Dunlap: Antonio Brown Trick Play A Thing Of Beauty
There's not much distance between making a really stupid playcall and assembling a brilliant one.
Most times it comes down to the result --- plain and simple.
It if fails miserably? Dolt.
If it hits for the best case scenario? Pure genius.
As the Steelers rallied back for a 30-23 victory against the Houston Texans on Monday Night Football, seems to me the most commanding play was one that could have backfired with an intensely negative result.
But it didn't.
So it was genius.
It struck true, hit to perfection and came during an incredible span of time in which the Steelers --- seemingly left for dead by the Texans --- threw punch-after-punch late in the first half to climb back into a game that looked to be headed for a blowout.
Instead, Antonio Brown threw a pass, Houston scratched their head, Todd Haley escaped criticism (at least for a few moments) and the Heinz Field crowd went positively ballistic.
On the first-and-goal play that started at the 3 with 1:10 on the clock and the Steelers down 13-10, Roethlisberger was under center to take the snap.
Brown came into the backfield of the formation from the left side just as the ball was snapped and Roethlisberger quickly pitched it to him at about the 11.
From there, Brown stopped dead, reversed field and headed back to the left. As Brown transferred the ball into his left hand with J.J. Watt just a step behind him in pursuit, the receiver-turned-passer picked up Lance Moore who was dragging across the middle of the end zone from the right to the left.
Brown threw a perfect pass to a diving Moore, who pulled it in as he bounced across that Heinz Field grass to propel the Steelers into a 16-13 lead and then 17-13 with the subsequent extra point.
It took guts.
It was improbable.
It was risky and precarious.
But it worked. So it fell to the good side of that pendulum where the playcall could have been the greatest one in the world or the most boneheaded.
"Sometimes you got to just do something a little bit different," said Moore, the recipient of the touchdown.
Funny thing is, Moore wasn't even the first option on the play. Instead, Markus Wheaton was the initial intended target as Brown began to roll left on the play. But out of the corner of his vision, Moore spilt through the middle of the endzone and Brown picked him up.
"Lance was actually the second read," Brown said. "But I knew Lance was working to get [open]."
It was a flash of cleverness that helped the Steelers score 21 points in five offensive plays in the last 73 seconds of the initial half.
The team also turned a 13-0 deficit into a 24-13 advantage in a period of only 2:54 at the tail end of the first half. "Boy that was a nice explosion for us," Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said. "It's good to be on the good side of it."
Amazing stuff, really.
The pass wasn't all that Brown did on the night, as he pulled in nine passes for 90 yards and had a wonderful effort that, at first, looked like a touchdown ruled just out of bounds after review.
That said, for all he did with his legs, for all Brown did on this night pulling in passes from Roethlisberger, it was that singular pass he threw that swung the tide in this football game.
Colin Dunlap is a featured columnist at CBSPittsburgh.com. He can also be heard weeknights from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Sports Radio 93-7 "The Fan." You can e-mail him at colin.dunlap@cbsradio.com. Check out his bio here.
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