Steelers Beat Texans with a Mix of Old-School and New-School Methods

For three glorious minutes, the Pittsburgh Steelers' past, present and future coalesced in a football singularity.

Steelers stalwarts like quarterback Ben Roethlisberger worked with youngsters such as debut rookie receiver Martavis Bryant to reel off an incredible 24 points in the dying minutes of the first half. Their Monday Night Football opponents, the Houston Texans, seemed set to go into halftime up at least 13-0; instead the Steelers took a 24-13 lead—and the momentum—into the locker room with them.

"It was crazy," Roethlisberger told ESPN's Lisa Salters during the postgame broadcast. "You never expect to score that many points that fast."

Both teams seemed dazed from the scoring blitz; neither team put up points in the third quarter. Though the Texans rallied, the Steelers got just enough from their old-timers (and their newbies) to salt away a desperately needed win.

Now what?

The Steelers improve to 4-3 and jump up to third place in the incredibly strong, incredibly close AFC North. This game was a microcosm of the Steelers' season so far—and, for good or for ill, what Steelers fans can likely expect from here on out.

Whether that's good enough to meet perennially high expectations in Pittsburgh remains to be seen.

Kickin' It Old School

For most of the first half, the Steelers' graybeards looked every bit their age.

Their first drive didn't cross midfield. The Texans marched straight down the field for a touchdown. Their second ended on a sack-fumble of Roethlisberger. The Texans scored again. Their third was a three-and-out. The Texans scored again and sacked Roethlisberger again.

Roethlisberger's famous elusiveness seemed to be buying Texans pass-rushers J.J. Watt and Whitney Mercilus more time to hunt him down than time for Roethlisberger to make plays. The Steelers' front seven, perennially one of the most feared units in football, was toothless, as Sigmund Bloom of Footballguys.com shared:

In the wake of getting blown out by the unremarkable Cleveland Browns the week before, this prime-time breakdown looked like a definitive end of an era.

That's when dynamic Steelers sophomore running back Le'Veon Bell flipped on the hyperdrive:

His 43-yard scamper finally got the Steelers deep in enemy territory and made Texans linebacker Brian Cushing look like he needed to hail a cab to keep up. Shaun Suisham hit a 44-yard field goal, and the Steelers hit warp speed.

Let's Do the Time Warp

After a quick Texans three-and-out, Roethlisberger found the newest Steeler of all for a stunning touchdown strike: Bryant, whose very first NFL reception was a brilliant 35-yard back-of-the-end-zone toe-dragger.

On the second play of the ensuing Texans drive, tailback Arian Foster put it on the turf, and the Steelers ended up with it on the Texans' 3-yard line. The play offensive coordinator Todd Haley dialed up must be seen to be believed:

Football vocabulary sputters and fails in the face of such. We could call it a jet-motion-crack-receiver-toss reverse-option pass, or maybe 26-year-old receiver Antonio Brown was just making stuff up. Either way, call him "Inigo Montoya," because few in the football-watching world seemed to know he was left-handed. Brown shared his thoughts in a tweet:

Incredibly, the first play of the ensuing drive, defensive lineman Brett Keisel gave the Houston Texans a taste of their own medicine, intercepting quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick and running it back down to the Texans' 8-yard line. Roethlisberger connected with Bell from two yards out, and the script was dramatically flipped.

As the game wore on, the Steelers got even more contributions from their aging stars. Linebacker Lawrence Timmons—despite being visibly sick in the first half—racked up a game-high 11 solo tackles and a sack. Safety Troy Polamalu had two tackles and a crucial 13-yard fumble return.

Back to the Future?

Without those incredible three minutes, though, the story of the game is much drearier for the Steelers.

They were outscored 23-6 by a mediocre Texans team that was stuck at 3-3 in the increasingly poor AFC South. They allowed Fitzpatrick to complete 65.6 percent of his passes, per NFL.com, and let Foster rip off his fifth 100-plus-yard game out of six played.

If not for the Keisel pick and two lost Texans fumbles, we'd be remembering this big win as the close contest it was—or the blowout it might have been in the other direction. Brian T. Smith of the Houston Chronicle provided his perspective on the game:

In this game, we saw a tantalizing glimpse of the past (Roethlisberger completed 69.7 percent of his passes for 8.0 average yards per attempt, two touchdowns and no picks). We got an emphatic reminder of the present (Brown's big plays, Bell's 145 all-purpose yards and a score on 20 touches) and were served a scintillating taste of the future (Bryant's big debut).

The inescapable conclusion: The Steelers are going to be maddeningly inconsistent like this for the rest of the year.

Roethlisberger, Polamalu and the like are aging too rapidly to be consistently at their best. Brown and Bell aren't enough to cover up the holes the team has on both lines and in the secondary. Bryant, and players such as injured rookie middle linebacker Ryan Shazier, aren't mature or skilled enough to be difference-makers every week.

Sometimes it'll all click. Sometimes nothing will click. Most of the time, the results will be somewhere in the middle. Right now, the 4-3 Steelers still have their heads above water in the most competitive division in football—and for a team in transition, they'll take that level of success any way it comes.