This article is part of our NFL Observations series.
The NFL was hellbent on getting this game into Week 12, and they did, but the quality was more or less as you'd expect when one of the teams was missing so many key players including its starting QB. For me, the key issue was Chase Claypool and Diontae Johnson combining for fewer than 41 points, and that worked out, though the late Marquise Brown TD gave me a push rather than a win against the spread.
- Robert Griffin still has some wheels -- at least before he hurt his hamstring on a non-contact injury.
- Brown took a ball to the house, thanks in part to one of the Steelers defenders losing discipline on a tackle. Brown made a nice move on Minkah Fitzpatrick in the open field though.
- Ben Roethlisberger is dink and dunking like Drew Brees and Philip Rivers these days. It would have helped if Eric Ebron (11-7-54-0) and Diontae Johnson (13-8-46-0) didn't drop so many of his passes, though.
- Johnson, Claypool (9-6-52-0), JuJu Smith-Schuster (9-8-37-1) and Ebron should be PPR monsters with this style of offense, though, as the Steelers often use dump-offs rather than hand-offs these days, and they don't throw much to the backs. But with James Washington around too, it's a fairly wide tree.
- There were a couple interesting fourth-down decisions. At first, I was against the Steelers going for it on their opening drive, rather than kicking a short FG against a weak offense, but after they got stuffed and RGIII threw a pick-six, I changed my mind. Part of the advantage of going for it on fourth down when you're inside the 10 yard line is the field-position windfall even when you fail. Often, you get the ball back just outside field goal range after a punt anyway. If you make the FG, you have to kick off.
- The Ravens botched the first-half end game by burning their final timeout on second down and then getting stuffed on a run play. (They also got screwed by the Steelers preventing their players from getting up to run another play and the refs allowing it.) That left Baltimore with two choices on third-down with the clock running down: (1) Spike it and get the field goal; (2) Run a play and hope for the TD. They did the latter, had a good call, got the apparent TD to Luke Willson before he had it stripped on the way down to the ground. Given that the Ravens were undermanned and that close, I think it was probably the right decision to try for the TD -- volatility is your friend when you're the underdog. But they probably should not have called the timeout, and definitely should not have run the ball on second down. They would have had two pass plays (second and third) and could have kicked the FG or gone for the TD on fourth down in that case.
