With the 2025 season on the horizon, Steelers.com is bringing you Looking Back, where a game against each of our opponents is highlighted. In this edition, it’s the Cleveland Browns.<\/p>\n
Steelers 41, Cleveland Browns 0
December 24, 2005
Cleveland Browns Stadium<\/p>\n
With visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads, the Steelers got an early Christmas gift when they defeated the Browns handily, with a 41-0 shutout.<\/p>\n
The win put the Steelers in a good spot for the postseason, with just one game remaining against the Detroit Lions at home.<\/p>\n
“We’ll take some time, enjoy Christmas, come back and understand what we have in front of us,” said Coach Bill Cowher after the game. “We control our destiny. That’s the only thing that counts.”<\/p>\n
It was the Steelers first shutout since they shutout the Browns, 22-0, on October 22, 2000. It was also a win that set them up to clinch the final playoff spot with a win the following week over the Lions.<\/p>\n
“It’s big, man,” said defensive lineman Casey Hampton said. “It’s a one-game season. We control our own destiny, you can’t ask for anything else. That’s what you play for.”<\/p>\n
The Steelers came out of the gate like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer leading the way for Santa’s sleigh, not letting anything get in their way. Running back Jerome Bettis had a two-yard touchdown run, and receiver Hines Ward pulled in a seven-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to put them up 14-0 before the Browns knew what hit them.<\/p>\n
“This was one of those games where we clicked really well on offense,” said Roethlisberger. “Our defense was out there having fun flying around. It was fun watching them.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the 2025 season on the horizon, Steelers.com is bringing you Looking Back, where a game against each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,85,54,2337,198,7,4463,6,914,915],"class_list":{"0":"post-152479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-browns","8":"tag-browns","9":"tag-cleveland","10":"tag-cleveland-browns","11":"tag-clevelandbrowns","12":"tag-featured","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-history","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-non-sponsored","17":"tag-sights-and-sounds"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114733347393759705","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}