Where Was The Run?

I thought the game plan was to win. We accomplished that. lol

 

Remember the shovel-pass play they used to run (pretty successfully) in goal-line situations? Whatever happened to it?

 

They were using it on Ben's TD run. A defender read it, snuffed it by stepping between Ben and McDonald, which resulted in the busted (but scoring) play.
https://steelersdepot.com/2018/11/f...ess-that-was-ben-roethlisbergers-game-winner/

 

We turned it into the "stumble run".....

 

Saracsm (I think) aside, we were not down by much for most of the game. There was no reason to completely abandon the run game so quickly. Conner is one of the league leaders in broken tackles so maybe he could have dealt with those stacked fronts. He did have a couple of good runs, they weren't all stuffs. Second, until the fourth quarter our passing game was killing us so at that point I would have tried to dial back a bit. It all worked out alright in the end, I just felt that Conner needed a bit of defending.

Just for fun: Bell vs. Conner regular season Jax game -- Bell 3.1 yards per carry, Conner 2.8 Not that big of a difference. Bell had a bigger role in the passing game, but only had about .5 yards more per catch. IF Conner had caught both drops, he would have outdone Bell. I chalk that up to being young and also Ben was forcing passes to Brown all game this time and not taking the dump offs.

 

That was a pretty good defense the Steelers were going up against. Glad to get out of there with a W.

 

Ah my young friend, even the greatest rb's need offensive lineman blocking in front of them
to give them a chance to be a game changer.

 

I don't want to add to the Bell threads, but apparently we're not done hearing about it. Conner's drops got the national sports guys talking about the possibility that the Steelers made a mistake by not getting Bell back.

Here's the thing. We have Bell's side claiming that he would have returned if the Steelers would have promised not to tag him again, but they team said no. We only have their word for it, which I don't completely buy. That said, if it's true, they did make a mistake. I doubt Bell would have been on the field for that final drive Sunday, but he certainly could have helped this team.

 

Have you seen the giants offensive line?

 

I have and that is 1 reason why they are 2-8. The Steelers OL did not have a great game against a very good Jags
defense. Sometimes this happens, you just hope it doesn't happen too many times.

 

Yep

Conner will be fine. He did not have the offensive line push as in previous times. The Jaguar's defense is good.

My problem is the two dropped passes, which has been uncharacteristic of James.. He just needs to work on his concentration and catching the ball first. He will be fine.

He did drop two big one's though.

 

They are 3-7 actually but that as well as eli's decline is why they suck. But their oline is horrible and saquon still has been ballin.

 

What I remember from last year was we don`t score on them unless we go pass happy. We scored 40 points on them in the playoffs throwing mostly. They stuffed the run and our guys match up poorly against them run blocking anyway. They also ball hawk short passes Take what the defense gives you. What we have against them that works is good enough pass blocking plus the QB and receivers to throw mid range and deep passes which answers what their defensive scheme is doing. If you are throwing 10 yards and more every play, you only need 50% success rate to easily move the ball. The trick here is Ben has to throw the ball away more often and not force it.

The Jags are a freak matchup for us which calls for an unbalanced pass attack. We can go balanced attack against other teams. I wish we had learned from the playoff game what we can do.

 

I guess I am not on the same page your on. All I was trying to say is that so called game changers
need help to make these game changing plays.

 

We sat in shotgun every game against them. Running from shotgun works against average d-lines/lb's. We wanted to see them get under center and actually run the ball down their throat to open the pass. We got pass half last weekend and there was no where for Ben to throw because they were rushing 3-4 and dropping everyone into coverage. We got extremely lucky they got out of zone and started playing man late in the game. Usually you need to establish the run to make them do that but they did it willingly. Then Ben and the WR's won their one on one match ups.

 

The Ravens were the league's top-ranked defense when the Steelers played them the second time. The Steelers played almost exclusively out of the shotgun that day and Conner ran for 107 yards.