My thoughts on regular season wk 13

my FIRST thought!

 

Patterson has been a solid addition, by Khan and Co, this offseason

 

tomlins clock management was in true tomlin form, at the end of the first half!

 

Coming into this game this officiating crew has been responsible for the most flags thrown this season. I knew JPJ and Pickens would both be flagged several times over. Porter Jr though was a disaster out there and really needs to relearn the position. He just keeps doing the same stupid things every week. There were so many flags yesterday that I’m surprised didn’t penalize the coin toss.

 

We won at the line of scrimmage today. That won’t be nearly as easy against the rest of the teams on our schedule. Cincy is not good in the trenches, especially on defense. Their whole defense is not very good. I will give credit to the Steelers on offense for that performance, but you do have to put it in context as well.

A couple other things I noticed today.

1. Ben Skowrenick (sp?) was in quite a bit. I like him, He is a grinder.
2. Connor Heyward was barely in. It's about time. Too small for TE and lacks the fundamentals and toughness to be at Fullback. Where do you play him? He is a liability in blocking.
3. Porter didn’t have a great game but alot, alot of those penalties were ticky take in my mind. The penalty in the end zone against him was ridiculous. He had his hand son him but he didn’t impede the receivers forward motion nor did he interfere with his hands or arms. Cam Sutton did the exact same thing few plays later but because his arms are alot shorter it isn’t as obvious and he didn’t get called for it.
4. Where is Ogunjobi and or Benton when Watt is getting double teamed? If they are single blocked they should absolutely be producing.

* Short passing game. I loved it. We need to do this consistently when the opposing teams take away the deep perimeter which is obviously what Cincy did.

 

Honestly, we dont need Benton or Ogunjobi to get sacks or TFL in the backfield. What we need them to do is maintain gap control, occupy their lineman and allow our ILB's to shoot the gaps and make the stops. Dont get me wrong, when they do get TFL's and sacks, it should be coverage sacks or them flat out beating their man in front of them. I really dont want to see them swim moving and taking themselves out of position or out of the play. I want them to eat space and eat the OL. I miss the days of Big Snack that took 2 -3 men to move him or block him. Thats when our defense under Lebeau was monstrous with the fire X blitz, safety blitz etc...the offense had no idea who was coming next or from where and if they let Big Snack alone 1 on 1 it was a mismatch and resulted in bad things for the offense. We have small and fast ILB ( except for Roberts ) and in my opinion we are too busy reacting to the offense rather than dictating to the offense. No one fears us blitzing because we do very infrequently and when we do, its not usually disguised very well. I miss Lebeau's defensive intellect and approach.

 

Congratulations on your first thought I knew you could do it eventually



Sorry it was a hanging curve ball and I had to swing at it

 

10 guys caught passes, and 8 for over 20 yards. They are trying to feed everyone,,but like I said before.....no matter who gets catches, someone on here, and I'm not pointing at You ,but someone will say.......I think so, and so should get more touches.

 

This is something I was going to bring up. Thanks for saying it for me.

 

Actually that is the only logical thing to do....You don't want a quick strike, especially with a team like Bengals, but just because You do the right thing, doesn't mean Your players will do it correctly. For example: You don't expect Your players to knock each other out of a play.

 

I actually think that was totally on purpose. He didn't want a turnover, and wanted to take the 3, but didn't want to make it seem like He didn't trust Wilson. Example: the sack Wilson took last week, and took us out of easy field goal range

 

Points five and fourteen couldn't be more truthful even if you could find any way to make either true. Particularly point four. Joey Porter Jr is having as about a roller coaster of a Sphomore Campaign as one is going to get. I anticipate him bouncing back against Cleveland.


For that matter, I expect it.

 

so, we got down to the 13, or so. Close game at that point (was it tied?). 12 seconds left. JUST CALL THE TIMEOUT.

just call it.

then think what you want to do, with your options.

even a sack does not hurt there. Give Russ one read to the EZ, TD's we thought at that time, were needed. CINCY had 21 points already, 14 from their offense. It looked like both teams would easily go into the 30's. Mikey got away with it. but I saw it as poor clock management.

I just don't what that get construed as hate....to not want a TO, that is living in your fears.

 

Yes, the Steelers got one bad call in their favor. That doesn't come close to making up for all of the bad calls and no-calls that helped the Bengals. The big one was the pick-six. The guy smacked Pickens in the head and pulled him to the ground with no call. Given how the Steelers moved the ball in the first half, that was likely a 14-point swing to start the game.

A couple of the calls on Porter were garbage. More importantly, the Bengals' offensive tackles were moving ahead of the snap consistently all game long. It was called twice, but they got away with it far too often, including one of the Bengals' touchdowns.

 

Maybe, but it didn't entirely make up for the pick-six and they made plenty of other errors that helped the Bengals.

 

Well put. Even worse, they left Chase wide open for a big play to set up a very quick touchdown. If you are going to back off like that, you can't have a broken coverage like that. The entire point is to make them work for every yard so even if they score, it takes too long.

 

Jerome Bettis would like to talk to you about that.

 

It's no coincidence TJ's production is down since Highsmith has been out. They just don't respect Herbig the same. TJ hasn't lost anything. He's getting doubled, chipped, knocked all over the place. Let's see what happens when Highsmith comes back and shores up runs to the left.

 

I was critical of it too at the time. They could have had about 12 seconds left and take a shot at endzone. Then again, if that scenario took place and we threw an interception or got sacked we all would be pissed about the play call. I'm cool with it

 

THIS. Herbig is FAST, that is about all, right now. Highsmith is STRONG and quick. Teams have to plan for him

 

true, on that last part.

 

That's what I tried to tell you in the game day thread, I wasn't worried about it they got the FG and received the ball after halftime.

 

Your speaking my language. I miss those days too. Unfortunately our defense isn’t built like that anymore. We don’t ask our DT’s to two gap maintain. We ask them to gap penetrate. So as a result it really does leave our MLB’s exposed. They ask an awful lot of our MLB’s in this defense. You saw how effective they can be when they allowed the MLB’s to go forward and attack their gap in the Baltimore game. We don’t do that much though because we like to keep them back in coverage to protect the middle of the field.

 

Herbig has some decent moves, too, but he has to get stronger. Highsmith creates more consistent pressure. Also, Smith was out there quite a bit and he did next to nothing yesterday.

 

Smith is a stop gap insurance policy guy, nothing more. Certainly not a play maker.....