And..................Exhale (Rich)

Steeler Nation breathed a sigh of relief this afternoon. I can personally attest to some of what Charlie Batch can do--ask me privately to relate how, as a Steel Valley Ironman, he personally ruined my high school senior homecoming. But no one thought that 3-4 weeks of Charlie as our starter during a tough stretch of games was going to work out for the best. When I first saw the replay of Ben's injury last night, I said, "That's a month." But the black and gold lucked out.

As for the game itself, this was a huge, huge win. Going down a game and a half in the division to a very.....good...(spit it out).....Bengals team would have been troubling. Showing a continued inability to stop good pass-catching backs and tight ends--and inability to exploit teams that allow good pass-catching backs and tight ends to prosper--would have shown a major strategical chink in the armor. Instead, we demonstrated an ability to contain, if not shut down, two of the premier threats at those positions, and we also brought the first round pick out of mothballs.

In a game like this, I hate it when people complain about the other team making plays--those guys are on scholarship too. But you do have to feel flustered when you blow opportunities, and the big one here was a 25-yard bullet to Quincy Morgan ("The Coroner") at the end of the first half that could've turned into a whole lot more, but it was dropped. Usually, you can't flounder opportunities like that against good teams on the road and win.

One of the cool things about this win, too, is the weird transitivity--the New England, Pittsburgh, San Diego triad has split its season series over the last three weeks, with the road team winning each game. Strangely enough, Michigan, Michigan State, and Notre Dame pulled off the same feat this season. OK, maybe I'm the only one who finds this cool.

--rich erenberg