsend picked off Henne at midfield, setting up the Steelers with good field position. But on his first pass of the drive, Roethlisberger turned it right back over on an interception by Yeremiah Bell to give the Dolphins the ball back.

Pittsburgh led 27-10 early in the final quarter, but with Thigpen in the game, surrendered 14 unanswered points in a span of about three minutes. First it was a 16-yard run by Brian Hartline on an end around that got the crowd back in the game, then Davone Bess made a terrific catch on a 34 yard pass to take it to 27-24.