No Such Thing As An Ugly Win (Thank God): Steelers Game Balls Week 2

Oooof. Christ that was ugly. I mentioned it in my 2020 Steelers predictions that there's always a few of these "puke" or "fire everyone" games, and I was not ready for it to be this early. 

Luckily Butler dialed up the right blitz at the right time and Edmunds made a play on 4th & 2 to hold off the banged up Broncos. 

A win is a win. No such thing as an ugly W. There's no style points. All the cliches for this one. 

A few game balls: 

Chase Claypool

Congrats to the rookie on catching his first career NFL touchdown on an 84-yard bomb from Ben Roethlisberger to extend the Steelers lead in the second quarter. 

Pretty straight forward. Claypool got a nice release off the line to the outside and used his blazing speed to just beat the corner. Perfect deep ball from Ben. 6.

This has to get to get Steelers Nation jacked up thinking about the possibilities of more of these to come. He's a freak of nature. That part is easy. Seeing his connection with Big Ben two weeks into his career is even better. 

Kevin Dotson

Another rookie stepping up in a big way early in 2020. The 4th round pick had to slide in at right guard this week with DeCastro being down again and Wiesnewski getting hurt on Monday night, and like Rich Gannon wouldn't shut the fuck up about, the broadcast didn't talk much about that right side of the line much which is good for the Steelers. 1 sack. 3 QB hits. Obviously not all because of Dotson, but hats off to him for sliding in with ease. 

James Conner

Nice bounce back from James. Did nothing on Monday night. Was banged up (again). Came back today for 16 carries for 106 yards and a touchdown including closing out the game when the Broncos had three timeouts. He ran hard, but most importantly he held onto the damn ball. After Snell's performance today, expect much of this to continue for James Conner. He'll stay the "bell cow" as long as he can stay healthy. 

Another solid performance from Big Ben but don't want to get into the habit of giving him a game ball every week. I toyed with the idea of giving Diontae Johnson one, but he's still just too up and down. He'll make a couple of great catches, return a punt for a TD that was negated because of a bullshit clipping penalty, but on the other hand he continues to have problems with drops and fumbles. A lot of good from him, but he's gotta clean up the bad that's holding him back from being a study on a weekly basis. 

2-0. Here we go.