Steelers News: INSTANT REACTION After 21-14 WIN vs. The Patriots | Defense Punches Way To Ugly Win

[Music] Steelers win week three versus the New England Patriots by a final score of 21-4. It certainly wasn’t pretty, Steelers Nation, but a win is a win. And now we’re off to Dublin. Welcome into the Steelers Talk postgame show. I’m your host, Jack Sperry. Make sure you guys click that subscribe button if you haven’t already. Currently filming this on our Steelers Talk live watch party. Uh we had a fantastic showing today uh with thousands of people joining us to watch the Steelers game. We’re going to be live early in the morning for the Dublin game next Sunday. Guys, make sure you click that subscribe button to never miss a game and to never miss any of our postgame shows either throughout the course of the 2025 Steelers schedule. So now let’s talk about this game, guys. 214 only touchdowns scored in this game. Uh Aaron Rodgers and the offense started really hot. Uh they did a really good job first two drives scoring touchdowns and then they just really stalled out for most of the rest of this game, but then put together a really good clutch uh final drive, a third and six touchdown pass to Calvin Austin III, who led the team in receiving today with 34 yards on three catches and of course with that touchdown. But the Patriots were the team that was moving the football for most of this game. Drake May had a pretty darn good performance, 28 of 37, 268 yards, was their leading rusher today as well. multiple big runs from him in key moments. Had two touchdowns and he had an interception, had a fumble as well. But then, you know, really the story of this game was the fumbles from the New England Patriots, guys. Four fumbles lost in this game by New England. So, the Steelers defense certainly back to uh punching that football out. That’s been really the bread and butter of this defense for many years, and it’s why uh they have allowed less than 20 points to their opponent for the first time this season. So, very gritty win for the Pittsburgh Steelers. And let’s give out some game balls here to the people that I think deserve them. We’ll start with TJ Watt. And listen, man, a lot of people were talking about TJ Watt after these first two weeks, saying he’s washed, not worth the money, all that different stuff. And he can still have that opinion, but TJ got two sacks today. Um, you know, he had a fumble recovery and he was affecting Drake May in this football game. And honestly, he has been affecting the quarterback in the first two games as well. Um, it’s just that he wasn’t getting the quarterback on the ground the same way that he was today. So, um, you know, you can tell TJ and this defense, specifically this defensive line, brought a lot of focus to this week. Um, there’s still some issues in coverage that we’ll talk about here in just a second on the Steelers defense, but man, this this stat line is what Steelers fans wanted to see in this football game. Hopefully, it continues as the season goes on for Mr. TJ. Then, we get on to Cam Hayward, another defensive player. Um, you know, he was responsible for two of the Steelers turnovers today. He had a tip ball. Uh second week in a row he’s had a tip ball that ended up going right into the arms of a Steelers defender. That was huge to get that interception before the half and then he punched out another ball at the oneyd line. So Cam Hayward might have saved two touchdowns for the Steelers today. I I think I got to give him my MVP trophy because of that guys. Had a force fumble, had a sack, had a PBU that led to an interception. Monster game for Cameron Hayward. um and certainly seems like he is uh hopefully going to be ending up worth the money that the Steelers hopefully end up paying him uh at the end of the season if he hits those incentives. Then we get to Jaylen Warren and you you know we talked about it in our preview this week guys. My one of my keys to victory was to feed Jaylen Warren and feed him they did. Um he had over 20 touches in this football game and you know the Steelers didn’t have that many opportunities uh in this game to get him the football, right? There was only a very limited amount of offensive snaps. The Steelers were not on the field for a lot in this foot football game and they still fed him and they used him like a true uh like a true feature back. They didn’t really put Kenneth Gainwell out there too much and Gainwell I thought actually did pretty well when he did get his opportunities. But Warren man, making guys miss, picking up big first downs, catching the ball out of the back field, doing all the things that he does, man. He is the best offensive player on this team and he needs to continue to be featured in this offense. Then hey, Calvin Austin the third. Give him his give him his credit, man. second touchdown of the season for him. DK Medaf also got a second touchdown of the year today. Uh but Calvin that big time third and six uh where he’s getting press coverage on the outside. And you know all the Calvin haters, what do they say? He’s too small. He can’t hold up on the outside. Um he can’t make tough catches. He had to adjust to that football. Rogers slightly under threw it and put it on his back shoulder. He just beat his guy flat out off the line. And I’ve said for years, guys, that Calvin is a better outside receiver than he is in the slot, in my opinion. And uh I think all three of his catches came from an from an outside alignment. So Calvin uh had an off week last week, gets back, uh to playing some good football this week. Um really happy for him, man. For now, he is definitely this team’s wide receiver, too. Then we get to Jabril Peppers, who I thought looked excellent out there today. Uh, one of my biggest criticisms of the Steelers defensive coaching staff today is that they put Chuck Clark out there way too often. Jabril Peppers needs to be the full-time starting strong safety, especially as long as Deshawn Elliot’s out. If Deshawn can’t go versus uh the Vikings next week in Dublin, Jabril Peppers should get every strong safety snap there is. All right, he had some really good stuff against the run today. He helped this run defense have a big bounceback week. All right, and we’ll talk about the run defense later in the show. Uh, but Jabril really a big-time player today in my opinion. Can’t wait to watch the film and see exactly how he played, but just watching him live, uh, it was a good performance. And then the fact that he got that revenge versus his former team just makes it even more sweeter. He also had a forced fumble. I don’t know if he got credit for that forced fumble. Maybe they gave it to TJ Watt. I don’t know. But s sure sure looked like to me that Peppers forced that fumble. Uh, but good day overall from number 40 in black and gold. So, who’s your MVP? Let me know down there in the comments section. Who was today’s MVP for your Pittsburgh Steelers? For me, I got to give it to Captain Cam Hayward. Man, in my opinion, he saved two touchdowns for this team today. And of course, that’s the difference in the ball game. Um, so that’s who I that’s who I got. Let me know who your MVP is down there in the comments section for today’s pin question. Just a second here. I’m going to tell you about our sponsor today. While I’m telling you about our sponsor and a great deal to get a great piece of of Steelers apparel today, make sure you get down there and let me know who your MVP was for this matchup. Uh, if you guys want a Steelers uh, shirt to be wearing around the house, uh, if you are an appreciator of minimalistic type of style like I am, I love this uh, long sleeve gray t-shirt here uh, with the Steelers branding there on the little patch. It’s 40% off right now when you use our link chatports.com/pit3. Uh, the proceeds go to help us here at Chatports. So, we’d really appreciate it. If you’re looking for another pajama shirt or just another Steelers shirt to add to your collection, 40% off, it’s a great deal. It helps out our channel chatsports.com/pitweek3 to get it done. So, my takeaways versus New England, it’s a lot more of the same with the Pittsburgh Steelers, right? Tell me if you’ve heard this before. A a defensive performance where you have a lot of turnovers uh helps propel a a struggling offense to a Steelers gritty victory. I mean, this has been the playbook for the last several seasons here in Pittsburgh, right? You you’re in a close game. The offense is struggling. The defense is the reason why you pretty much win the football game. And then you have a clutch drive late, right? And that’s really been the the formula going back to uh Kenny Picket and Mason Rudolph to Russell Wilson and the Steelers last year. And now, you know, with the offensive line not playing well, certainly seems like that’s the formula for winning, at least at this point in the Steelers schedule. And that’s my second takeaway, which is that this offensive line, guys, is not good enough. Plain and simply, it’s not good enough. I mean, Rogers has no time to throw. Uh, you know, Jaylen Warren, for as good as he is, and as good as we know that he is, he is for m for much of this game on first down, the defense pretty much knew that they were running the football, which is a big criticism I have of Arthur Smith right now, is that he ran the football too much on first down today. There wasn’t enough uh to keep them guessing on first down. And because of that, you were in second and long a lot. You were in third and long a lot, all this different stuff. And you know, when you get into those third and long situations and then those second and pass situations and then you can’t protect your quarterback who is 41 years old, it’s going to create problems. And it’s created problems for this offense for many years on end at this point. I said in a video that we did this year that bringing back Pat Meyer was the worst decision that this team made this off season and it seems like he’s once again failing us. Troy Futano has not looked as good as I want him to look through the first three weeks. Neither is Brick Jones. And now it looks like Jones is dealing with a shoulder injury. I mean, it’s just not good enough to this point, guys. And if it doesn’t get better, it’s going to hold back this team this season. Then we get to uh the punches save the day. Four turn four turnovers on forced fumbles by the Steelers today. Uh Cam Hayward forced one. Jabril Peppers forced one. Uh Nick Herbig forced one, and Cole Hulk forced one. So four different players punching the ball out. Uh this is what the Steelers do. All right. This is what they do. This is there’s a reason why this team over the last several seasons has led the league in turnovers. It’s why they led the league in turnovers last year. It’s because they got multiple players that can get the ball out. And if they this defensive coaching staff does anything well, it’s they teach the peanut punch better than any team in football. So, those four turnovers save the day today with as much as New England was moving the football. Um, but you know, obviously we’re going to talk about some of the struggles on defense here in just a second. Uh, but great job by this defense to get the ball out. So, make sure you guys click that thumbs up icon if you haven’t already to celebrate this week three victory. A dub is a dub. Um, even even though this week was a little bit of an ugly one, make sure you guys click that thumbs up icon if you haven’t already. All right, so now continuing on here with our takeaways here in this week three win, which is that you got to be better on third and fourth on defense. All right. Um, you know, they were just moving the chains and moving the chains and prolonging drives and they were go they were taking long fields like they would start inside their own 20 and then get inside the Steelers red zone multiple times. All right, they moved the ball extremely well and this is now the 11th straight game. All right, count them. 11th straight game where the Steelers opponent has gotten over 300 yards of offense. Now, obviously with the turnovers and all that stuff, the the the timely plays, you’re able to only give up four 14 points today, but um you know, you got to be better in those third and fourth down situations, or else teams are going to be able to prolong drives, wear out this defense, and it’s not always going to end in a victory if you keep doing those things. Steelers are pretty pretty lucky that they had as many turnovers as they had today. Um and then I would say terrific resilience by the defense um for being out there for as long as they were. Okay, the Patriots dominated, straight up dominated the time of possession battle today. 33 minutes and 22 and 20 seconds for the Patriots today. Only 26 minutes and 40 seconds for the Steelers offense. To be out there that long and to play uh that final drive the way that they did stopping them on that fourth and one um was really really a testament to this football team. It’s a testament that they never broke when they got deep into their red zone and they really did a good job uh creating those turnovers, forcing those fumbles, never giving up. Uh obviously, I think that there’s some schematic things on the back end of the pass defense that need to get better. We’re going to talk about that on this channel over the next several days, some of the things that we see on the film, all that different stuff. But hey, man, at the end of the day, a win is a win. And you know, good teams find a way to win football games. And you know, I’m okay with things looking a little ugly here early in the season as long as they figure it out by the time we get to the middle stretch of this season where you get Los Angeles and you get Green Bay and you get Indianapolis and you get the Ravens twice and you get all these tough games and you get Buffalo, right? Like you got to be able to be firing on all cylinders by that point. So listen, man. If it takes you uh three, four weeks, maybe maybe five games to really find your groove as a team, but you’re collecting tough victories and you’re coming up big in these big moments, that’s going to be fine with me. All right. So, I I think that the offense showed up big time on their final drive after a really frustrating uh day at the office. The defense showed up big time or even though they gave up a lot of yards, they made enough big plays and enough turnovers to get the victory. Obviously, the Steelers have a lot to work on if they’re going to get to the place where they want to be, uh, which is a legitimate Super Bowl contender by the end of the season. I will say I still have hope that they can get there, but now we’re 3 weeks into the season, and they haven’t been that type of guy, that type of team yet. So, certainly lots of stuff to work on, but it’s much better to work on stuff with a win versus having to work on stuff coming off a loss. And now we are on to Dublin versus the Minnesota Vikings. What say you guys? Let me know down there in the comments section. Great today’s performance from the Steelers, AB, B, C, D, or F. Uh, honestly, I’m going to give him a C++. You come away with a victory. You know, you made you made the plays when you’re supposed to, but honestly, creating five turnovers, you should win this game by three scores. And they had opportunities to do that. They failed at that. Um, and this team has certainly a lot of things they need to fix before uh we get to kind of this gauntlet that’s coming up in the middle portion of the schedule. So, some final thoughts here on this football game. 2114 final. Uh I thought that the Steelers showed some really great resiliency today when the Patriots had all the momentum. They were able to win the fourth quarter um and and make the plays that that were needed to win. Uh it’s very indicative of a Mike Tomlin le team um where you know you’re in these tough games where it’s not pretty especially offensively and you just find a way to get the job done. Uh but you know it’s definitely my big takeaway here guys is it’s got to be better offensive line. We got to be better both in run blocking and pass protection. We got to create run lanes for Jaylen Warren. He’s just too big of a talent to not give him opportunities. And then, you know, I think Arthur Smith needs to call a better game, frankly. You know, get more play action stuff going on. Early downs. Don’t have to run it every single play on first down. You got to mix it up, keep defenses on their toes, all that different stuff. Wasn’t a great game from Aaron Rogers, but I expect him to play better uh in future games. But overall, man, uh just a tough, gritty win from the Pittsburgh Steelers. And this early into the season, you just got to keep collecting them, man, because you got a pretty def difficult uh middle and end portion of your schedule. And uh you got Vikings, you’ve got Browns, and you got Bengals coming up. Three very winnable games for this football team. Uh and as I’ve been discussing all throughout this week, you got to take advantage of the opportunities that are presented over these next three weeks. Now, make sure you guys click that subscribe button if you haven’t already. Uh really do appreciate all the support that you guys gave to us today. We will be coming at you guys with another postgame show. Once I get to collect my thoughts, watch the game over one more time. I’ll have some more thoughts for you guys, some injury updates if there is any from Mike Tomlin in the postgame press conference and uh any interesting things that Coach T or Aaron Rogers or anybody else says in the locker room. So make sure you guys click that subscribe button if you haven’t already. I greatly appreciate you guys sticking around to the end. And until next time, here we go, Steelers. [Music]

Pittsburgh Steelers news is coming at you postgame after the Steelers gutted out a Week 3 victory over the New England Patriots on the road by a final score of 21-14. Today on the Steelers Talk postgame show, host Jack Sperry breaks down his game balls and takeaways after the Steelers defense forced 5 turnovers to secure the victory and get this team to a 2-1 start as they now prepare to take on the Vikings in Dublin next Sunday. What are the big issues the Steelers need to fix in the weeks to come of they want to be the team they want to be down the stretch? What did the Steelers do well today that we can take into next week? Get some answers on Steelers Talk’s postgame reaction show for Week 3.

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49 comments

  11. I'm happy we got a W, but the Patriots were the better team today! The Steelers should NOT be celebrating this win! Tomlin should NOT be celebrating this win, but something tells me he will justify it somehow with some sort of Tomlinsim. How can you create 5 turnovers and barely win the game? Although the Steelers are great historically at creating turnovers, this won't happen every game! In fact, the collapse that happened last year, starting with the Eagles game, was also the end of turnovers for the rest of the season, and we saw how that turned out!!! Our offensive line looks terrible! The receivers can't create separation quickly enough, and our defense is so porous that any team we are playing looks like a top 5 offense! And that's the problem!!! What happens when we do play a top 5 offense? I see games coming where we are about to be embarrassed big time!!! We got the Bill's, Ravens, and Lions coming up on our schedule, and we are far from ready for them!!! Jack, please stop saying we are trying to win a Superbowl this year for Cam, that just isn't happening with a team like this! Unless something drastically happens and they magically turns things around, we will be lucky to escape this season with a winning record!

  15. Bro Calvin Austin is straight ass. I don't know what the f*** you're talking about. He made three catches today for 34 yd. One of them happened to me. Touchdown yes but he is not demanding people to cover him. This is why DK is not getting any Target. He's not getting open. Calvin, Austin does not command pressure from the defense because he's just a random ass receiver. He's not a wide receiver too. He's a decent wide receiver three but he's not taking away. Any pressure from DK and TK is getting double and triple-teamed on most plays cuz they can't. There's nobody on this offense who's a threat and this team is not going to win a playoff game with this pitiful offense. I remember earlier in the year you were saying Roman Wilson was going to be a big x Factor 😂😂. Yeah The x Factor is he's not playing. That's his x Factor. Another wasted third round pick wasted. One on Wilson. Wasted one on Caleb Johnson

  17. Same offense, no creativity, predictable, simple, Bad O-Line, we won but it's just like the last two years….defense has to make all the effort, offense just carried

  20. Eh, here goes. Offense: Pat Meyer needs to be let go. That line looked shaky as hell. Especially right up the middle! It's bad enough our tackles are struggling, but when pressure is coming right up the middle, something has to be done about that. Arthur Smith really needs to be less stubborn about that run play on 1st down. Three times, I watched him call the same running play for a 2 yard loss. GO VERTICAL! We have all these tight ends and we barely use them. Darnell Washington was almost nonexistent the whole game.

    Defense: Yaha has to go to NT. Please. We looked a little better with our run defense and I can see that they really stressed some post-snap looks and what not. Short passes were killing us. 3rd down, we were not getting off the field. Glad to see Harmon's influence on our play. Incredibly happy to see TJ Watt ball out like he did and Cam to shine. We won the TO battle easily, but those 10+ play drives were brutal to watch.

  26. Jack, are you not hitting the panic button on our offense yet? Because I'm hitting the FUCKING panic button, hard. for two weeks in a row. Our offense is terrible. It has to massively improve for Minnesota to pull out a W, massively. I personally am still NOT CONVINCED about AR leading this offense…if our line sucks and doesn't give him the ability to pass, then he simply may not be effective. I think Arthur Smith BLOWS, I don't see much improvement from Matt Canada, it's the same shit – lucky to pull out a W on a couple great drives.

  27. Celebrate the W but the effort was disappointing.Once again if this were a good team we were playing we would be 1-2 on the year.Thanks to NE for all the turnovers because this would not have been close otherwise.

  35. I blame Rodgers,, 99% of his throws are to Metcalf or a screen to Warren,,, as if that's his only 2 options,, there are other receivers and tight ends that can also catch 🙄

  41. "A win is a win", but why do I feel like we lost? This team is awful and the Coaching is terrible, period! The O-Line will get Rodgers hurt, because they can't hold water and we can't run the ball effectively enough to help the passing game! We get 5 turnovers and 5 sacks and only score 21 pts??? What's wrong with that picture??? That young Patriots team made mistake after mistake and our veteran team couldn't bury them! As a diehard STEELERS fan, we are going nowhere fast…

  43. D.K. Metcalf has not been a #1 WR and I didnt think he was in Seattle; big play guy, yes, but a WR that can run the entire route tree and use that size and speed to separate from the defense, not hardly! I expect my #1 WR to get force-feed the ball on ocassion and get at least 8-10 targets per game! I mean, how many DBs out there 6'4" 230 lbs like Metcalf? We gotta get the ball in his hands on slants, outs, dig routes, go routes, WR screens, jet sweeps, whatever! This is embarrassing and a further indictment on Arthur Smith's play calling!

  44. Same ol shit!! Most expensive Defense in the league by far, and they've been shredded ALL 3 GAME'S!!! Tomlin, Smith , Austin, and Meyer NEED TO GO!! DAMNIT!!!!!
    Soooo Sick of this BS!!!

  48. Arthur Smith just stinks simple. He is the most predictable oc we never throw on first down. We only throw when we have to and at that point it’s very obvious and we can’t get our guys open. Give rodgers 2-3 downs to throw the ball and we can get down the field. Running will not win us the game and clearly smith doesent know how to get our Receivers open.

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