CLEVELAND -- Who said the Steelers aren't a big-play team? Week after week, year after year, they continue to make enough big plays to fill a highlight film. Just two weeks ago, there was a 53-yard pass down the right sideline that went for a touchdown.
Yesterday, on a beautiful, sun-soaked field that looked more like a fairway at Augusta National, the Steelers kept enhancing their reputation as big-play artists.
It came at just the precise moment, too. Right after a delicate pooch punt was caught and downed at the 4. The score was tied, 20-20. Less than seven minutes remained in the game.
Perfect opportunity for the Steelers to come up with another big play.
Like Domino's, they delivered.
There's only one problem.
The Steelers keep making big plays. But they are allowing the other team to make them.
The latest was Kevin Johnson's 79-yard catch and run that set up the winning field goal in a 23-20 loss to the Cleveland Browns that will haunt the Steelers like a Stephen King novel.
"I guess you can talk about being a good defense or you can actually go out and be a good defense," said defensive coordinator Tim Lewis. "Right now, we've done more talking than we've done playing."
Talking is what the Steelers didn't do in their season-opening loss to the Baltimore Ravens. They were done in by a 53-yard touchdown pass from Tony Banks to Qadry Ismail in which free safety Brent Alexander failed to communicate a coverage change to cornerback Chad Scott.
Against the Browns, verbal interaction had nothing to do with Johnson's big play that resulted in Phil Dawson's winning 19-yard field goal with 2:45 remaining.
It was a case in which Scott Shields, the free safety who was starting because Lee Flowers (groin) was injured, was playing the wrong coverage.
The verbal interaction came later, between player and coach. That wasn't pretty, either.
"The safety has to keep him from getting inside," Lewis said. "You can't get beat inside. You got inside leverage on a receiver, you have to absolutely eliminate him from crossing the football field, force him to go outside."
In other words, when Johnson lined up on the left side and got past the jam from cornerback Dewayne Washington, Shields was supposed to be playing him to the inside and taking away the middle of the field in the zone defense. Instead, Shields was playing him to the outside, leaving the middle of the field open.
When the Steelers failed to generate any pressure on the pocket -- they were even blitzing Joey Porter from the outside -- quarterback Tim Couch had plenty of time to wait for Johnson to get open.
"Couch had a lot of time," Washington said.
"It's tough to cover him when he has that much time," Shields said.
To be sure, Shields did not do that. By the time he caught up with Johnson and ran him out of bounds, saving a touchdown, the Browns had first down at the Steelers' 13. That was immeasurably better than where the Browns had been moments before -- backed against their own end zone.
"The one thing he did do," Coach Bill Cowher said of Shields, "was run him down."
That, though, is like saying at least Kent Graham didn't throw an interception on the last play of the game.
"He just kept going across the field," Shields said of Johnson. "When he gets a step inside, that's fine. But when he's running across the field, it's tougher to catch up to him."
The Browns never threw another pass on that series, preferring to run Errict Rhett five consecutive plays. The Steelers even stopped him for no gain on three plays from the 2. But the damage had been done. Dawson's 19-yard field goal proved to be the winner.
"That was one of the turning points of the game," said defensive end Kevin Henry. "It was a lot of change of momentum. That was one pretty big play."
Not as big, perhaps, as what followed in the final seconds at Cleveland Browns Stadium.
But pretty big.
"You can't have a feast-or-famine defense," Lewis said. "You can't play your rear off one or two snaps here and there and then all of a sudden give up the big one. You can't do that. You have to eliminate the big play."
Particularly when it's the other team that keeps making them.
Play of the Day: Shields' blown coverage another in long line of defensive errors 
