Steelers Super Against Kelly
The Pittsburgh Steelers looked like a team intent on returning to the Super Bowl. Jim Kelly apparently thought he was playing in one.
Pittsburgh turned all three of Kelly’s second-quarter interceptions into scores, including Carnell Lake’s 47-yard touchdown on the final play of the first half, and the Steelers beat the Buffalo Bills 24-6 Monday night.
Jerome Bettis ran for 133 yards and two touchdowns in his second consecutive 100-yard game and Kordell Stewart turned a seemingly routine screen pass into a 48-yard big play that set up Bettis’ first score as the Steelers (2-1) beat Buffalo (2-1) in Pittsburgh for a fourth straight year.
“When you make a great quarterback like Jim Kelly hesitate and throw the ball to you, you’ve done a great job,” Steelers defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau said. “They tried everything, but when a defense is playing well likes ours is, it looks like you’re setting on everything they’re doing.”
The Steelers are 8-1 under coach Bill Cowher and 6-0 at home on Mondays, apparently their favorite night of the week. But it again wasn’t Kelly’s night in his hometown.
Kelly, playing without his top pass protector, the injured Ruben Brown, and under constant pressure from a revived Steelers’ Blitzburgh defense, threw four interceptions and was sacked twice in one of the worst games of his career outside of a Super Bowl in which he is 0-4.
Kelly was knocked out of the game by the Steelers’ defense on his last three trips to Pittsburgh, including a body-slam sack by Greg Lloyd in the Steeler’s 40-21 playoff victory in January. But even on a night he started and finished, Kelly never got into a rhythm against a Steelers’ defense that resembled the Steel Curtain of the 1970s.
“They played their rear ends off and we got beat bad,” Kelly said. “I wish I had answers, but I don’t. We came in confident. We had a great week of practice. But we couldn’t click any way you looked at it.”
Kelly was 15-of-31 for 116 yards and has thrown two touchdown passes and nine interceptions in his last four games in Pittsburgh - all losses. He started his career by beating Pittsburgh five straight times.
“It wouldn’t matter if we were playing in Pittsburgh or Dallas or China,” Bills linebacker Mark Maddox said. “They beat us. We let them dominate us.”
The loss continued the Bills’ offensive problems that began in tight, come-from-behind wins over the Giants and Patriots. They have scored only two touchdowns in their last two games and 46 points in three games.
“Offense, defense and coaching are all responsible for a loss that to all of us is humiliating,” Bills coach Marv Levy said.
Kelly, trying desperately to make something happen on the Bills’ final drive of the first half, instead all but threw the game away, when an interception was returned for a TD.