Ed: Not Bad for a Third-Stringer

Sunday, 02 December 2012 22:56

Written by Ed Bouchette

Good morning,

    So how you feeling about old Charlie Batch today? There probably won’t be many who believe the Steelers’ third-string quarterback wasn’t worth keeping around this season, or that there should have been a younger man holding down that job.
         Batch pulled off his Ben Roethlisberger imitation Sunday, extending plays and even taking a few rough hits and bouncing back up to do it again. The Ravens seemed to hit him harder in the fourth quarter than they did earlier, perhaps realizing they had to knock him out of the game if they were going to win it.
        His makeshift offensive line with Maurkice Pouncey making his first start at left guard since  his freshman season at Florida and with rookie Kelvin Beachum making his first NFL start, at tackle, played well. Extremely well. At least one of his two sacks was a coverage sack and the other one may have been as well.
     Let’s look at some other stuff from the game:
    --- Heath Miller has blossomed into one of the best receiving tight ends in the league. At age 30, he’s an overnight sensation as a receiver, not that we haven’t seen this before because he has a prolific season in 2009. It’s just the Steelers never really took full advantage of his abilities other than that season. His seven touchdowns lead the team and No. 7 was a beauty, a combination of good footwork, handwork and an ability to know precisely where he was on the field.
     --- If anyone thought Ben Roethlisberger had to rush back to play this week for the Steelers to win, Batch put those fears at ease. If Roethlisberger isn’t close to 100 percent, they should hold him out one more week.
    --- The season the Philadelphia Eagles are going through reminds me not of Bill Cowher’s final season, but of Chuck Noll’s in 1991.
 --- Some of the Baltimore Ravens’ comments were funny because they were so stunned at what happene.
     Safety Bernard Pollard: “It sucks to let this one go. We let this game go. Right now, we’re just trying to figure out how and why.’’
     Haloti Ngata: That’s definitely frustrating. You think you’re going to win, and at the end, they just come back.’’
  John Harbaugh: A very disappointing loss, a very tough loss.’’
   Anquan Boldin ripped the officials: “They were making bad calls all night. I know they don’t want to say it, but this is what it was. You can’t allow a guy to hold and then when the receiver breaks free call a pass interference. You can’t haveit both ways. If you are going to allow us to play football, let us play football. If guys want to hold, I know how to get a guy off of me, but you can’t just let the guy hold somebody and then complain about a guy throwing somebody off when heis trying to get out of a route.’’
    Tight end Dennis Pitts: We shot ourselves in the foot a lot.’’
 Center Matt Birk: This one is hard to explain.’’
--- Seven of the past eight Steelers-Ravens games have been decided by three points.
--- Besides their 15-game home winning streak, 16 including the playoffs, the Ravens had their streak of 12 consecutive AFC North victories ended.
--- The Ravens blew a fourth-quarter lead for a loss for only the eighth time under John Harbaugh, who has a 48-8 record when his team enters the fourth quarter with a lead.
 --- Rashard Mendenhall has four more regular-season games as a Steeler, but Mike Tomlin showed on Sunday that he might not have that many left to wear the uniform.
--- The Dallas Cowboys are a desperate team that will desperately need to beat the Steelers at home in two weeks.
--- Has the bloom gone off Chris Rainey as a runner? He did not have one carry Sunday, although he did return two kickoffs for a 30.5-yard average.
 --- Shaun Suisham is now 24 of 25 after making all three tries, all three over 40 yards. His only miss this season came from 54.
--- All was not happy in Baltimore, though, because the Steelers lost Ike Taylor to a lower leg/ankle injury that did not sound good. Cortez Allen had an up and down day replacing him.
--- Ziggy Hood may have playe his best game. He was third with on the team with five unofficial tackles to go with his sack, another tackle for a loss and a quarterback pressure.