The defending NFL champions lost
their fifth straight and had their playoff hopes sacked by the lowly
Cleveland Browns, who ended a 12-game losing streak against their
bitter rival by beating the Steelers 13-6 on Thursday night in subzero
wind chills.
Ben Roethlisberger was sacked eight
times and lost for the first time in 11 career games against the Browns
(2-11), who extended Pittsburgh's longest losing streak in six years
and defeated the Steelers (6-7) at home for the first time since 2000.
Pittsburgh's postseason chances are
in peril — if not over completely. The Steelers are going to need help
to make the postseason, a stunning free fall for a team that hit the
season's halfway point at 6-2.
Unexpected losses to Kansas City,
Oakland and Cleveland — three of the NFL's worst teams with a combined
record of 9-28 — have pushed Pittsburgh to the brink.
Chris Jennings, who began the season
on Cleveland's practice squad, scored on a 10-yard run and Phil Dawson
kicked a pair of 29-yard field goals for the Browns, who snapped a
seven-game losing streak, a 10-game slide at home and beat the Steelers
for just the second time in 20 games.
Roethlisberger tried to rally the
Steelers, but his fourth-down pass to Santonio Holmes with less than
two minutes left was knocked down by linebacker David Bowens.
When Holmes was tackled on a punt
return and the final second ticked off the scoreboard's clock, frozen
Browns fans, who were nearly outnumbered by Terrible Towel-waving
Pittsburgh fans, danced in the aisles. Several Cleveland players
sprinted down field and jumped into the Dawg Pound section to
celebrate.
The win was just the second for
Cleveland's embattled first-year coach Eric Mangini, who certainly
helped his job security by beating Pittsburgh, something no Browns
coach had done since Chris Palmer nine years ago.
Josh Cribbs, Cleveland's Mr.
Everything, rushed for 87 yards out of the wildcat formation, had 104
return yards and caught one pass for 9 yards. Cribbs picked up a big
first down on a 14-yard run in the fourth quarter when the Browns were
trying to milk the clock.
Still, the Steelers managed to get
the ball back with 6:16 left at their own 21. Roethlisberger, who has
broken Cleveland's hearts before, began working his team down field
with short passes. But he was sacked at midfield in the final two
minutes and had his final pass batted away.
Browns quarterback Brady Quinn completed just one pass in the second half and finished 6-of-19 for 90 yards.
Roethlisberger went 18-of-32 for 201
yards. He had trouble throwing in the swirling winds that consistently
blew over 20 mph and the Steelers were never able to establish their
running game against the Browns' defense, which came in ranked 32nd
overall.
Cleveland's defense dominated the first half, sacking Roethlisberger five times and pressuring him on nearly every snap.
Jennings' 10-yard scamper around
right end — the first TD scored by a Cleveland running back in more
than a year — put the Browns up 13-0 late in the second quarter. With
their defense stuffing the Steelers and the temperature dropping, the
Browns' lead seemed insurmountable.
But the Steelers drove 58 yards in
41 seconds and got a 27-yard field goal from Jeff Reed as time expired
to close within 13-3 at halftime.
Reed's second field goal with 8 seconds left in the third brought the Steelers within a touchdown.
But Pittsburgh was unable to put
together a scoring drive in the fourth, and now the Steelers find
themselves in more trouble than they could have imagined.
This is certainly not what Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin had in mind when he promised his team would "unleash hell" in December.