My thoughts on regular season wk 2....

What have they done to Jones?

Don’t play him at his position.
Don’t start him and then throw him in raw.
Why the head games?

 

He is either hurt worst than he is letting on or he’s going down Bust Alley after being completely mismanaged.

 

Personally, I'm not ready to leave Wilson on the bench....I'm just more comfortable now letting Wilson get fully healthy before trotting him out there

 

Occasionally, Pickett also had a good one for pickens. Its not about one play. It is about consistency and the output over an entire game. Fields also seems to be too locked into his first read, struggles with his decision making. We have watched two entire games and the offense has not had the development and improvement people were expecting and no, it is not just the penalties

 

I didn't realize you could get benched twice in one game

 

Agree, when he is ready he needs to get a shot. I mean he WAS going to be starter and by the way Fields played you got to try the other option in Wilson. Fields has not done any huge mistakes but he also has not exactly thrown for 6 touchdowns and 600 yards in those two games

 

That’s young Ike Taylor or Chad Scott type stuff!

 

Fields played well. I’m glad to see we do have a running Quarterback. The D played very well except for to many holding calls. All said good game and another win.

 

sorry but when the penalties cost 7-11 points in the first half only,this is such a huge deal....We would have a different discussion on Fields if the steelers would been clean

 

The offense would not been better in this game with Wilson

 

It is production against what might be. Fields is moving the ball and controlling the clock. He is making good decisions too. I saw a few times when I was thinking that he's being given the opportunity to make a bad throw or something like that and he made a good choice and did not try and force something that costs us.

I am not saying that he's better than Russell Wilson. But Russell Wilson has played a handful of plays in preseason and has had very little training time with the team. It would literally be like a new quarterback coming in and not one that has been with the team for the entire year. Fields is the one that has been getting all the first team reps because Wilson has been nursing his leg injury.

Wilson might be a better quarterback, but a point is going to come where fields has earned the job. I was really hoping to see what Russell Wilson can do, but if Fields is getting the job done, that's good enough for me.

 

I know that most of the people that have responded to your post disagreed with it, but I do agree with you about Austin. He's having three plays that lose or get no yardage for every one play that gets a few yards. His first punt return of the day he just took off right down the middle and got like 15 yards. I thought maybe he's received a little bit of coaching. But then his next punt return he tries to run around a steady stream of defenders and ended up probably 10 yards behind where he originally caught the ball. Unsat.

 

First half felt like we beat them soundly. Then I looked at the score. Gotta clean up the penalties. Gotta do better on 1st down.

Next week will be tough, must play better to win.

 

Coach took a 10 pt lead n ran with it IMO… played cowher ball. Some o that was head scratching back en as well. Grateful for 2-0 start but but much to be determined

 

seems like the 2nd half play calling was totally diff, run , run, pass , punt

 

1. Agree... We made too many mistakes offensively to have it look good. We had at least 7 points erased by "ticky-tack" penalties and a few first downs taken away by penalties too. Self-implosion due to penalty unfortunately.

2. Yeah, can't get flagged 3 times in a game... let alone one drive. The hold on that deep ball was pretty bogus, but it was still called.

3. Didn't notice him negatively or positively. That usually means he played pretty well.

4. Daniels' game was surprising, as he is generally a pretty good player. Dan Moore just kinda came back to earth after a good game and had a very Dan Moore game.

5. Yep

6. Refs blew a number of calls today. The refs in the NFL are terrible every game, every week. The league refuses to put a significant investment in making sure they are at an acceptable level, so this will continue for the immediate future. However, the first two weeks seemed to have more "bad" calls go against us than for us. Hopefully we see a regression to the mean and get a couple of calls in the next few weeks that break our way.

7. It was a nice play. Good for him. Happy to see him make a play after a painfully long time away with his injury.

8. Had to do with the directional stuff for sure. Waitman hit some nice punts, but let two bounce in the end zone for touchbacks and didn't get the final punt out of bounds. It was an okay start for him, but I can see why he was available. Good leg, just not a top 32 guy at his craft.

9. ILB is the hardest position to play on defense in the NFL in my opinion. I'm not sure its on his grasp of the defense as much as it is just settling into his role. He's been Robin for so long to Roquan, its his time to be "the man" and it might just take a couple games to get fully settled in.

10. The hands to the face call was a phantom for sure. Didn't see the other one.

11. Agree... Called a tight one on Jones on the big play to Pickens, but let a few more blatant ones go for the Broncos. It was an extremely inconsistently called game.

12. Yep, screw 'em. We need to keep stacking wins and pull ahead while we can. Having a good cushion for the home stretch takes a bit of pressure off us and puts extra pressure on them...

13. Same. My brother before that play happened said "just throw it up to Washington, he's 1v1 on a corner", then boom haha Nice to see a mismatch put in position then taken advantage of.

Overall, I thought the line run blocked exceptionally well. Harris and Warren had a good number of massive holes to run through. I'd still like to see Najee do more with what he has blocked, but he had a pretty solid game. So did Warren. I think they both should be thanking the OL for that. Loved to see it. Gotta clean up the stupid penalties. We've left so many points on the board with dumb penalties so far this year. We only had 251 yards offensively and 13 points, but we played MUCH better than that. Dumb mistakes have taken away multiple big plays, over a hundred yards, and a double digit number of points directly. There's going to be a couple games this year where we will need to score 25+ in a game to win, and we can do it, we just have to be much cleaner.

 

While he hasn’t made spectacular plays, Fields makes plays that Wilson just can’t at his age. Behind this offensive line, Fields might have to be the guy.

 

They are both 1 year rentals.

 

He definitely locks in... unfortunately we only have one real competent WR at this point, so it is hard to blame him for reading Pickens/Muth/Warren or run. He definitely holds the ball a bit too, but I do think that is due to him trying to keep his eyes downfield longer instead of just taking off and running. So I can appreciate that, he's just gotta make a decision a split second sooner. I think he can get there with that. He throws it really well in phase to the sideline and he is pretty darn good 20+ yards downfield too... In all honesty if we have a clean game in the penalty department, we likely score 23+ points that game. We directly screwed ourselves out of 4 on the TD called back, another redzone trip that would've gotten us 3 or 7 on the Jones penalty, and then had two other first downs nullified by penalty and killed potential momentum as well. We at worst should have had 20 points, but I think 24 or 27 is what a clean game walks away with in that one... We just can't keep beating ourselves.

 

I think a lot of it has to do with a lot of people not being sold that Wilson doesn't suck.

 

Rotating Offensive Tackles is a terrible idea anyhow. Doing so only causes less cohesion on the Offensive Line. Play the five best and stick with them.


Enough of this "Merry Go 'Round" nonsense.

 

They definitely need to try another guy on the returns, I'm just not that impressed with Austin. You'd figure with his speed he'd be able to pop one once in a while, but it never happens

 

Steelers have a +5 turnover differential this year, with 0 turnovers.

Besides that, 8 of the last 9 teams to start 2-0 on the road made the playoffs. Every Tomlin team to start 2-0 has made the playoffs.

 

Austin is averaging 11.8 yds/return, 7th in the league. 19 teams in the league have 0 punt return yards after week 1.

 

he was ok to me. Fine as a backup. That pass to pickens was tight coverage and to me he just threw it up there hoping the taller puckens could make a play. MR threw a few good passes last year in a backup role. I dont see this as anything better than what MR did. I think people just see the athleticism of Fields, he made a few good passes, and theres a hopecto see him as the next anointed one. I dont see it. I trust Wilson to lead this team, not fields