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Tomlin pleased as depth shines

PITTSBURGH – If there were any punches thrown at Heinz Field on Sunday afternoon, they were confined to the stands and the parking lots.

The Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals gave peace a chance, playing an incident-free game that was in marked contrast to the almost out of control playoff game they had in January.

The Steelers won 24-16, which makes them 2-0 and allowed them to win the first of their six AFC North games this season.

The latter may not seem like a big deal on a humid, rainy afternoon in September, but it could be a big deal when the tiebreakers are under the microscope a few months down the road.

Mike Tomlin called it “good enough,” and that was a good enough way to describe a game that never seemed to be quite what it should have been.

In some ways, Ben Roethlisberger didn’t have much of a day, completing 19 of his 37 passes (51 percent) and posting a passer rating of 78.5. But he threw for 259 yards and three touchdowns.

If you heard he had three TD passes, you’d probably figure at least two of them were caught by Antonio Brown. But not on this day. Targeted 11 times, Brown had only four receptions for a paltry 39 yards, 17 of those on one catch. No touchdowns.

The scoring passes were to Xavier Grimble, Jesse James and DeAngelo Williams, a touchdown trio that few fantasy owners probably had.

The stat sheet was an interesting jumble. The Steelers only had one sack, but managed two turnovers. None was bigger than Robert Golden’s recovery of a Tyler Boyd fumble that changed the game radically in the closing minutes of the fourth quarter.

Pittsburgh’s defense effectively stuffed Cincinnati’s running game, holding the Bengals to 46 yards and a lousy 2.6 yards per carry. But the Bengals’ passing game generated a whopping 366 yards, even though the Steelers held the talented A.J. Green to two catches for 38 yards.

So anybody who came into the game expecting Brown and Green to match fireworks came away disappointed. So did anyone who thought the teams would match the level of hostility they displayed back in the playoff game.

There were hard hits and intense play, but a lack of cheap shots. At one point, the Steelers’ Shamarko Thomas was uncertain as to whether punt returner Alex Erickson had signaled for a fair catch.

Rather than erring on the side of blasting him, Thomas sort of put a bear hug on Erickson and dropped him gently to the turf.

If the NFL sent a special message telling both teams to dial down the nonsense that broke out in January, it was received.

They stayed within the boundaries, with each team flagged five times. The penalties were garden variety stuff like pass interference (the Steelers got two of those on the same possession) rather than personal fouls.

It was far less and aesthetic success than the season opener in Washington, but Tomlin is a bottom-line guy who has succeeded in spreading that message to his team.

“I told the team afterwards, it wasn’t pretty, but a win is pretty, especially against the AFC North, against a great football team at home,” Roethlisberger said. “We’ll take the win.”

Mehno can be reached at johnmehnocolumn@gmail.com

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