Ben Roethlisberger: “We won. That’s all that matters.”

[Steeler Nation]

The Pittsburgh Steelers got back to their winning ways last week in the form of a 19-13 victory against the Tennessee Titans. As the season continues to wind to its end and each game meaning more and more in the playoff race, teams take any win they can get. The Steelers are no exception to that. Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger held his weekly press conference before practice on Wednesday and was asked about last week’s game. The Steelers’ offense was only able to put up 168 yards of offense with only a single touchdown, yet they were able to win on the backs of a great Steelers’ defensive performance. Being the offensive team captain, Roethlisberger was asked about what the offense could have done better to score more points last week. To that, he simply replied:

“We won. That’s all that matters.”

Seeing as though the Steelers are sitting a half-game behind first place in the AFC North, that seems to be the correct mindset at this point in the season. Before the season when the schedules were released, a lot of attention was drawn to the AFC North teams’ schedules with how tough they looked. As it turns out, this has been a very difficult season for the entire division. Roethlisberger was asked about how things stand in the AFC North at this point in the season, to which he replied:

“The whole AFC kind of feels like it’s a jumbled mess at times. I’m not really sure why. I think our division could be argued as one of the toughest in the NFL, so we’re constantly beating each other up. Playing some of our competition that we’re playing this year, obviously we have the No. 1 schedule (in the division). It’s not easy.”

The Steelers have seen their fair share of up’s and down’s throughout this season. But as Steeler Nation knows all too well, a playoff push is dependent upon how you play in December and January, not how you play in September and October. With the Steelers fading late last season after a strong start, they are looking to do the complete opposite this go-around:

“If you’ve been doing this for a while, obviously rookies won’t understand, but really you’ve just got to get in (the playoffs),” Roethlisberger explained. “You got to peak at the right time. And I’m not saying we’re peaking or close to it. But we’re winning the games, the close games, or we’re coming back or fighting so we know that there’s a little bit of life and we’ll just keep fighting one week at a time.”

The Steelers face a difficult test this week as they take on the Kansas City Chiefs on the road. Not only is Arrowhead Stadium a hard place to play, but Kansas City currently features the number one offense in the conference. The Chiefs are able to score early and often against opposing defenses, which is something the Steelers’ offense cannot do. Obviously, this is going to be a tough game if they get into a shootout. Going up against a top offense can be tough for the opposing offense in forcing them to play up to the competition and can be a daunting task. When asked about the pressure he feels to match the Chiefs on offense, Roethlisberger explained:

“It isn’t always the easiest thing to do,” he said. “When you watch an offense like that, taking care of the ball is obviously huge. Not turning it over, which we didn’t last week, is key to victory. A team like this, you say okay, we possess the ball, that helps. But they can obviously score really fast and do some amazing things. We’ve just got to be smart, play our game and that’s going to be the key no matter what’s happened.”

So far this week, we’ve seen a plethora of new Covid cases and protocols throughout the league. The Chiefs have had an abundance of new additions to their Reserve/COVID-19 list and there is speculation of a possible postponement of the game. This tends to be difficult for a team; not only for creating contingency plans for preparing for missing starters, but timing out the practice week and travel. The Steelers are no stranger to unfortunate game movements and Roethlisberger was asked how the team is preparing this week with that in mind:

“We obviously don’t know what is going to happen. Maybe they’ll just make it a double-header for Monday next week; I don’t know, we’ll see,” he said. “You don’t worry about it because it’s out of our control. So we can’t worry about things we can’t control.”

The Steelers are currently slated to take on the Chiefs on Sunday at 4:25 EST.

What are you looking for in practice this week? How do you think the AFC North is going to shake out? Let us know in the comments!

#SteelerNation

Support SteelerNation by clicking here to read the story..