What was most satisfying for them was the performance of their offense, from their line to their backs and receivers. Ben Roethlisberger completed 13 of 14 passes and his arm was hit on his one incompletion. Willie Parker ran as if he never had a broken leg. Even Hines Ward, at 32, got off to a fast start with two touchdown catches.

"We need to just continue it, play good football," said Roethlisberger, whose 147 passer rating was the 26th of his career at 100 or more. "We played good football on offense. If we keep it up we'll be pretty good."

The Steelers entered the season with questions in their offensive line, where they have two new starters and weren't very good at protecting Roethlisberger the past two seasons (93 sacks). Roethlisberger was sacked twice by Mario Williams, but otherwise the line played a strong game. The Steelers had 183 yards rushing and Roethlisberger had plenty of time to throw, for the most part.

"I can t say enough about how good they did," Roethlisberger said. "They did such great job of run-blocking and pass-blocking."

That balance is what the Steelers hoped to achieve on offense and it appears they have it with Parker and rookie Rashard Mendenhall running the ball and Hines Ward, Santonio Holmes, Nate Washington, Heath Miller and Matt Spaeth catching it.

"It's fun to sit back there and find Heath and Hines and 'Tone and Nate and Spaeth and just throw the ball," Roethlisberger said.

"I think we showed a lot but we still have a lot of weapons we didn't utilize. We have some guys who can make big plays and we kind of kept them under wraps."