NFL Week 9 (and trade deadline) reactions and overreactions

Talking some football and football trades.

The Pittsburgh Steelers won a game nobody expected them to win and a lot of teams made some big trades this week. Now we talk about it.

1. The best thing about the NFL is that, at the end of the day, nobody really knows what they are talking about. We are all just yelling at each other, yelling into the void, yelling for the sake of yelling. It is entirely unpredictable. From a big picture full-season outlook, and especially from a week-to-week outlook.

Nobody expected the Indianapolis Colts to be one of the best teams in football at the halfway mark, with a juggernaut offense led by *checks notes* …. Daniel Jones?

As such, nobody expected the Steelers to beat them after looking like a dumpster fire on defense two weeks in a row.

Just like nobody expected the Carolina Panthers to go into Green Bay and beat the Packers.

It rules for that very reason. Sports are boring when you know what is going to happen. Give me the unexpected chaos.

2. Included in that unexpected chaos is the fact the Steelers defense, after nearly a full season’s worth of games looking mostly horrible, was able to shine on Sunday against the Colts, forcing six turnovers, creating pressure and taking over the game in a manner that should be expected of them. Given the way they looked the previous two weeks, and even on the Colts’ first drive of the game, that just seemed like a thing that was not going to happen anymore with this group.

But there is still talent there, and there are still players that can make a difference.

3. Things did not look promising in the first quarter. The Steelers managed just nine yards on offense, allowed a lengthy touchdown drive and were in danger of going down by 14 points until T.J. Watt pulled off the trifecta and got the strip-sack and fumble recovery. That one play completely swung the game, and from that point on the Steelers were in complete control of everything.

If they go down 14-0 there, or hell, even 10-0, things were probably going to get ugly. They would have been defeated mentally. The crowd (actually a real home-field advantage this week) would have turned. It would have been a difficult hole to climb out of. But Watt changed the game in a way he has done so many times throughout his career.

I still did not love the way the offense played, and things looked extremely disjointed in the passing game. Nobody was getting open, there were dropped balls, and at least two or three clear miscommunications on players where wide receivers/tight ends were simply not ready for the football to come their way. The most glaring of those was on the fourth-and-goal play in the first quarter when Aaron Rodgers threw a perfect pass to Darnell Washington, hitting him right in the numbers, only to have Washington not looking for the ball.

Where I will give the offense credit is that, outside of the muffed punt drive where they went four-and-out with no points, they turned the other five takeaways into 21 points. They mostly capitalized. That was a big difference in the game.

Where I will give the defense credit is they just mostly dominated the game. Jones looked frazzled and the Steelers didn’t just capitalize on Colts mistakes, they forced Colts mistakes.

I know the Colts still ended up with 20 points and the margin of victory was only seven points, but a lot of their yards and their final 13 points all mostly came late in the fourth quarter in garbage time situations. Especially their final 10 points. The game was already well in hand at that point and the Steelers were content to just let the Colts take their short passes and burn time off the clock.

Look at it this way: In the second half the Indianapolis Colts never touched the football where they were in a position to even tie the game, let alone take the lead or potentially win the game. That is a decisive, convincing win.

4. It is also a huge win for the Steelers, especially given the way the Baltimore Ravens have started to narrow the gap in the AFC North and with the way the Steelers lost the previous two games. It is still, however, just one game. They need to repeat it on Sunday night against the Los Angeles Chargers. If they do that, your expectations and belief should start to return.

Now let’s talk some trade deadline (seller’s market), the New York Jets stockpiling draft picks (again) the rest of the NFL’s Week 9 action, why I am still not on the Colts bandwagon (Daniel Jones loves the domes; outdoors? Not so much) and more!