Game 38: Steelers 17, Bills 0

Lucky me, I have stumbled my way into my fourth Buffalo Bills game of this preseason. Injuries loom as the big story line for this game: T.O.E. for Buffalo, Big Ben for Pittsburgh. Which team will perservere?

Steelers take the opening kickoff to the 29. Roethlisberger is playing, expectedly a lot, tonight, though Fast Willie Parker and Santonio Holmes are out. Completion to Mewelde Moore at the 44 gets Pittsburgh their first 1st down. Big Ben fires to Hines Ward for 23 more, barely getting the ball by Leodis McKelvin. Rashard Mendenhall gets a big crease from Trai Essex and spurts for 12 down to the 22, then craps all over his own parade with a fumble the next play. Kyle Williams knocked it out for Buffalo and I believe Keith Ellison recovered. Steelers still not getting the quality of play from Mendenhall they drafted him for.

Bills from their 26: we have a Roscoe Parrish sighting! Trent Edwards hits him for 4, and tries him again on 3rd-and-4, but DeShea Townsend breaks that up. Quick 3-and-out for the Bills there.

Steelers tee it up again at their 22. Buffalo stuffs Mendenhall twice more and have to settle for a diving Heath Miller catch for about 7. Off with the punt.

Cutback run by Marshawn Lynch for 17 gets the Bills rolling out to their 30. Fine block by the TE there, Derek Schoumann, who catches the next pass for 6 over the middle. But Edwards is hit as he goes deep sideline for Parrish on 3rd down and Buffalo's punting again. His elbow hit his own blocker in the head as he tried to follow through.

17-yard return by Stefan Logan and a penalty set Pittsburgh up nicely with the punt. But so much for momentum, as they blow the snap on first down. Ben falls on it, though. Mendenhall gets 12 on a draw from the 30. Nice hit there by RT Willie Colon to open up the hole. Ben gets forever to throw on 3rd-and-2 and hits Moore on the cross out to midfield. Mike Wallace makes a couple miss on an end around left for 10, and add 15 more because he was speared at the end. No, Limas Sweed held; play it over. Wow, bad hands, penalties, not that fast, what's not to like about Sweed? Until he makes a leaping catch at the 34 on third down to move the chains, that is. Quarter runs out with the Steelers facing 3rd-and-10 from there.

End of first quarter: no score.

Continuing to get all the time he needs to throw, Ben hits Ward at the 18 for a first down, beating Reggie Corner the corner. The Bills finally get to Ben a couple of plays later, with former holdout Aaron Maybin scoring a coverage sack to force a FG. Piotr (CHELSEA SUCKS!) Czech gives the Steelers the lead from 35. Bills are playing pretty vanilla D and are covering the Steeler receivers well, but need to get better pressure on Ben if they're going to prevent continued long drives.

Pittsburgh 3, Buffalo 0.

Bills launch from their 18. Edwards gets plenty of time to throw and looks for Josh Reed crossing, but apparently never sees James Farrior, who jumps the route like it was meant for him and returns it 22 yards for a TD. Terrible freaking throw by Edwards. It was so low it never would have gotten to Reed.

Buffalo's move to acquire T.O.E. is going to prove useless as poorly as Edwards is playing this preseason. He ranks as one of the NFL's big disappointments thus far.

Pittsburgh 10, Buffalo 0.

Edwards saw Farrior on the INT but Farrior fooled him into thinking he was going to pursue the receiver running the shallow cross counter to Reed's route. Bills re-form the herd at their 9, and James Harrison stops Dominic Rhodes for -1 at RDE, then, dropping back into coverage, ENGULFS him and drills him to the ground after a 3-yard gain on a short pass. Edwards throws wild for Reed at the sideline. Edwards is getting plenty of time to throw. The Steelers are covering very well, but there's still no good word to describe Edwards at QB other than Awful.

I really like Stefan Logan. He catches the kick and immediately starts moving upfield. 12 for him here on this return, when most young returners would have started running sideline to sideline and backwards and come off the field frustrated when they couldn't get more than 2 yards with all that space in front of them.

Steelers at their 42. Underthrown deep ball for Mike Wallace. McKelvin's covering very well tonight after looking kind of blase the rest of preseason. Interesting sequence on 3rd-and-8. Ben completes to Sweed for 6, then orders the punt team to stay on the sideline on 4th-and-2. He gets Kyle Williams to flinch a couple of times on hard counts, but can't ultimately draw the offsides and calls timeout. Heck of a way to disguise the hard-count ploy. That's a trick the Steelers might have been better off saving for the regular season, though.

A Steeler offsides and a Parrish end-around get Buffalo a rare first down at their 24. Dumpoff to Rhodes works for about 20. Dumpoffs must be the top end of Edwards' range, as on the next play, he pitifully one-hops one to Lee Evans WIDE open 15 yards downfield. Edwards then misses a smoke route to Reed by a country mile. And he's sacked by Farrior on third down. Farrior's big night continues after he fights off the blitz pickup by Rhodes.

Look alive on that Buffalo bench, Ryan Fitzpatrick. You'll be starting before you know it.

Pittsburgh now at their 17. Dumpoff to Mendenhall out to the 30 for a 1st. Ben escapes a sack and hits Sweed at midfield. Tough catch by Sweed; throw was well behind him. Sweed then bobbles an 18-yarder he should have had in bounds for a catch. Bills blitz doesn't get there on 3rd-and-8, and Ben's good to Ward over the middle at the 34. Ben gets another epoch to throw before scrambling around and lobbing to Miller for 20 more. Ball at the Buffalo 15. Mendenhall bumps down to the 13 at the 2:00 warning. 6 to Ward, then Mendenhall bops outside and drives to the 4 to make it 1st-and-goal. Clock still running inside 1:00. Ward can't come up with the diving catch of a pretty inaccurate effort by Ben on first down. No matter, with the Bills appearing to be playing pass, Essex and Colon clean house on the right side and Mendenhall has a huge gap for a 4-yard TD run. Black and gold domination in the first half in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh 17, Buffalo 0.

Thanks to NFL Network "spoilers", I know the final score of this game, and no offense to the Steelers, (the Bills can be as offended as they want; their play this first half has been offensive), but we're now in "screw this game" mode the rest of the way.

Buffalo doesn't really even try to move the ball in the last 0:20 of the half, and Edwards STILL looks like a spaz out there.

Halftime score: Pittsburgh 17, Buffalo 0.

Pittsburgh out-passed Buffalo in the first half 164 to 22.

Rhodes hits the seam and gets the second-half opening kickoff out to the 32. Xavier Omon now at tailback. Another 3-and-out for Edwards, who's hit by Farrior as he throws on third down.

Steelers at their 38. Watching the NFL Network crawl, I see the league has enough attention to detail to notice Chad JOHNSON wore an orange chinstrap Thursday night, but at the same time, not enough attention to detail to make sure Jerry Jones didn't hang his freaking giant TV in the Dallas Palace too low to keep it from getting hit by punts. Idiots.

We also learn the Bengals have just FINALLY signed first-round pick Andre Smith. Who wants to bet he's up to 4 bills and has bigger boobs than Sherri Shepherd right now?

And BWA-HA-HA, the Whiners STILL don't have first-round pick Michael Crabtree signed.

Steelers roll out the second string, and then some, with Charlie Batch and Justin Vincent in the backfield. Batch hits Brandon Williams breaking to the sideline for a 1st down at the 48, then escapes the rush and hits TE Dezmond Sherrod for 20. Dezmond? Maybin beats the Steeler second-string to get to Batch, but Batch still hits SHAUN MCDONALD at the 20 for another first down. After the Bills stuff a Vincent sweep on 2nd down, Dallas Baker fails to make a diving end zone catch and sends in the FG team. Czech gags badly from 40, however.

Bills at their 30. Ryan Fitzpatrick finally in for Buffalo, and he hits Justin Jenkins with easily Buffalo's best pass of the night for 17. Good sideline pass to Parrish for about 9. The Steelers stuff Omon on third-and-1, though, making Buffalo 0-for-6 on third down tonight. Steve Spagnuolo must think Dick Jauron is a wild man for trying to go for it on 4th down. The Bills false start anyway (Shawn Nelson), and opt for the boot.

You'll be pleased to know I balanced my checkbook for July during that last possession. Still a month behind, though.

McDonald gets the Steelers moving with another first down catch, and you have to think he has made this team. Punishing Isaac Redman at RB now for Pittsburgh. First down pass to Brandon Williams across the 35 as Steeler QBs continue to get tons of time. Redman bulldozes 19 yards with a screen pass after a Jeremy Parquet holding penalty on first down, and converts with a plunge to end the third quarter with the Steelers near midfield.

End of third quarter: Steelers 17, Bills 0.

Hopefully the Steelers will just grind out the rest of the fourth quarter from here. Yes, I know there's 15:00 left. Bah, 3rd-and-long from midfield, Brandon Williams barely fails to come up with a diving catch of a Batch bomb inside the 10. Looked like a pretty sweet pass to me; needed to be caught.

Fitz will try to matriculate Buffalo from their 20. He overthrows Parrish, though. At least he's got the arm to overthrow somebody, TRENT EDWARDS. Arnold Harrison bowls over the center for a sack, and Keyaron Fox bowls over Omon, the intended receiver for the screen pass, blowing up the third down play.

ANOTHER exciting return for Stefan Logan, 20-plus yards across midfield. Sorry for the hype, but I don't know what's going to keep this kid from being the NFL's -best- punt returner very quickly. He's smart, fast, uses his blockers well... you don't want to outkick your coverage like Buffalo just did here, that's for sure.

And did I mention that he ALWAYS heads straight upfield after the catch?

Steelers at the Bills 49. Mike Reilly reports at QB for the home team. Play-action to Williams for 12. After a holding penalty, Reilly comes up short on a third-down scramble, and Redman comes up even shorter on 4th-and-1, to re-gift Buffalo the ball.

Fitzpatrick continuing to fire bullets, compared to Edwards, at least. He drills it to Jenkins across midfield, and hits Parrish again near the Steeler 30. With Parrish still on the field this late in a preseason game, the Bills have to be trying to showcase him for other teams, don't they? Yet? He hasn't been all that special tonight. 6:00 to play. Fitz barely avoids a middle blitz and scrambles inside the 20. Go Fitz! From there, though, Joe Burnett knocks down a pass and the Steelers don't let anything else inside the 15. Bills settle for a Lindell FG on 4th-and-5 - WHAT'S THE POINT? - and BURNETT BLOCKS THE KICK.

Dick Jauron deserved that for that decision. You're really trying to kick a FG to save face during a preseason game?

The only thing that could possibly top that is a boll weevil mascot punching an aardvark mascot in the groin. And, there you go.

2:48 left, let's get to the showers and get out of here. My checkbook also balanced for August, btw. Reilly's third down pass to David Johnson inside the 2:00 warning is the last throe for this dog.

Final score: Pittsburgh 17, Buffalo 0.

MVP: James Farrior, who had at least one sack and made a nifty play to fool Trent Edwards into throwing a pick six to him, as Pittsburgh took it to Buffalo right away and effectively ended this game in the first quarter.

What did we learn: Roethlisberger looks fine coming off the injury. I'm not as sold on the running game with Mendenhall as I'd like to be, though. Right side of the Steeler line is really showing signs of coming together and could settle that issue for them. Steelers continue to dominate on D and Logan continues to be the revelation of the preseason on punt returns. Buffalo's got serious problems. I know the o-line has been totally rebuilt, but Edwards still looks like crap. He was making poor passes when he had time. If he continues to be absolute crap, T.O.E.'s certain to start sniping, and the Bills are going to crumple like like tinfoil while proving as impossible to smooth back out.

Up next: I'll go for Whiners-Cowboys, coming up next from the Palace of Dallas.