Steelers Steal Win at Indianapolis

When the schedule first came out this looked like it would be a really good, competitive game.  Then, when the news Manning was going to miss at least the first several weeks of 2011 if not the entire season it appeared this would be a cake walk. However thanks in large part to the porous offensive line play by the Steelers, it turned into a good, competitive game…for the objective fan. 

In the end the Steelers came out of Indianapolis with a win but they looked bad in the process. Offensively they have become one dimensional, largely because they have what might be one of the worst offensive lines in the league.  Ben Roethlisberger had to do everything up to and including engineering a drive in the final minutes to kick the game winning field goal. With an O line that only enabled the Steelers to run for 67 yards on 28 total carries, Big Ben had to throw 37 times for 364 yards with 1 TD and 1 INT.  Don’t let those stellar numbers fool you, Ben was under pressure all day, getting sacked 3 times, fumbling twic and being hurried many more times.  If it wasn’t a glaring problem before the game it sure is now. They need help on that line. They already lost Willie Colon for the year, then they decide to only dress 7 guys on the line and what happens, 3 get hurt in the game.  You play 5 at a time people!  7-3 = 4. 4 healthy O lineman. They had to bring back injured Marcus Gilbert to finish the game.  It’s pathetic that given the fact that the team has a terrible O line, were facing two great pass rushers and can use all the help on that unit  that they can get; they only dressed 7! That’s all on Tomlin.  Two of the guys that went down were getting burned all day long. Marcus Gilbert looked like the rookie that he is and the sack/fumble he gave up really turned the game around for the negative. The black and gold were up 10-0 moving the ball down the field and looking like they would score again and BOOM he gives up that play and the Colts took momentum the rest of the way.  Jonathan Scott was the other guy hurt and burned all day. He gave up a sack/fumble that was returned for a TD. It’s about time they sacrafice a wide receiver and bring in a full back more often because they need all the blocking help they can get and that appears to be the only way. Don’t think for a second they won’t be making some calls this week to see what they can pick up off the scrap heap. They are in trouble there. If the Steelers can’t run the ball, which right now with this line and Mendhall running the ball, it appears they can’t, we’re looking at a long season. 

Defensively they didn’t look all that good again. Granted, the defense made the play of the game on a Harrison sack that forced a fumble into the hands of Troy Polamalu who  promptly ran the ball into the end zone but, aside from Harrison and his team leading 7 tackles and Polamalu who had 3 tackles, that TD and seemed to be in on just about every play, the defense looked pretty average. They allowed Joseph Addai 86 yards on 17 carries, a 5.1 YPC average. The Colts are missing Manning, had to start Kerry Collins and then ended up finishing with Curtis Painter which means you know the team is going to run at you and you STILL give up that kind of yardage? That’s not good.  The secondary looks bad, aside from Taylor again, the corners were burned and even Taylor was burned on a play that should have been a TD but because Painter overthrew Garcon the Steelers escaped with no damage.  There are a lot of problems on both sides of the ball and they need to fix these issues immediately.

A couple of thoughts and notes from the game.  On the second fumble by Roethlisberger; the entire frikken O Line just stood there and let the play continue without attempting to pick up the ball. How many times are football players told to play to the whistle? Where were the fundamentals on that??

On the Big Ben interception, yes it was a bad throw but what the hell was Emmanuel Sanders doing on that play? Instead of tagging the defender down right there at the spot of the pick; he LEAPS over him trying to avoid contact? What the heck? How does that even make sense? It doesn’t and he needs a talking to.

Jonathan Scott sucks. He was burned all day, had numerous penalties against him and just looks bad.

Rashard Mendenhall is clearly not trusted by the coaches in crunch time. Don’t think it was a mistake that Mendenhall was not in there carrying the ball on that final drive as Mewelde Moore and Isaac Redman got the only carries on that drive. The coaches don’t trust Mendenhall won’t fumble. It’s hard to argue with them given his history.  It’s also hard to trust Mendenhall should even be the featured back at this point but when we thought Redman would get more carries they cut them down to 3 this week. That’s a poor decision on Bruce Arians part and someone needs to ask that clown what he was thinking?

It appears that Antonio Brown is a play maker both on punt returns and in the passing game. We’re not sure if we’d annoint him as the number 2 reciever just yet but he’s gaining ground and looks like he may be that guy soon.

Big Ben will not last the whole season at this pace. This is obvious, but it’s just so glaring.

Ok, so the team won and that’s the true thing that matters here. We’ll take it because it’s certainly better than a loss and the good news is it was on the road.  Now they must prepare for Houston who has a pretty good QB and if Arian Foster plays they have a damn good running back too. Next week is a true test for this team and what type of leadership they have and how they respond to falling short of overall expectations.

2-1, next week: at Houston (2-1)

Steel Nation Association Trivia Night

Title: Steel Nation Association Trivia Night
Location: Tavern 245 – Pittsburgh
Link out: Click here
Description: Steel Nation Association Trivia Night with prizes!
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2011-09-29
End Time: 20:00

Steel Nation Association Trvia Night on 9/29

Hey Steel Nation!  Come on out to Tavern 245 located at 245 4th Avenue Pittsburgh, PA on 9/29 from 6pm-8pm to participate in our trivia night!  We will be having raffles for great prizes like autograph photos of former Steelers players, signs, gift cards and more. We’ll also be having a trivia game and the winner will receive a grand prize provided to us by Trash Talking Store LLC.  This trivia night is being held to help raise money for Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh as we donate 20% of everything directly to them to help the kids!  Please check on the invite and we hope to see you there:  http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=163240980427653

Steelers Route Seahawks 24-0 To Net First Win of 2011

Seattle fans had to know what they were in for this week. Coming across the country to an angry, hungry ravenous Steeler team that had just gotten blown out in their opener was not going to bode well for their team. The Seahawks were out matched from the get go.  The Steelers had a point to prove and for one day ,they did. They showed the world their defense is not too old, they do have a potent offense and they are still a bully on the block. 

The Steelers got the ball first and marched down the field inside the Seattle 5 with Big Ben slashing the secondary and with a big pass interference penalty in the end zone.  On this opening drive however the Steelers were stuffed by the Hawks and had to go for it on 4th and goal from the 1 and were stuffed again.  This is one concern that did arise from the game, they don’t appear to have a goal line offense. This really isn’t new and has been this way since the Bus left but with a swiss cheese offensive line and a lack of a bigger back they don’t seem to have that formation and set of plays locked in just yet. Our opinion is Isaac Redman or even Jonathan Dwyer should be in that package and not Mendenhall.  We digress however as the Steelers forced 3 and out and a Seattle punt just after that series. From then on they dominated. They went down the field and scored a TD and never looked back, totaling 24 points and not allowing a single score to the hapless Hawks.

Offensively the team looked stellar in the passing game. Big Ben made it a point to keep the mistakes to a minimum completing 22 of 30 passes for 298 yards and a TD to their ace receiver Mike Wallace.  He also did not put the ball in the opposing teams hands via interception of fumble like he did a 5 times last week.  Mike Wallace has officially proven he’s the main man in the passing game grabbing another 8 balls for 126 yards and a TD. He’s pacing for a pro ball season at this rate.  It was also very nice to Antonio Brown grab 4 balls for 67 yards and Emmanuel Sanders take in 2 more for 44 as well as throw one for 15 to the aging veteran Hines Ward.  While Ward is still one of the teams starting receivers it appears he is their 3rd or even 4th option at this point. He did catch 4 balls for 33 yards but he’s more of a team leader emotionally rather than via his play at this point.  We’re not saying he still can’t put up decent and respectable numbers but he’s really not a focal point of the teams passing game anymore…despite what some people we know may wish.

The running game is a a bit of a cocern. Through two weeks we are not impressed with Rashard Mendenhall. He put up better numbers than last week carrying the ball 19 times for 66 yards and a TD. However that’s only a 3.5 YPC average and that’s not good.  We really like Redman and think he’s a great second option and could possibly be a feature back in this offense. He garnerd 10 carries for 49 yards and had an amazing 20 yard scamper for a TD.  He has a better YPC average than Mendenhall and may be a bit faster than Mendenhall which with this O Line may be a better fit.  Speaking of the O line they did the job for the most part but failed on some goal line situations in the running game as we mentioned. They kept the sacks down to two and one guy we asked you to watch in our Game Day feature was rookie Marcus Gilbert making his first start at right tackle. We’ll give him a C- grade.  He was decent blocking but he allowed a big sack on Ben early in the game and also almost got Ben seriously injured when he was beat and Ben got his knee crumpled. Fortunately Ben was ok but it’s scary to see your leader go down like that.

Defensively the Steelers had a near perfect game. They were hungry for a shut out and felt like they had to prove all the critics wrong.  Last week after the drubbing the took everyone said they were old washed up and done. They proved that to be a bit reactionary and didn’t allow one score today.  The team was led by Troy Polamalu with 8 tackles and sack. Overall they had 5 sackes on the game. They were brutal to the Hawks’ offense only allowing a total of 164 yards, and just 31 on the ground. Now let’s be honest the Seahawks are not the Patriots and are relatively putrid but this was just the game the doctor ordered and we won’t pick anything apart here this week on the defensive side of the ball.

The one thing we will pick apart today is Mike Tomlin leaving the starters in the game when it was clearly in hand. last week with the game in check in the wrong fashion he left the starters in and they lost Willie Colon for the year. This week with the game at hand for the good, he leaves the guys in and risks injury to  the guys he needs to rely on down the stretch, Big Ben, Polamalu, Harrison etc. With Big Ben getting his knee hurt early on you’d think he’d have pulled him. With Colon getting hurt last week you’d think he’d have learned. Well, he’s either a bit hard headed or slow not sure but that’s just the one complaint we do have this week. 

That all said, when you’re coming out of a game with just one complaint it means you had a fantastic week and you won the game. 

Up next: Steelers (1-1) at Colts (0-2)

Steelers Get Embarrassed in Loss at Ravens

This is the day we’ve been waiting for since the Super Bowl loss in February.  This was supposed to be the first step back, the first sign that  this team was ready to get back to the big game and this time win it! Well if this game was a forshadowing of things to come, it will be a LONG season.  Today reminded of us of the two most recent post Super Bowl seasons in which the team failed to be competitive for the most part or even be in contention for the playoffs. Now look, we know this is the first game of a 16 game season and that one game doesn’t make the year but if you’re looking for an upbeat and positive read on today’s game you can stop reading now.  Quite frankly they sucked. 

If you give the QB the Lion’s share of the credit then I guess you have to give him the Lion’s share of the blame too.  Normally we are praising Big Ben for his play, he typically destroys Baltimore and had won 7 straight against them but he was horrendous today. Ben threw only 5 interceptions all last year and he managed to throw 3 today alone.  He also fumbled another two times accouting for five frikken turnovers. The team had 7 total to match their wonderful total of 7 points!  When your QB turns it over five times you rarely, if ever, win.  In fact we calculate the odds of winning when your accounts for five turnovers at 0.0000002%.  We also calculated the odds when your team accounts for seven turnovers total in a game and that came out to 0.0%. YOU DON’T WIN!  Sure Big Ben accounted for 280 yards in the air but he had to throw 41 times, those were garbage yards, he sucked.

Let’s get to Mendenhall, he had a measely 45 yards.  Now he did only have 12 carries because they had to bail on the run game when they fell behind by so much but he was unimpressive at best. Of those 45 yards 23 of them came on one carry. So the other 11 carries accounted for 22 yards. Pathetic.

The O line is surely to blame for some of this.  If you read our pre game we said they were a concern and they proved us right, sadly. They again look like swiss cheese, holes everywhere. They allowed 4 sacks, they allowed Big Ben to fumble twice they only enabled the Steelers to rush for a total of 66 yards and they looked slow and out manned.  To help out you would expect the coaches to throw in a full back more often, but that’s just not something they are willing to do. But we’ll get to the coaches later.

Let’s move on to the, gasp, defense!  Can you believe this? They definitely have a lot to do with this loss. They were plain bad. Ray Rice gashed them for 107 yards and Rickly Williams added another 63 to toal 170 rushing yards for the Crows on this vaunted defense.  The linebackers looked a bit slow (aside from Timmons who did total 12 sacks).  The defense looked confused and not only were they ripped apart on the ground but they let Joe “I never beat Pittsburgh” Flacco to throw for 224 yards and 3 TD’s without 1 pick.  Unacceptable. We mentioned in our pre game that the secondary would be a concern and much to our shagrin they were. They looked bad, out of place and slow.  McFadden was bad, Gay was bad and Ryan Clark looked like a guy getting paid by the Ravens, he was never where he needed to be. How could this be? Were they unprepared today? Could they not make adjustments? What the hell happened?  The team couldn’t get off the field on 3rd down again, another trait we can’t stand! Some of that is just bad coaching, not having guys in the right places or making the right play calls defensively.

So let’s talk about the coaching.  Did Tomlin and company forget this was a massive divisional game? Did they forget to motivate this team? What did they tell them this week or what didn’t they tell them? We’ll never know that, but we do know this team was not ready.  You have to question why Mewelde Moore, a change of pace back was not really used until the end of the game. He can catch out of the backfield better than any other back and yet with a struggling rush game they failed to put him in the game until it was locked up and sealed for the Ravens.  You have to wonder why Tomlin would allow Big Ben and the starters to play the whole game? Why risk the injury? The game was way out of hand, the Ravens were flying to the ball and are known to be fierce and have a rabid hatred for the Steelers that includes putting out bounties, why the hell risk it? Idiotic.

This game was plain bad, not much else we can say.  So we’ll leave the game summary to our old friend Jim Mora. What he says sums up the game better than we ever could:

 

Up next: Vs. Seattle (0-1)