Two plays.
That’s all it took for the Panthers promising young secondary to fall from the heights they had created for themselves by limiting the Buccaneers’ #1 passing offense to 219 yards passing and one of the best wide receiver tandems in the league in Mike Evans and DeSean Jackson to three catches on fourteen targets last week. Coming into a game against another top tandem in JuJu Smith-Schuster and Antonio Brown, the talk all week was how James Bradberry had spent his season eliminating wideouts like Julio Jones and AJ Green and Donte Jackson was being overlooked as a candidate for defensive rookie of the year.
One offensive play for the Steelers was all it took to undo a lot of the goodwill the cornerbacks – both of whom are under 25 and are likely to be considered cornerstones of the defense going forward – had built for themselves. The Panthers had driven down the field quickly and efficiently, utilizing Christian McCaffrey on six of their nine plays to score on their opening drive for the first time all season, perhaps putting the slow starts of their previous road games behind them.
And then Ben Roethlisberger moved his shoulder.
“We were in Cover 3 [and] I was looking at the quarterback,” said Bradberry. “They ran a ‘china fade’ – he ran a nine route and one ran a little hitch route; he pumped me and I went for the hitch and I should have been on the nine.”
“The offense had a hell of a drive, we had the momentum and it was just a bad play by me.”
Bradberry’s bite on the pump fake, especially with Captain Munnerlyn sprinting to cover James Washington on the underneath route, resulted in a wide-open 75-yard touchdown for Smith-Schuster – other than that, Smith-Schuster had a relatively quiet day – only catching two other balls for 15 yards.
“It happens,” said safety Eric Reid. “Those guys are professionals too. We just have to do a better job of understanding what the playcall is, where your help is, what your technique is and then just executing. That’s all it comes down to – in this game, if you make a mistake in any one of those areas, it’s going to cost you.”
START WITH A BANG 💥 pic.twitter.com/mOPT9Sf63m
— JuJu Smith-Schuster (@TeamJuJu) November 9, 2018
Donte Jackson made his mistake with three minutes left in the half and the Panthers closing a 17-point gap to only ten as they attempted to storm back in the first half – with Antonio Brown running a nine route down the right sideline, Jackson appeared to lose his footing as the ball gently floated into Brown’s hands. But Jackson felt as if he was pushed by Brown, who has been named first-team All-Pro for the past four seasons.
“We’re at their place so you’re not going to get a call – you’ve got to move on to the next one,” said Bradberry.
“Ain’t no way I’m going to fall just chasing a guy,” said the brash rookie. “I do this every weekend; I press guys, I play them up the field – I’m not going to just fall. But it is what it is, he made a good play on the ball.”
ANTONIO BROWN.@AB84 goes 53 YARDS for the @Steelers TD! #HereWeGo #CARvsPIT
📺: @nflnetwork + @NFLonFOX
📱+💻: https://t.co/DJUityQHC9 pic.twitter.com/YZoYycYImR— NFL (@NFL) November 9, 2018
Aside from the touchdown, Brown had a pedestrian five catches for 43 yards; while you can’t take away the big play, Jackson thought he did a good job when he was one-on-one with one of the most dynamic wide receivers in the game.
“You never saw 26 not in 84’s face,” said Jackson.
Moving on from a bad snap, having that ‘next play mentality’ is one thing, but moving on from a bad game is harder – that’s exactly what the Panthers will need to do if they’re going to recover from giving up the most points and the first perfect quarterback rating in franchise history.
“One play each,” said Jackson, who made sure to make clear that watching the tape and learning from their mistakes is their top priority. “That type of stuff don’t define us; we know what we’ve got, we know we have a lot more football left to play – that’s who we [are]. We’re not going to let one game define us – not even one game.”
“Two plays, really.”
Sometimes it’s only two plays that loom the largest. The stats don’t lie – the Steelers didn’t punt the ball until Ben Roethlisberger was removed from the game with the Steelers up 52-14; Roethlisberger only had three incompletions the entire game and consistently found open receivers – especially when he was given time to do so as the pass rush couldn’t get to the Steelers quarterback on a consistent basis. The Panthers defense didn’t perform well enough to get the win – and the only hope is that they learn from their mistakes and don’t make them again.
“You watch the tape, you swallow that pill and you learn from it,” said Eric Reid about how to fix their issues on defense going forward. “It’s the NFL, we knew we were playing a good quarterback with good receivers – so we’ve just got to step up to the plate. We’re going to get that chance many times moving forward.”
