Steelers vs. Buccaneers Final Score: Steelers break through in prime time Youth Sean Davis Jersey , hold on to win 30-27 The Pittsburgh Steelers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers entered Week 3 under very different circumstances. All that aside, this matchup had the look of a shootout in its purest form. Ryan Fitzpatrick had been the NFC’s best quarterback through the early portion of the season, and Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers’ offense were no slouch either.When the game got underway, it was Pittsburgh receiving the opening kickoff, and a three-and-out was what ensued after a special team penalty pushed them back on the opening kickoff. After another mediocre Jordan Berry punt, the Steelers’ defense stood tall and forced a three-and-out of their own on the Buccaneers’ first possession of the game.On the second Pittsburgh possession it was Tampa Bay who drew first blood when Justin Evans stepped in front of a Roethlisberger pass intended for JuJu Smith-Schuster and gave the Buccaneers tremendous field position after the interception. With the ball on the Pittsburgh 46-yard line, it took just four plays for Fitzpatrick to find Cameron Brate for a 4-yard touchdown to give Tampa Bay an early 7-0 lead.With a chance to answer, on third-and-10 Roethlisberger found a wide open Vance McDonald who stiff-armed Chris Conte into next week on his way to a 75-yard touchdown. However, Chris Boswell’s kicking woes continued with a missed point-after, his second in the past two weeks, and the score was 7-6 midway through the first quarter.After Tampa Bay threatened to add to their lead, an Anthony Chickillo sack on third down pushed them out of field goal range and forced a punt. The Steelers turned the possession into a Boswell field goal, his first of the season, giving Pittsburgh a 9-7 lead.The Buccaneers’ next possession ended quickly when Fitzpatrick completed a pass to C.J. Godwin, but Artie Burns jarred the ball loose and it was recovered by Mike Hilton for the first Pittsburgh turnover of the game. Two plays later, Ben Roethlisberger hit Antonio Brown on a quick slant, and after making a defender miss Brown was off to the races for the score. Boswell tacked on the extra point to give the Steelers a 16-7 lead.For the second straight possession Cheap James Conner Jersey , Ryan Fitzpatrick had the Buccaneers in scoring position, but a Jon Bostic tipped pass turned into a Mike Hilton interception, denying Tampa Bay of points again.Pittsburgh failed to turn the turnover into points, but on the next Tampa Bay drive Fitzpatrick was picked off again, this time by rookie safety Terrell Edmunds.For the second straight possession, the Steelers failed to convert the turnover into points, giving the ball back to the Bucs.What happened next was Fitzpatrick’s third straight interception, this time to Bud Dupree and Dupree walked into the endzone for the Steelers’ touchdown. The Boswell point-after made the score 23-7 with 2:50 left to go in the first half.The Buccaneers weren’t going to just roll over and die, and a big pass play from Fitzpatrick to Mike Evans moved the Tampa Bay offense inside the 10-yard line. However, the Steelers’ defense held strong and forced a 21-yard field goal attempt to make the score 23-10 with 1:15 left in the half.Boswell made the extra point, giving the Steelers a 30-10 lead heading into halftime. The Buccaneers started the second half with the football, and despite driving down into the red-zone, and facing a first-and-goal from the 6-yard line, they came away with only three points. The field goal made the score 30-13 with just over 7-minutes remaining in the third quarter.After a lengthy drive of their own ended in another Chris Boswell missed field goal, Fitzpatrick and the Bucs’ offense continued to pass their way back into the game. The next Tampa Bay drive took up a lot of time, but ended in a C.J. Godwin touchdown reception to make the score 30-20 with 11:06 left in the fourth quarter.The Steelers’ failed to put up any points since the second quarter, and Tampa Bay came storming back into the game when Ryan Fitzpatrick hit Mike Evans with just over 5-minutes left in the game to narrow the lead to 3-points, 30-27.James Conner came alive on the ensuing Pittsburgh drive http://www.steelersauthorizedshops.com/authentic-jordan-berry-jersey , and on 3rd and 9 from the 36-yard line, Ben Roethlisberger threw incomplete to Antonio Brown and the Steelers were forced to punt the ball away with 3:22 left in the game, putting the pressure on a defense which has provided little resistance in the second half.Pittsburgh forced a punt with 2:34 left in the fourth quarter, and on 2nd down Ben Roethlisberger hit JuJu Smith-Shuster for a huge first down. On the next play from scrimmage James Conner rumbled for a first down, icing the game away. The win gives the Steelers their first win of the season, and moves their record to 1-1-1 heading into a Week 4 game vs. the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday Night Football at Heinz Field. Be sure to stay locked to BTSC for all the best Steelers coverage leading up to the huge AFC North grudge match next Sunday.NFL fans can’t be critical of both the preseason and the idea of an 18-game regular season When I was a little kid in the ‘80s, NFL preseason games were like professional wrestling matches — I basically knew they were both fake, but I still wanted to suspend my disbelief. I’d watch Steelers’ exhibition games (excuse me, Mr. Commissioner, preseason games) with the same fervor I reserved for the regular season. It didn’t matter that backups, has-beens and never-weres were doing most of the heavy lifting, I was all-in for August football.In fact, my favorite preseason game of all time was the fourth and final one of the 1988 exhibition campaign, when Chuck Noll played every single one of his A-list superstars —we’re talking Bubby Brister, David Little and the whole lot of them for the entirety of regulation and overtime — in a thrilling victory over the Saints at the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. The win pushed the Steelers’ preseason record to 3-1 which, as it turned out, would represent 60 percent of their actual win-total during the regular season (that probably should have been a clue to the 16-year-old me that NFL preseason action was the exact opposite of NBA action—not fantastic). By the ‘90s Alejandro Villanueva Jersey , with the help of age and wisdom — not to mention, the advent of NFL free agency, a salary cap and restrictions on stashing players on IR — I began to realize just how meaningless NFL preseason action really was. It didn’t help that the superstars played less and less, and that the (say it with me) all-important fourth preseason game slowly morphed into the all-important first half of the third preseason game. Thanks to the very vocal social media, along with the sleepless 24/7 news-cycle, recent summers have been filled with an endless number of voices “exposing” preseason football as a farce. And those exposed seats at stadiums all across the NFL, including those yellow ones atHeinz Field, don’t help either. People complain about the expense of attending preseason football games (totally true), and what can be done about it. There’s only one thing that can be done about it:Decrease the preseason by one or two games. After all, with most key starters seeing just limited action, how valuable is preseason football? If you eliminate those two games, you can make up for it by adding an extra week to the training camp schedule, thus allowing the veterans and youngsters to hone their tackling techniques and their route-running skills. And, to that, I say, “yeah — right.” Sure, you can eliminate two preseason games, but it will come at the price of two more regular-season games. Say what? You hate that too? You say the 16-game schedule is perfect as is because you can divide it up into four little quarters of the season? I agree totally but neither of us is an NFL owner Authentic Vince Williams Jersey , and NFL owners look at things a little differently than we do. While we see preseason football as the farce that it totally is, NFL owners see preseason football as a way to line their coffers with that all-important revenue. There might be a huge difference between Tevin Jones and Antonio Brown, but August revenue spends just the same as January revenue. Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones made news recently by suggesting the league adopt an 18-game regular season as a means to shorten the preseason farce — oh, and to cut down on things like concussions to its players — this despite them being exposed to two more games worth of hitting and tackling per year. That second part is totally ludicrous, right? Of course, it is. But it’s equally ludicrous to think the NFL will ever give up two games’ worth of revenue. The league has been using a 20-game model since at least the 1960’s, when there were six preseason games, followed by 14 regular season games. Then, in 1978, the current 16-game regular season was implemented, along with a four-game preseason.That 20-game model ain’t going anywhere, ever. We can cry — we can threaten to boycott stuff — we can cite head injuries until we’re blue in the face but nothing is going to get the owners to move away from a 20-game revenue model. Therefore, you can either accept the current format of four preseason games — games that aren’t worth much to you beyond an unofficial tax for the right to own season tickets — or you’ll have to eventually accept an 18-game regular season. Either way, the NFL’s 20-game revenue model (and “revenue” is the most important word here) is here to stay.