Old Partners — The Gridiron Court

Six And Counting. — the words of House Steelers

Aaron Rodgers has said this is the last season he intends to play, and he is spending it in the least comfortable place he could have chosen.

Fifteen years ago, on the largest field the sport has, he and his steward Mike McCarthy took a title off House Steelers. This is not a grudge somebody invented for the occasion. These are the two specific men who beat this specific house on the only night of the year that counts, in front of everybody.

On Sunday afternoon the pair of them came out of the tunnel wearing Pittsburgh’s colours — McCarthy running this house for the first time, Rodgers playing for it.

Pittsburgh won. It was narrow and it was grim and the Watch had to rescue the attack, which in this hall has always been a perfectly respectable way to win.

Atlanta came in with a hole where its lord should have been. He had been ruled out in the week with a hurt side, and the man asked to stand in for him, Cooper Rush, was told on the Friday.

Rush did what a substitute does. He kept it simple, found Bijan Robinson on a short throw that Robinson turned into a score himself, and handed Atlanta a lead they carried into the second quarter.

Pittsburgh took it back the slow way. Rodgers threw it a great many times without ever making the afternoon look easy, and found Pat Freiermuth from close range for the only score his attack would manage all day. Everything else Pittsburgh had by the interval came from the Reckoner, twice, cold and businesslike. Enough to be ahead. Not nearly enough to feel safe.

Then Atlanta needed more from Rush than simple, and it came apart.

Early in the fourth quarter, with Pittsburgh barely ahead and the whole afternoon still there to be won, Rush threw one into the middle of the field.

T.J. Watt was standing in it.

There is no man in this realm you would less like to throw at. He took it out of the air in Atlanta’s own half and carried it back the other way for a score himself, and the noise in that building went up the way it used to, and a game Atlanta could still have won became a game they had to chase.

They chased it and found nothing. On one march Rush was dragged down before he could throw at all, and that was the afternoon.

Afterwards McCarthy praised his Watch and was hard on his own attack, and on himself for it — rare in a man who has just won.

So the pair of them have had their first day in this hall, and it went to them. The house that spent fifteen years resenting them now needs them to be good, and if Rodgers meant what he said, they have one season to manage it.

Ships of the week: McCarthy and Rodgers, together again, in the colours of the house they ruined. Villain of the week: the throw into the middle of the field, which Atlanta will be shown again all week. Next week: Atlanta hopes its lord’s side has healed. Pittsburgh’s attack has a week of questions coming.

The Record