Sep 21, 2009 3 min read

By Mike Ciarochi CHICAGO ? Welcome to life in the NFL, where last week?s hero is this week?s goat.

While every player and every coach was saying exactly the right things about their kicker, Jeff Reed knew he cost the Steelers a victory by missing two field goals in the fourth quarter of Sunday?s 17-14 loss to the Chicago Bears.

?No excuses,? Reed said. ?It was raining and the field was slick, but those were both makeable field goals. I thought the first one (from 38 yards out) was going to hook in. The second one (from 43 yards away) never really got close.?

Reed sent out congratulations to Chicago?s Robbie Gould, whose 44-yard field goal with 15 seconds remaining was the game-winner.

?I feel terrible about both misses,? Reed said. ?But we live to fight another day.?

It was just 10 days ago that Reed got to answer all of the questions Gould was being asked on this night. Reed kicked the game-winning field goal in the overtime win over Tennessee on the opening night of the NFL season.

The Steelers have grown accustomed to Reed converting, to the point they rarely even think about the alternative.

?It was very uncharacteristic for Jeff,? coach Mike Tomlin said. ?It?s not what we?re used to seeing him do. What we saw in our first game was what we?ve come to expect from him.?

?We?re in the National Football League. Not every game is going to go your way,? said wide receiver Santonio Holmes, who dropped a couple of passes that could have helped the Steelers win without a dramatic field goal kick. It was also Holmes, who saw a Ben Roethlisberger pass bounce off his hands in the end zone on the play before Reed?s second miss.

?It was tipped a little bit right before it got to me,? Holmes said. ?The defensive back wasn?t able to knock it down, but he did get a little piece of it. I was watching the point of the ball the whole way in and, right at the last second, it kind of dove down away from me. It would have been nice to come up with it, but it wasn?t meant to be.?

Likewise, Roethlisberger could have helped Reed immensely by not taking a nine-yard sack just before Reed?s first miss. The sack took a chip-shot 29-yard attempt and turned it into a 38-yarder that, as Reed described, almost hooked in, but didn?t.

?It?s one of those things that happen,? defensive end Aaron Smith said about Reed?s misses. ?The way I look at it is that we shouldn?t have put it all on him. We should have stopped them when we had the chances to.?

James Farrior noted that the defense, which limited Chicago to 43 yards rushing, will wake up this morning knowing it has work to do. The defense allowed 10 of Chicago?s 17 points at the end of each half and gave up a nine-play, 72-yard game-tying touchdown drive in the fourth quarter.

?Those are things we?re going to have to shore up,? Farrior said. ?That shows you, though, that we didn?t lose the game because of a missed field goal. Thee were plenty of other things that we could have done better.?

Just like life, nothing is a given in the National Football League. Reed likely will win more games for the Steelers. This just wasn?t one of them.

Sports editor Mike Ciarochi may be reached at mciarochi@heraldstandard.com.