There are a lot of reasons why the Pittsburgh Steelers
lost to the Cleveland Browns (again) on Thursday night, dropping a 27-24 decision, to send them to 2-2 and lift the Browns to first place in the AFC North.
The normally reliable Chris Boswell missed a makable field goal in the first half.
They failed to turn a turnover at midfield into points.
The defense played soft and allowed too many big plays and too many easy yards with the game on the line.
But quarterback Aaron Rodgers has to take some of the blame as well. While he finished the game with a respectable stat line (299 yards, three touchdowns and a two-point conversion), he took some unacceptable sacks in big moments, missed some chances for big plays and missed a lot of throws that a younger version of him would have made.
His biggest miss came on the Steelers’ final play of the game.
Aaron Rodgers blew it for Steelers on their final play
Shortly after Browns kicker Andre Szmyt drilled a 56-yard field goal to give the Browns the lead with 10 seconds to play, Cleveland opted to kick the ensuing kickoff through the end zone for a touchback, allowing no time to come off the clock.
As we saw with the Baltimore Ravens and Dallas Cowboys on Sunday, that could be a disastrous decision given the current touchback rules that place the ball at the 35-yard line.
Given the touchback location, and how good NFL kickers are, you are basically one play from getting into field-goal range, and as the Ravens showed, you only need seven seconds to make it work.
Instead of going for that, Rodgers and the Steelers threw a desperation Hail Mary that not only landed 20 yards short of the end zone, but it was intercepted.
The problem?
They had a chance to get into field-goal range.