The Steelers have placed 24-year old WR Limas Sweed on the reserve/non-football injury list due to illness which will end his season.  Sweed played in 9 games for the Steelers this season and he caught 1 pass for 5 yards and he made 1 tackle.  In his first two years in the NFL, Sweed has played in 20 games in which he has caught 7 passes for 69 yards (9.9 avg) and he has also made 3 tackles.  Sweed flat out sucks and the Steelers will be better without him.  They should just cut him after the year is over as WRs that can’t catch a football are worthless.

The Steelers have lost long snapper Greg Warren for the rest of the year.  He played in all 14 games (0 starts) for the Steelers this season.  He has now played in 69 games (0 starts) in his five years with the Steelers.  The Steelers have signed Jared Retkofsky to replace Warren as the long snapper and he has played for them before.  He should do a decent job for them the rest of the way.

The Steelers have signed 38-year old WR Joey Galloway.  Galloway played in 3 games earlier this season for the Patriots and he caught 7 passes for 67 yards (9.6 avg).  He has now played in 188 games in his NFL career and he has caught 689 passes for 10,777 yards (15.6 avg) with 77 TD grabs.  Galloway also has carried the ball 63 times for 496 yards (7.9 avg) with 1 TD run in his career.  The Steelers will likely use Galloway as the #4 WR the rest of the season.  I really like this signing for the Steelers because if Galloway has anything left at all he will help them the last couple of weeks and in the playoffs if they are lucky enough to make them.

The Steelers pulled out a improbable win because of Ben Roethlisberger who hit rookie WR Mike Wallace with a 19 yard TD pass on the last play of the game!  It was a very interesting game as Roethlisberger opened the game on the first offensive play with a 60 yard bomb to rookie WR Mike Wallace for a TD and his only other catch of the day was on the final play of the game.  Ben Roethlisberger completed 29 of 46 passes for 503 yards with 3 TD passes and 0 INTs.  He also carried the ball 1 time for 7 yards.  Rashard Mendenhall pitched in with 38 yards rushing on 11 carries (3.5 ypc) with a TD run and he also caught 6 passes for 73 yards (12.2 avg.).  Hines Ward (7 rec, 126 yards) and Heath Miller (7 rec, 118 yards) led the way for the Steelers through the air.  Santonio Holmes (3 rec, 77 yards) and Mewelde Moore (3 rec, 25 yards, TD) also pitched in for the Steelers in the passing game yesterday.  The Steelers finished up with 537 total yards on offense (65 rushing, 472 passing) in this game.

The defense was awful for the Steelers yesterday.  CB William Gay led the Steelers with 6 tackles but he probably missed just as many and he was get burnt quite often in the passing game.  Casey Hampton pitched in with 5 tackles, 1 tackle for a loss, 1/2 a sack and 1 QB hit.  The Packers finished up with 436 total yards on offense despite only having the ball for 24:38 as the Steelers’ D sucked yesterday.  The Steelers are now 7-7 and they kept their playoffs hopes alive with this amazing victory.

This is not the kind of team the Steelers want to play right now as the Packers have won five games in a row while the Steelers have lost five games in a row including games to the Browns, Chiefs and Raiders.  The Steelers will have to protect Ben Roethlisberger to have any chance of winning this game.  That is because the Packers have 29 sacks this season and they also have a excellent secondary who will make Big Ben pay if he tries to force the ball to Hines Ward, Santonio Holmes or Mike Wallace.  The Packers already have 23 interceptions this season.  The Steelers will have to throw the ball because yards will likely be hard to come by on the ground as the Packers are allowing only 85.0 yards rushing and 3.6 yards per carry this year.

On defense the Steelers must get to Aaron Rodgers or he will pick them apart.  He is 9-0 this season in games in which he has been sacked less than six times in a game.  Rodgers does a great job of spreading the ball around so the Steelers will likely pay if they double either Greg Jennings or Donald Driver.  Rodgers also likes throwing to his TEs (Donald Lee and Jermichael Finley) a lot which will test the coverage of the safeties.  The Steelers can also expect Ryan Grant to be coming at them on the ground due to the easy time the Browns had running the ball against them last week.  It’s do or die time for the Steelers tomorrow and it doesn’t look too good for them.

PREDICTION:  PACKERS 27, STEELERS 17