Is Arthur Smith worse than Canada?

Didn't Najee catch a screen pass for their biggest gain in the game ?

 

One of my biggest problems with Smith's offense is he doesn't feed his best playmakers enough, when you don't have a #2 WR Muth should be getting 6-8 receptions a game.

 

One of the very few. Najee is a good receiver, and can run pretty well when in the open field. Not sure why they don't utilize him more on screens? I'm not saying call screens 10 times a game, just a few times to try to open things up downfield.

 

Ok, so maybe he's not as bad as Canada, but the offense is only a hair better than last year with Smith. Same old slow starts though.

 

That goes back to lack of separation, rarely does Muth get open.

 

No, it's because teams don't respect the passing game. If you have only one wide receiver worth damn, it is way to easy to keep eight men in the box.

 

He isn't close to being as bad as Canada, who was a failure at multiple stops before the Steelers foolishly made him their OC.

Smith has run a successful offense in the NFL. He did it with the Titans. I don't think he will ever be a good head coach, but he had nothing to work with at quarterback in Atlanta.

You seem to insist on ignoring the other factors hampering the offense so far, all of which are areas where they are worse than last year. They have one good receiver. Their offensive line has been decimated by injuries. They have gotten almost nothing out of Warren due to injury. Warren was a huge part of what production they did have last season.

I don't think Smith is some offensive genius, but he is at least a competent offensive coordinator. Canada was not.

 

I even question if Pickens is worth a damn at this point? Sure, he's shown flashes at times, but he really hasn't been much of a factor as you'd like him to be. Something is seriously wrong when your #1 receiver still doesn't have a TD catch after 5 games.

 

You are definitely experiencing 'the grass is greener on the other side of the fence syndrome '.

Smith has slowly been expanding the playbook and you do see adjustments during the game. Canada used the try harder to make my terrible plan work strategy.

 

They should make Harris a tight end and Warren and Patterson the 1 and 2 rbs when they get back.

He can block. He has good hands on a pass. When not running into a wall of defenders, he gets solid yards. That is a tight end.

 

I am starting to think that Pickens has a pre-game ritual that includes a step for deciding on what childish and immature things he will do today.

 

How much of that is teams being able to roll coverage his way because no other receiver on the team scares them?

 

Well, blame Khan for not getting a competent #2 to help Pickens out. I'm tired of hearing about how great Khan is when he's done nothing to improve the 2nd most important position besides QB.

 

Everything can't be fixed in a year or two when it was as bad on the roster as it was for us. Roman was supposed to be the first step in fixing the receiver issue, but he got hurt.

I predict that next draft will be a QB first, then a wr..... Unless they determine that fields can be the guy. In that case we will go wr first, and again around 4th

 

Harris isn't big enough to be a TE, they already have like 4-5 TEs on the roster.

 

Or the QB doesn't see him open

 

Really they have Muth and sometimes Washington. The others are just brought in to block sometimes. Muth is the only guy that regularly does the job of a TE. I think the normal progression for fields is Pickens, Muth, Harris. Or swap Harris and Muth when in trouble.

 

The Qb play is still bad. Give any OC a bad QB and you're not going to see consistent results. The main difference between this offense and last year's offense is that we have a QB that can run for 1st downs....and we initially had a good o-line.

this offense even with a bad QB has actually had better results vs last year. I'd love to see us run this offense with a QB that could read a defense past 5 yards

 

You forgot Connor Heyward. He's caught a few passes this year... one was a TD.

 

Steelers scoring 1 point per game more than last year ------

 

They also have Pruitt and Heyward at TE.

 

The o line injuries make it hard to tell. He could be worse if we get a couple lineman back and still cant run or pass protect. I blame the head coach for this mess and front office for being horrible at drafting o lineman and spending all of our salary cap on an overrated defense that cant stop anybody when it really matters.

 

at some point you have to look at the players. you have one playmaker that is a lazy scumbag. about it. QB is average at best. your number 1 draft pick looks to run into defenders instead of a crease.

 

They're drafting OL in the middle of the first round or later, they have done alright considering they aren't using top 10 picks.