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)