Byron Leftwich led two touchdown drives after Ben Roethlisberger reinjured his throwing shoulder as the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Washington Redskins 23-6 on Monday.
The Steelers’ top-rated defense had seven sacks, allowed only 221 yards and became the first team this season to intercept Jason Campbell.
Leftwich went 7-of-10 for 129 yards and a touchdown as the Steelers (6-2) beat an NFC East team for the first time in three attempts this season.
PHOTO: AP
Roethlisberger was 5-of-17 for 50 yards and an interception before leaving the game at halftime, again hindered by the slightly separated shoulder that has bothered him since the second week of the season.
Leftwich’s 50-yard completion to Nate Washington set up a 1-yard TD run by Willie Parker, who was back from a four-week layoff with a knee injury. He also had a 5-yard scoring pass to Santonio Holmes. Roethlisberger celebrated that touchdown on the sideline by high-fiving his teammates — with his left hand.
The Steelers held Clinton Portis to 51 yards rushing, ending his streak of five straight games with at least 120 yards. Washington (6-3) came close to scoring a touchdown only once — when Campbell threw incomplete to eligible lineman Lorenzo Alexander on fourth-and-goal at the 1 in the fourth quarter.
Campbell, who finished 24-of-43 for 206 yards, thought he had scored on a scramble on the previous play, but a replay challenge showed he was down just before the goal line.
While the Steelers remain atop the AFC North, the Redskins lost ground in the NFC East to the New York Giants. Washington enters its bye week needing to tweak an offense that has put together promising drives all season but has often struggled to find the end zone.
The game was the first hosted by Washington on the eve of a presidential election since 1984, and there was no mistaking the combination of football and election fever. One fan alternately waved a white towel with Barack Obama’s image in the left hand and an all-burgundy Redskins towel in the right hand.
The Redskins also used the special occasion to wear burgundy jerseys and pants together for the first time in franchise history.
A more noticeable color, however, was the yellow from the sea of Terrible Towels waved by Steelers fans who managed to secure tickets by the boatload for the lower bowl of the stadium. In a bizarre sight, visiting Pittsburgh players were waving to the fans all around them to make noise during defensive stands.
Neither team managed 100 yards in a first half that included seven sacks and a combined 13-of-32 performance by Roethlisberger and Campbell.
The Redskins didn’t convert on third down until Campbell hit tight end Chris Cooley for a 12-yard gain late in the third quarter.
Campbell’s streak without an interception reached 271 attempts before cornerback Deshea Townsend grabbed a pass tipped by Portis late in the third quarter.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with