Steelers Harass Titans in Tennessee, Win 18-6

The Pittsburgh Steelers showed their strength by beating the Tennessee Titans 18-6 in Week 3 of the NFL preseason. It was one long and tough game for the hosts at Nissan Stadium, as they felt the hard grip of the Steelers’ defense.

All three quarterbacks of the Titans were sacked at least once. Marcus Mariota didn’t have a single completion, and he had only three attempts. He was sacked for the safety, and was immediately pulled off the field, as Mike Vrabel decided not to gamble with his health against fired up Steelers.

“We knew coming in that was a strength of their football team,” Vrabel said about Pittsburgh’s defense.

The guests from Pennsylvania had 7 sacks for 47 yards, four of them in the opening two quarters. They brought down Mariots once, while backup QBs Ryan Tannehill and Logan Woodside suffered three sacks each. The Titans couldn’t make a touchdown score, and their productivity on the offensive side of the court came down to two field goals.

Meanwhile, things were good for the Steelers, who included Ben Roethlisberger for the first time during the preseason. Big Ben had one touchdown pass to JuJu Smith-Shuster, 17- yards long, and the two-time Super Bowl champ threw for 63 yards, with 8 completions in 13 tries. Roethlisberger revealed after the match, that he is satisfied with his performance.

”I wasn’t as crisp as I would’ve liked to have been, but I think we got enough accomplished,” Roethlisberger said.

Pittsburgh had a 15-0 lead already after the first period, and the guests had a 159-25 advantage in total yards at that moment. It seems that either they got into the zone last night, or the Titans’ abilities aren’t too big before the start of this season. Anyway, coach Mike Tomlin was very pleased with the way his team performed, saying that he saw a lot of positive things in various aspects of the game.

“It was good on a lot of fronts,” coach Tomlin said.

Steelers’ coach had to mention Stephon Tuitt who had two sacks, one of them bringing a safety for the guests.
The 26-year old DE had both of them already in the first period.

”We’re expecting big things from him,” Tomlin said. ”He’s expecting big things from him. He’s had a good preseason both in stadiums and out, so that was not unlike what we’ve been looking at from him.”

Apart from being sacked three times, Tannehill had a solid game for the Titans. He completed six of his nine passes for 62 yards. The same goes for Woodside who had even better percentages, collecting 117 yards, 11 of 17. But overall, they couldn’t do anything when approaching to the Steelers’ end zone.

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“We’re going to make sure we can protect our quarterback, and that’s important,” Titans coach Vrabel said. “And it’s imperative that we do that as a staff and we do that as an offensive group.”

The Steelers kept their preseason record perfect, with three wins without a single loss, while Tennessee has only one win and two defeats. Tomlin’s guys are visiting Carolina Panthers next Thursday, while Titans head for Chicago, to meet with one of the biggest Super Bowl contenders, the Bears.

Both sides will have one hell of a task in the season premiere. Tennessee goes to Cleveland and kicks off the campaign against the Browns. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh visits Foxborough, to have another clash with their biggest rivals in the past decade, the champions, New England Patriots.