PITTSBURGH — Word began to spread at the Jaguars’ team breakfast Sunday morning. “Did you see the tweet?” one player asked another and then another….
PITTSBURGH — Word began to spread at the Jaguars’ team breakfast Sunday morning.
“Did you see the tweet?” one player asked another and then another. Then Jacksonville coach Doug Marrone showed anyone on the team who had not seen it.
Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell had taken to Twitter just before midnight on Saturday and showed his thumbs are not as skilled as his legs.
“I love round 2’s… we’ll have two round 2’s in back to back weeks …” Bell wrote, referring to rematches with the Jaguars on Sunday and an AFC Championship game rematch with the Patriots next week.
Yeah … about that.
Bell’s tweet lit a fire in the Jaguars and they upset the Steelers 45-42 in an AFC divisional playoff game Sunday at Heinz Field. It was the second victory over the Steelers the Jaguars scored this season, adding it to a 30-9 regular-season thumping in Week 5. Now, it is the Jaguars who will travel to Gillette Stadium on Sunday to face the Patriots with a trip to Super Bowl LII on the line.
Bell’s tweet was just one indication to the Jaguars the Steelers were overlooking them and focusing on Tom Brady and the Patriots.
“I was wondering why they were so confident,” Jaguars cornerback Jalen Ramsey said. “We stomped their ass last time and we knew we was going to do the same this time.”
Before the teams took the field, Steelers safety Mike Mitchell was chirping at the Jaguars in the tunnel leading to the field. That came days after Sports Illustrated quoted Mitchell talking about how the Steelers would beat the Patriots. It was like the Steelers dismissed their early-season loss to the Jaguars.
“It was like they had dementia, amnesia or Alzheimer’s or something,” linebacker Myles Jack said. “I don’t know if they just forgot and thought that didn’t happen but it happened and it happened again. It was strange, man.”
The Jaguars had to fight to earn the franchise’s third trip to the AFC title game and first since 1999. They took an early 21-0 lead and then a 28-7 lead in the second quarter, but the Steelers kept fighting back and had it down to a one-touchdown lead three separate times in the second half.
With former Giants coach Tom Coughlin now in charge in Jacksonville and Doug Marrone in his first year as head coach, the sad-sack franchise turned things around this year after a 3-13 finish in 2016.
The Jaguars jumped on the Steelers immediately on Sunday. They drove 66 yards on their opening drive and rookie Leonard Fournette scored his first of three touchdowns on a 1-yard fourth-down plunge. Later in the first quarter, Jack intercepted Ben Roethlisberger at the Steelers’ 18. Fournette scored a play later to make it 14-0.
The Jacksonville defense was not its usual stingy self, allowing a number of big plays. But the unit forced two turnovers and stopped the Steelers on two fourth downs.
A T. J. Yeldon 4-yard touchdown put the Jaguars up 21-0 with 11:31 left in the first half.
“I think you could see it especially in those first couple of drives,” Jack said. “We came out so hyped, so amped up. We made a promise that we were going to be quiet until we put those pads on and the ref blows the whistle. That’s what we tried to do.”
Roethlisberger (37-of-58,469 yards, 5 TDs, 1 INT) made two beautiful throws in the second quarter to get the Steelers back in the game — touchdown strikes of 23 yards to Antonio Brown and 36 yards to Martavis Bryant. But he also fumbled late in the second quarter and Jaguars linebacker Telvin Smith returned it 50 yards for a touchdown.
“It doesn’t matter [how many points you score] when you give them 14 more,” Roethlisberger said. “That’s on me. I’ll take full blame for those points and that loss because you can’t put your defense in that situation.”
Roethlisberger cut the Jaguars’ lead to 28-21 after a 19-yard touchdown pass to Bell on the first drive of the second half.
It felt like all of the momentum was going Pittsburgh’s direction until a fourth-and-1 early in the fourth quarter. Instead of having Roethlisberger sneak for the yard or hand it to Bell, the Steelers passed and it fell incomplete.
The much-maligned Blake Bortles marched the Jaguars down the field with a 45-yard pass to Keelan Cole and Fournette scored a 3-yard touchdown to make it a two-touchdown game. Roethlisberger again cut it to one touchdown with a 43-yard pass that Brown made a remarkable catch on.
Bortles came back with a 14-yard pass to former Jet fullback Tommy Bohanon that appeared to ice the game, but Pittsburgh would not die. Roethlisberger threw a lateral to Bell for an 8-yard touchdown that made it 42-35 with 2:18 left to play.
Steelers coach Mike Tomlin called for an onside kick that did not work and gave Jacksonville the ball at the Steelers’ 36. The Jaguars kicked a 45-yard field goal for a 10-point lead with 1:45 to play. The Steelers scored one more touchdown but there was only one second left and the game was over.
The upstart Jaguars will be road underdogs again in New England, but they don’t care.
“We respond on Sunday,” defensive tackle Malik Jackson said. “People keep talking about what we can’t do, we can’t do this but we are still playing when a lot of teams are at home. We’re in the final four right now. We’re going to try to get to the final two.”
