My thoughts on regular season wk 5

I see you ignored the more important part of my response, the silly notion that Rudolph somehow deserves credit for an offensive outburst even though he did almost nothing as a passer.

 

the PLAYERS said he did, that was all I needed to hear.....

 

The whole season is a house of cards ready to implode. MT players coach crap has allowed many diva wrs to develop bad attitudes and lazy on field play and Pickens is half as talented at antonio brown is, and on his way to being just as much of a distraction. The o line is beyond atrocious and the qb is learning a new offense. Add to it a injury prone expensive d that plays amazing 3/4's of the time and god awful the other 1/4. No shot at winning a playoff game and playoffs are 40/60. Glad we signed MT to that extention and cheap owner will never fire him with that many years left on contract. Same old same old for team stuck in neutral.

 

I gave him some credit during training camp when it appeared he had shown some maturity. Tha's all gone. We need to start drafting character players.
That said,Tomlin is holding the offense back. It looks no different than last year's.

 

I didn't ignore it---the team was sparked. He completed clutch passes when he needed to. But like with us, everyone did better when he came in for them. Much as our running game improved, everyone's effort improved, etc. I'm sure he'll play again for them and we will see what it all looks like.

 

Some of my views from being at the game firsthand and expansions on B&G, who always captures the game extremely well....

1. Justin Fields was not seeing the defense well at all - Justin is mobile enough and that helps him behind this horribly coached offensive line, This half the problem and the other half is Justin has to learn to put some air on the ball. His fastball isnt the answer to every throw, he has to learn to "throw these guys open"

2. Play calling was a major head scratcher - New coordinator same offense, I cant say its Tomlin, but he is the only common denominator left. Makes you wonder how much influence he has on this too!!

3. Defense got gashed something fierce - They were getting hammered against the run, Dallas was gaining 5-7 yds on first down run plays and everyone in the stadium knew they were running the ball. We were manhandled by the Dallas front 7 point blank and simple

4. But for the turnovers, this game had no business being this close - 100% accurate, we were lucky to even be in this game, we were outgained, out possessed and definitely outplayed most of the game.

5. Offensive and defensive coaches laid an egg - I have no words for why Harris wasnt given the opportunity to break that defense, why was Ward and Shamplin given the ball makes no sense to me. Defensively, Tomlin's soft zone defense was exposed yet again as the middle of the field was wide open and Dak is just good enough to exploit that. All in all, we got out butts kicked on both sides.

6. Losing Herbig was huge - once Herbig went down, Watt was basically taken care of, Leal is not an OLB, if we trade for a WR we better start looking to poach some OLB'ers off teams PS real quick too

7. Special teams was the only part of the game that was consistent for us - We did punt well, but the decision to return that last kick with 20 seconds on the clock was stupid. I get that if you break one for a big gain, your a hero but when you waste 5 seconds and barely get to the 20, not smart.

8. The Justing Fields starter talk is about to cool off a bit - AT this point we know what we have in Fields, he was OK, he never wowed me to the point of saying this is the guy. I think he has athletic talent, but he either needs to learn to read defense's , adjust/shift his line and he definitely needs to learn some touch on his throws

9. One of the worst run defenses in the league and we did nothing to take advantage of it - 2 weeks in a row we have played "weak" run defenses and 2 weeks in a row we cant run the ball with any type of success.

10. Tomlin cant burn his last timeout with 30 seconds to go with Dallas on the 4 yd line, especially after Dallas just used a timeout. Bad coaching decision there. Also 12 men on the field burned another timeout, poor coaching or poor communication by the coaches, this is not acceptable. Its not acceptable week1 and its not acceptable now!

11. Too many Cowboy fans in attendance, looked like the San Fran game all over again - Steeler fans selling away home field is BS

 

LOL. Gotta love when people start talking about spark and intangibles, things that can't be quantified, so you can just make up whatever you want.

 

I doubt the two time-outs would have been enough with only 15 seconds remaining, but yeah, they should have had them and poor coaching wasted both of them. Tomlin essentially gave up on doing anything with that last drive and put everything on trying to get the fourth-down stop.

 

Very curious who will play OLB this week. Might be a hybrid DL against the Raiders. Not even really about pass rush, more about outside contain.

 

It does need to be about the pass rush. You saw what happened when they lost Herbig against the Cowboys. Prescott had way too much time to throw, including the game-winning touchdown.

 

The season is on the brink of total collapse. The o stinks because o line sucks and wrs blow. Pickens is recreating Antonio Brown actions before he forced his way out. The TE hates the offense. The D all of sudden stinks for 1/4 of the game. Tomlin has lost the locker room.