Sep 12, 2016 4 min read

Ben Roethlisberger said earlier in the week that he’d rather be the hunter than the hunted.

Monday night’s performance in a 38-16 win at Washington isn’t going to do anything to change that.

The Steelers entered the weekend as one of the favorites in the AFC. Beating the defending NFC East champions in convincing fashion isn’t going to do anything to change that perception. In fact, if anything, it only enhances it.

The Steelers didn’t just win this game, they did so going away, outscoring the Redskins 38-10 over the final three quarters.

And that was with Roethlisberger not looking particularly sharp and with No. 2 receiver Markus Wheaton and starting fullback Roosevelt Nix standing on the sidelines and star running back Le’Veon Bell watching at home.

• Eli Rogers, Sammie Coates and Jesse James all had their moments in this one. But Pittsburgh’s other stars – Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown, DeAngelo Williams and that offensive line – were what made this victory possible. They dominated the Redskins.

• At 33, Williams looks better now than he did when he was piling up 1,500 rushing yards for Carolina in 2008.

That’s saying something.

Williams runs hard and when he sees a hole, he hits it quickly. There’s no dancing.

His 15-yard touchdown run midway through the fourth quarter, when he put his foot in the ground an burst between a pair of Washington defensive backs was as pretty a run as you’ll see.

• The most underrated play in this game?

Maurkice Pouncey’s strip of Ryan Kerrigan after Kerrigan had forced a Roethlisberger fumble late in the first quarter with the Steelers trailing 6-0.

If the Redskins keep possession there, they do no worse than taking a 9-0 lead.

Instead, Pouncey stripped the ball free and Roethlisberger recovered.

That possession ended with Roethlisberger throwing a 29-yard TD pass to Brown on fourth-and-1 that opened the floodgates for the Steelers.

But if Pouncey doesn’t strip Kerrigan, everything changes.

• Ryan Shazier said he’s not concerned about the knee injury that forced him out of this game.

That’s big because that young man is a difference maker as we saw in the third quarter when he forced a fumble that Washington recovered and then came back with a big interception moments later.

• Cam Heyward was ticked off that the Steelers pass rush failed to record a sack in this game. But there was some pressure despite the fact that Kirk Cousins was typically getting rid of the ball quickly.

Could it be better? Sure. But something tells me Heyward was just looking for something to grouch about.

• The defense did miss a fair amount of tackles, but after watching the other games Sunday, that’s a league-wide problem.

• The play call to Brown on fourth-and-1 was a gutsy one. And it was the call coming out of the huddle.

That was Mike Tomlin looking to spark his team and since the Steelers had already nearly lost the ball twice on that drive, he was kind of playing with house money.

Nonetheless, if that pass falls incomplete, you open yourself up to all kinds of criticism. Then again, as Tomlin said, “We play to win.”

I didn’t get the same feeling later in the game from the Redskins, when they decided to kick a field goal down 24-6 late in the third quarter instead of attempting to convert a fourth-and-6.

The Steelers were 9-14 on third downs and 2-2 on fourth downs. They had scored on four straight possessions when Washington went for three instead of trying to keep the drive going.

That’s playing to lose instead of playing to win.

• The Steelers appeared to just wear the Redskins down in this one. Williams had 38 yards on 10 first-half carries, picking up 105 yards on 16 attempts in the second half.

That’s a physical beatdown.