This was why the Steelers brought Aaron Rodgers here — to play in games like this one. Or more accurately, to play like he did in games like this one.
On Sunday afternoon, M&T Bank Stadium served as the site for the 65th installment of Steelers-Ravens since Art Modell kidnapped the Browns and moved them to Baltimore after the 1996 season following a snit with the city of Cleveland over a new stadium. In the previous 64 meetings between these teams, 40 of them had been 1-score games, and 1 of them – the 2008 AFC Championship Game in Pittsburgh – was so breathtakingly violent as to become the impetus for the NFL’s player safety initiatives.
Anyway, Sunday’s game was another of those 1-score outcomes with the Steelers coming away with a 27-22 victory. The win also was hyped because it broke a tie for first place in the AFC North, but because it was just the second week of December that didn’t have a whole lot of meaning. A win and a 1-game lead in the standings with a full month left in the regular season just doesn’t mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.
No, what made Sunday afternoon significant was that the Steelers arrived having lost 5 of their previous 7, and as Bubby Brister once poetically explained it, “Things were fixin’ to come unglued.”
It was critical to apply a huge tourniquet ASAP, and there seemed to be a specific recipe to follow for that to happen in Baltimore against a Ravens team that arrived as winners of 5 of their previous 6. And it was going to have to be the quarterback who was the on-field chef to coordinate the cooking.
The book on the Steelers run defense this season was that it was a “sometimes” thing. Sometimes it was effective. But during the sometimes when it was not, when the opponent used the running game to avoid the kind of down-and-distance situations that lent themselves to mistakes/turnovers, the defense became toothless.
That’s what had happened in the three previous tussles with the Ravens, all in 2024. In winning 2 of those 3, Baltimore rolled up 643 rushing yards, which is demeaning in any bitter rivalry such as this one, and the offense had been complicit by scoring just 4 touchdowns in 180 minutes of football. The Ravens never really had been forced into many situations where they felt threatened enough to attempt something riskier than a handoff to Derrick as he runs behind 6-foot-3, 200-pound FB Patrick Ricard.
What there needed to be this time was a counterpunch from their own offense. Protecting the football, converting possession downs, capping those clock-eating drives with points. Preferably touchdowns. That’s the way to make the opponent take some chances. Aaron Rodgers checked all of those boxes.
The Ravens took the opening kickoff and drove 55 yards before settling for a red zone field goal. Rodgers answered by engineering an 8-play, 65-yard response that ended with him running into the end zone on third-and-goal from the 1-yard line. The fact 52 of those yards came on a deep down-the-sideline beauty to DK Metcalf on the first snap made a necessary statement, too.
The Steelers first 4 offensive possessions of the game were touchdown, punt, field goal, touchdown, which meant their halftime lead was 17-9 to go along with more yards, a 42.9 percent conversion rate on third downs, and 2-for-3 in the red zone. The Ravens were put on notice that they were going to have to keep up, not just keep throwing body blows until the opponent folded.
And this week there was no “horrendous” third quarter, either.
The Ravens’ kickoff to start the second half sailed out of bounds, and again on the first snap Rodgers went deep to Metcalf, this time for 41 yards to the Baltimore 19-yard line. On subsequent third quarter drives, Rodgers got the ball out cleanly and quickly to a wide-open Jaylen Warren, who sprinted 38 yards untouched into the end zone; and dropped another one to Calvin Austin III for 31 yards to convert a third-and-5 and flip the field.
“I just like (offensive coordinator) Art’s (Smith) kind of focus. He wanted to be aggressive when throwing the ball,” said Rodgers. “I knew it was going to be a lot of different guys, but once DK (Metcalf) got going, I just had to keep feeding him. He had a couple of huge plays. In the second half, we’ve kind of sucked on the first possession. So, you know, to start off with an extended pass play to DK … Get us down there, get a field goal, then go down (on the next possession) and score a touchdown. That was two good drives for us to start the half.”
In addition to playing quarterback on Sunday, Rodgers was being the quarterback. He played with energy, he was engaged, demanding, productive. A big-time NFL performance in a December regular season game vs. a division rival.
“That’s why you go do business with a guy like Aaron (Rodgers),” said Coach Mike Tomlin. “Thick days, like today, he’s a been-there done-that guy. Beyond the experience component of it, he relishes it. You can just tell. That’s the benefit of having a guy like him.”
But because it was a December regular season game vs. a division rival, and early December at that, there is still a lot of football left to be played properly. First in line is Miami on a Monday night at Acrisure Stadium. The Dolphins are averaging 192.3 rushing yards per over their last four games, all wins, and have made themselves relevant in the AFC playoff picture.
And after that comes a trip to Detroit for a game against the 8-5 Lions, where the highest-scoring team in the NFL this season lives in a dome; then a trip to Cleveland in late December where a very legit NFL defense will be wintering; and ending with a rematch with the Ravens they should expect to be for the AFC North title and the home playoff game that comes with that.
All of that is why the Steelers brought Aaron Rodgers here. To play in games such as those. Or more accurately, to give them a chance to win games such as those.
