Steelers beat Panthers 19-10; suffer major injury

CHARLOTTE — This article originally appeared on SteelersNOW.com.

If there’s one thing you don’t want to happen in a preseason game, it’s to have a key player suffer a major injury. If there’s another thing you don’t want to happen, it’s a bunch of sloppy and preventable mistakes that make your own team’s play nearly impossible to evaluate.

For the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Carolina Panthers on Thursday night, they went 0 for 2. But they did win, coming back for a 19-10 victory over the Panthers to close the preseason with a 2-1 record.

First-round draft pick Derrick Harmon left the game in the first quarter when he was carted off the playing surface at Bank of America Stadium after a knee injury. The big defensive tackle was injured rushing the quarterback on a play that became a James Pierre interception. He was quickly ruled out, but later returned to the sidelines.

The rest of the early portion of the game was marred by penalties and other errors by the Steelers. This time, it didn’t cost them the game thanks to a few big plays of their own, though the victory came in a game where the Steelers played most of their starters, and the Panthers — who finished 5-12 last season — rested most of theirs.

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