Joey Porter Jr. didn't play a single snap in the Steelers' Week 1 win over Atlanta. He was a healthy scratch, the fallout of a summer-long contract standoff that has since been reported as effectively dead. Pittsburgh has told reporters it is done negotiating during the season, and a trade remains on the table. And yet the Steelers won anyway, 20-13, behind a defense that got by without its best cornerback. That's the paradox sitting at the center of this situation: Pittsburg

On paper, it reads like another grind-it-out Steelers win carried mostly by the defense — and T.J. Watt's 35-yard pick-six of Cam Rush in the fourth quarter certainly did the heavy lifting on the scoreboard. But a closer look at the box score shows an offense that did far more good work than its modest point total suggests, and that got hurt by a handful of self-inflicted wounds rather than any fundamental lack of execution. Pittsburgh's offense finished with 264 total yards

Pittsburgh's 20-13 win over Atlanta will be remembered for T.J. Watt's fourth-quarter pick-six, but the more interesting story might be how the Steelers got there. Both Watt and Cameron Heyward played fewer defensive snaps than they have in years — and instead of blunting their impact, the lighter workload appears to have sharpened it exactly when it mattered most. Watt played just 38 defensive snaps, while Heyward saw only 32 — snap counts neither player had dipped to in any