Steelers Lose Pre Season Opener
The 2011 Pittsburgh Steeler football season is officially under way. On Friday the 12th the Steelers went into Washington ready to try to pick up the pieces from the Super Bowl loss, show they have no hangover from the big day back in February and get things moving for another title appearance this year.
The good news, it was a pre season game, and game one at that. The bad news, the team looked terrible. Now, with that latter sentence we need to re iterate that It was pre season game number ONE. A loss, a win, or a tie really doesn’t matter in the pre season. The games are simply played to tune up the players and see who’s going to make the final roster spots. The Steelers already have all 22 starters back from last season so there aren’t even any starting positions on the line.
The thing to keep an eye on here in the pre season are the position battles for back up running back, the number three, four and five receivers, the number three quarterback and perhaps the number three cornerback. Other than that, the battles are slim. We’d have to say that the most positive thing we saw last night was Isaac Redman running the ball. He’s battling for the 2nd running back job and he had a good showing. He carried the ball 5 times for 42 yards and a touchdown. He’s probably the leading candidate for that 2nd spot. The three, four and five receivers will probably be a battle between Antonio Brown, Emanuel Sanders and newly signed Jericho Cotchery. Neither Sanders nor Cotchery played last night so we only got a glimpse of Brown. He looked decent pulling in four balls for 64 yards. Other than that, the offense didn’t show much only totaling 186 yards. Dennis Dixon looked pretty awful, especially when you consider he was playing 4th string defenders. He completed only 1 of 10 passes for 29 yards. It was a nice completion but you really have to wonder if the kid has it don’t you?
Defensively the secondary appeared to be a concern again. They gave up over 200 yards passing in one half to journeymen Rex Grossman! That’s a concern but the Redskins spread the Steelers out and everyone knows that’s how you beat the black and gold. That’s exactly why the lost the Super Bowl. Again, it’s only game one in the Pre Season but we feel that area needs addressing immediately. They didn’t look great against the Skins rush attack either, but we’re not concerned with that. We never are. The linebackers will be fine.
The long and short of last night is this, the Steelers lost to the lowly Redskins 16-7 in a meaningless game. The big concern coming out of it is probably the secondary. The great news, nobody came out too banged up, they have three weeks to fix any issues they have, find the guys to make this team and get back on a Super Bowl run!
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