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The Pittsburgh Steelers have never blown a 20-point lead in the history of their franchise.
Not once. Not in 77 years.
Is anyone else as blown away by that as I was when that stat flashed across my TV screen last night?
Pittsburgh's insanely impressive streak was almost broken last night, as the Bengals had an opportunity to score a go-ahead touchdown in the final minute to complete a comeback from 27-7 down, but fell just short.
The Steelers escaped with a 27-21 win, and are now tied with the Ravens for first place in the AFC North with a 6-2 record.
You almost got the upset you were hoping for, Charm City. Almost.
The Ravens will hope to maintain their place atop the division this week when they travel down to Atlanta for a Thursday night matchup with the Falcons.
That game will mark the second contest in five days for both teams, which is frustrating to a number of guys in the Ravens' locker room. After Sunday's win over the Dolphins, linebacker Ray Lewis said that he was against the idea of Thursday night games because of the physical toll that it takes on the players.
Wide receiver Anquan Boldin agreed yesterday. Boldin seemed temped to bash the Thursday night format, but was able to keep himself in check.
"I think it's...one of the...I'm not in favor of it," Boldin said, drawing laughs from the assembled media. "The only way you should play a Thursday night game is if you've just come off a bye week. Other than that, I'm not in favor of it. Increasing the risk of injuries, things like that. Especially for us, you look at us playing a physical game on Sunday and then turn around and travel to Atlanta, that's a tough situation. But I think we're just the team for it."
The Thursday contest will force both teams to make major changes to their weekly schedules.
In a standard week when the Ravens are preparing for a Sunday game, they use Monday as a day to watch tape of the previous day's game and have a light walk-through, and then they get the evening off. The players also get Tuesday completely off, allowing them to rest up physically before getting into full practices on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
This week, the Ravens only have two days to practice - yesterday and today - which are usually the lightest days of the week.
As a result, the coaching staff has made adjustments to the schedule to give the players a chance to rest their bumps and bruises coming out of the Dolphins game while also getting as much preparation for Atlanta done as possible.
"It won't be the usual physical aspect of it," head coach John Harbaugh said. "The tempo will be a little bit different. We'll try to get our reps in. It's going to be more mental. It's going to be a focus on assignment, alignment, technique and just learning the game plan and go play."
From a player's perspective, Boldin says the most important things during a short week are to get as much work in as possible when you're not on the practice field, and to take good care of your body.
"For us, we just have to be smart," Boldin said. "We have to study a lot more film, because we do have a lot less days to prepare for a team than normal. We come in, watch film, try to rest as much as possible, although that is tough with the short week.
"But I think the coaches are dong a great job taking care of that, but this week is mostly mental as far as preparing for the game."
