Pittsburgh Steelers remember they have Jaylen Samuels, pick up first win of season

I had been baffled by the near-total absence of Jaylen Samuels from the Steelers’ game plans this season. Seems like a bad idea to me when you have a JaySam not to use said JaySam. But that completely changed on Monday night. Only took four games!

Samuels didn’t touch the dang ball one damned time in the Steelers’ loss to San Francisco in Week 3. Last night he had 21 touches, and the team ran a lot of plays out of a wildcat look like the one above.

This allowed JaySam to be credited with three passes, though really they were just short forward lobs in the backfield to James Conner. Hey, it all counts! Officially he finished 3-3 passing for 31 yards, had 10 carries for 26 and a score, and caught eight passes for 57 yards.

The revised approach naturally was a big success for the Steelers, who hadn’t won a game while wasting their time ignoring JaySam. Lesson learned, one would hope.