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Sheldon Rankins returned a fumble by Aaron Rodgers 33 yards for a touchdown early in the fourth quarter to highlight a dominant performance by the NFL’s top-ranked defense, and the Houston Texans beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 30-6 on Monday night for the first road playoff win in franchise history.
The Texans’ win means they will play the New England Patriots in the divisional round on Sunday night.
CJ Stroud turned the ball over three times but also threw a first-half touchdown pass to Christian Kirk, who had eight catches for 144 yards. Woody Marks had 112 yards rushing for Houston, who had been 0-6 on the road in the postseason before shutting down Rodgers and the Steelers. However they lost their No 1 receiver, Nico Collins, to a concussion in the second half. It was Collins’s second concussion this season: he suffered the first in a Week 7 loss to the Seattle Seahawks and returned two weeks later.
Marks’ 13-yard touchdown run with 3:43 to go sealed the game, and Calen Bullock added Houston’s second defensive score with a 50-yard pick-six less than a minute later on Rodgers’ final throw of the game – and possibly his 21-year career.
Rodgers passed for just 146 yards as the Steelers were held to 175 yards of offense. The four-time MVP is yet to confirm whether he will return next season but has hinted that he is coming to the end of his career. After Monday’s game the 42-year-old, a four-time NFL MVP, said he would wait to make a decision about his future.
“I’m not going to make any emotional decisions,” he told reporters. “It’s been such a fun year, a lot of adversity, a lot of fun, a great year overall. It’s disappointing to be sitting here with the season over.”
Asked if he had approached Monday’s game as if it could be his farewell, he replied: “Every game could be my final game.”
While Rodgers’ play down the stretch was one of the reasons the Steelers won the AFC North, he struggled in much the same way his predecessors Russell Wilson and Mason Rudolph did as Pittsburgh lost their seventh straight playoff game and dropped a Monday night home game for the first time since 1991.
Rodgers’ Hall of Fame career may have ended on a forced downfield throw that Bullock stepped in front of. Rodgers tried and failed to tackle Bullock on the way to the end zone.
The Steelers’ defense, long the biggest problem during a playoff victory drought that is nearing a decade, forced Stroud into numerous mistakes and kept Pittsburgh in the game until late.
The result, however, was the same as it has been for the Steelers and coach Mike Tomlin since they fell to New England in the 2016 AFC championship game, with a fall at the first hurdle, a long walk to the locker room and a longer-than-hoped-for offseason to figure out what went wrong.
While the NFL’s longest-tenured coach is all but assured of returning for a 20th season if he wants – even if there were chants for his firing in the final moments – Pittsburgh head into yet another offseason in search of a quarterback and answers to a playoff drought whose weight seems to grow by the year.
“When you don’t get it done, words are cheap,” Tomlin said after Monday’s loss. “There’s too much talking in our business.”
One may who believes Tomlin should stay with the Steelers is Rodgers.
“Mike T has had more success than damn near anybody in the league for the last 19, 20 years,” Rodgers said after Monday’s game. “And more than that though, when you have the right guy and the culture is right, you don’t think about making a change.”
