Pittsburgh own Paris: Steelers beat Saints 16-10 in the first NFL game in France

By the end, the towels told the story. The Stade de France was supposed to be a home game for New Orleans, in the technical sense the league uses when it exports a fixture, but the yellow Terrible Towels spinning above the seats belonged to Pittsburgh, and so, in the end, did the game. The Steelers beat the Saints 16-10 on Sunday in the first NFL regular season game ever played in France, and they won it the slow way, by strangling it.

The strangling had a shape. Pittsburgh led through the second quarter on the game's one moment of genuine history, a 4 yard touchdown pass from Aaron Rodgers to Darnell Washington. It was Rodgers's 540th regular season touchdown pass, breaking his tie with Peyton Manning and moving him into third place on the all time list, and it was also, neatly, the first touchdown ever scored in an NFL regular season game on French soil. Rodgers finished 19 of 30 for 212 yards, but the offence that actually moved was on the ground. Jaylen Warren carried 18 times for 101 yards and caught three passes for 36 more, while New Orleans, as a whole team, rushed for 18 yards. Eighteen. The gap, 148 to 18 across the night, is the game in one line.

New Orleans had its chance and everyone in the stadium knew it when it came. Early in the second half, Tyler Shough, who threw for 278 yards and a 1 yard touchdown to Devaughn Vele, drove the Saints to the Pittsburgh 10, close enough to take the lead and change the whole mood of the afternoon. Payton Wilson intercepted him there. Pittsburgh did not score another touchdown, Chris Boswell's three field goals did the rest of the work, and the Saints did not score at all after half time. When New Orleans pushed once more late on, Patrick Queen's sack forced a punt, Rodgers scrambled for 8 yards on third and 6, and Pittsburgh simply kept the ball for the final six minutes until there was nothing left to take.

That the game happened at all, on time and in front of 78,488 people, was its own result. The week around it had been closing in: fan events in Paris shut on Saturday, including the league's own NFL House, a Saints event was postponed to Sunday, and the United States State Department issued a security alert for Americans travelling to the game, against the backdrop of the unrest that has filled French streets this month. None of it moved the kickoff. The league got its photograph, the flag across the field and the fireworks above the roof, and underneath the spectacle it got a proper, grinding football game rather than a exhibition.

Our call is that Paris earned a permanent place on the NFL's map on Sunday, but not because of the pageantry. Expansion games usually sell a league on noise, and this one sold it on a crowd that understood what it was watching: a partisan, towel waving takeover that made a designated home team feel like visitors in its own fixture. The league will read 78,488 as a number. It should read the towels as the finding. France did not just host the NFL, it picked a side, and a market that picks sides is worth far more than one that buys merchandise. Expect Paris to move from experiment to rotation, and expect Pittsburgh, 5-2 now with three straight wins, to be invited back first.