Mike McCarthy did not want to oversell a four-game winning streak. “I think we’re exactly what our record says we are,” the Steelers head coach said after Sunday’s 27-6 win over the Cleveland Browns at Acrisure Stadium. “We’ve really focused on improving in certain areas, and I think we’re doing that.”
The win moved Pittsburgh to 6-2 and into sole possession of first place in the AFC North going into its Week 9 bye. Cleveland fell to 5-3. The Steelers ran for 200 yards on 33 carries and held the Browns to 34 rushing yards on 15. They sacked Deshaun Watson eight times, recovered fumbles on Cleveland’s first two possessions and kept the Browns out of the end zone all day. Cleveland went 0-for-3 in the red zone and 0-for-2 on fourth down.
Jaylen Warren ran for 143 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries on his 28th birthday, tying his career high. Rico Dowdle added 56 yards and a touchdown, and Pat Freiermuth scored on a 1-yard push in the final seconds of the first half for a 20-6 lead. Aaron Rodgers went 13-for-25 for 172 yards with one interception, and Darnell Washington had a career-high 94 receiving yards, 58 of them on one catch-and-run to the goal line that set up Warren’s 1-yard touchdown in the third quarter.
McCarthy: “The trap is something that we haven’t done a lot of”
The biggest run of the day was Warren’s 51-yard gain on third-and-13 in the first quarter, on a trap play. McCarthy said the staff had been waiting to use it. “The trap is something that we haven’t done a lot of. And I think everybody was excited to get the traps called today,” he said. “Obviously, it was a good scheme versus the defense.” He said a first-year staff has to be careful about how much it puts in. “You worry about volume. You really hone in on the fundamentals,” he said. “At the end of the day, that’s what winning football comes down to.”
He said the running game starts up front but runs through two backs. “Jaylen is on fire. You can’t get him the ball enough,” he said. “It’s important for those two men to touch the ball each and every week.” He also said his team “should have scored more points today,” and that the run defense had “really set the bar” over the last two weeks.
McCarthy praised linebacker Patrick Queen, who led the team with 12 tackles and had 1.5 sacks and a forced fumble. “I love the way Patrick’s playing,” he said. “When we’ve upped the pressure, the intensity of that front seven, it looks the way it’s supposed to look.”
The Steelers played the Saints in Paris in Week 7, and McCarthy said the players were still “a little run down” late in the week. “I thought they did a hell of a job getting ready to go,” he said. He was asked how much the win before the bye meant. “It feels great. It’s important. But this bye was going to happen regardless,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a season where your team didn’t need a bye.” He said he is already looking at the next three games: “Two on the road and come home and play a Friday game here after Thanksgiving.”
Warren: “Just keep your legs moving”
Asked about all his runs of 20 yards or more, Warren kept it short. “Just keep your legs moving, that’s pretty much it,” he said. On the 51-yarder, he said he hit the sideline, made the safety miss and kept looking for blockers. “I try to make cuts into my blockers so I can get a blocker on my way down,” he said. “I don’t know what it looks like. I don’t know what I was doing, but yeah, that’s what it was.”
Warren is in his fifth season, and he said looking after his body is paying off. “I feel the difference,” he said. “I’m in year five, so I know what to do and what not to do.” He called himself and Dowdle “very complementary,” said this was “100%” the team’s most complete game, and said he does not care about reaching 1,000 yards. “As long as we win, I don’t really care about that,” he said. Asked about comments from Browns defensive lineman Jared Verse during the week, he said: “We didn’t really pay attention to it.”
He also joked about the score. “Usually it’s a close game,” he said. “I know my parents and my grandparents didn’t have as much of a heart attack.”
Watt: “A bowling ball with teeth”
T.J. Watt had two sacks, giving him 7.5 this season, tied with Houston’s Will Anderson Jr. for the NFL lead. The team said he now has 20.5 career sacks against Cleveland, the most by any player against the Browns. Asked what that means, Watt said: “It means I’ve been playing a long time.”
He had the best line of the day about Warren. “He’s a bowling ball with teeth, man. You can’t get him down,” Watt said. “He’s the guy that’s out there in December when we’re practicing. It’s like 12 degrees and he’s in a t-shirt and shorts, and it’s like, what the heck. That’s just who he is.” He added: “He’s a great locker room guy, very selfless. But man, he loves football, and you can see it in the way that he plays.”
The defense has not allowed a touchdown in seven quarters, and Watt said that is not enough. “I’ll just say there’s more work to do,” he said. “The distribution of the splash is going all around the whole defense.” He said he likes that the Steelers have won in different ways. “We’ve come from behind, we’ve been able to hold leads. We’ve played games we haven’t looked great, we’ve played games we’ve looked great,” he said. He said defensive lineman Derrick Harmon is “coming back soon too, hopefully,” and that the bye “comes at a great time for us.” His plan for the week off: “Get our bodies back for the bye week and come back blazing.”
Heyward: “Throwing darts at Deshaun”
Cameron Heyward, who had 1.5 sacks, said it was the most complete game of the season. “I thought we controlled both lines of scrimmage,” he said. Asked what changed from the first meeting, he said: “Better extension, better control of gaps, and then just throwing darts at Deshaun. He’s electric back there, so you gotta have multiple guys getting after it.”
He was asked about the talk before the game and said the division is not decided that way. “I don’t think you can ever win a game by just talking about it,” he said. “You got to go out there and execute, you got to stop the run, and you got to make sure you run the ball.” He also said there is room to improve. “I think we can get more turnovers. And we still left some sacks on the table,” he said. “When we clean those up, we’ll be even more dominant.” On Warren and Dowdle, he said: “When they’re able to sustain drives, that means we’re on the sideline and we can put our feet up.”
Rodgers: “It should have been a lot more points”
Rodgers was the least satisfied voice in the room. Asked how complete the game was, he said: “Well, not very complete. Defense played excellent. Special teams did fine. But offense, it should have been a lot more points.” He said the offense “didn’t execute down there on the goal line.” Told that this team can win without playing its best, he said: “Well, we’d like to play our best and still win. We also like to win.”
He did praise the line. “A lot of attitude, a lot of trash talking. Good trash talking,” he said of his guards. “They dominated the line of scrimmage.” On Warren, he said: “He’s put himself in all the conversations. He’s playing incredible.” Asked about going for the touchdown at the 1-yard line before halftime with no timeouts left, Rodgers said he had no plan to leave the field. “I wasn’t coming off the field, so we were going to go for that,” he said.
He said the Steelers are 2-1 in the division after splitting with Cleveland. “We’re 6-2 going into the bye, first in the division,” he said. “Right where we wanna be.”
After the bye, Pittsburgh plays at Cincinnati on Sunday night, November 15 (3:20 a.m. Monday, November 16, Cairo time), at Philadelphia on November 22 (11:25 p.m. Cairo time) and hosts Denver on Friday, November 27 (10:00 p.m. Cairo time).
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