The BIG BIG ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM!!!!!

Cortez Allen, we should find out soon
what the Steelers plan to do. Should be interesting. Do we cut him? LOL.
This is a large question mark going forward.

 

Big season for Cortez. Can he take the pacifier out and become a reliable starter? Or is another meltdown in the cards.
They gave him the dough the night before the start of the season and then... The brass will give him another shot after giving
him the contract. I hope he can turn it around and contribute. But, maybe the starter spotlight is not Allen's strength. He was replaced by a corner that was rated one of the worst in the NFL and played pretty well. He falters and Blake will step in until one of the draft picks can start. Hope he rebounds but I don't have a positive feeling...

 

I thought this was going to be another thread about Jim's mother in law.

Ah well. I'm not sure Cortez is an elephant in the room, as there's been plenty of speculation about him. The fact is that we don't know what's going on - how can a player who gets steadily better in his first few seasons, enough to warrant a big contract (even taking other considerations aside, like losing Lewis, it was still a big thumbs up from the FO), have such a massive drop off in his play? Was there an injury? Was it mental? We'll only really know when he takes the field again.

 

i think blake, allen, webb will want to show they belong. webb may have alot more than first thought and will want to show he belongs too. i'd love for two of these guys to step up and put willie back to nickle.

 

I think Allen will be fine. Probably just into his own head last year. Time to man up and ball young fella...

 

Yes, we're so flush at the CB position and just paid him a bonus, so we can really afford to cut him loose.

Cortez has the tools, so hopefully he can turn it around this year. I believe he can.

 

Wait I thought the elephant in the room was Cam Thomas?

 

Hope you right, but if it's mental in his own head, that is harder to get rid of then if it was an injury that made him play so bad. Agree time to man up but I don't have the faith you got in him. We shall see soon enough.

 

Hopefully the coaches blinders come off in camp or someone steps up and takes his void.

 

no allen is , between the sb and the roster bonus he already took for the last year 9 milion
camthomas is a dead elephant

 

Wait..........aren't we talking about overweight Woodley again?

 

Hate to say it because he's one of my favorite Steelers, but I think the big elephant in the room may be Carnell Lake if he doesn't start to develop some of the young defensive backs the Steelers FO has supplied him. Shamarko and Cortez haven't developed, Mitchell regressed and Shaquille Richardson, Terry Hawthorne and other young DBs barely had a cup of coffee with the team. I'm not saying it's all Lake, but his unit has been a disappointment over the last few seasons and I really thought Lake may be on the fast track to becoming a DC, if not with the Steelers then with some other team. I'm not so sure I still feel that way.

 

Fair enough. I'm certainly not ready to kick him to the curb, but it would be nice to see Shamarko and Cortez show significant improvement this year, along with any DBs we draft.

 

That's not an elephant. It's been talked about to death. He absolutely won't be cut, and for good reason. All we can do is wait and see if he rebounds from last season. I think he will (hard to get worse than that!), but whether it will ever be enough to take on #1 receivers, I don't know.

 

In all seriousness if you look back at the season and what had to transpire, I think that Cortez Allen became the unfortunate recipient of complete beat down by other teams. Schematically he was made the goat and to a lesser degree so was Mitchell. I went back and was looking at numbers and scoring drives a week or so ago and the fact that early on the weren't stopping the run, guys weren't maintaining their gaps, over running plays, breaking contain, it made Lebeau make a hard choice. Now people want to say he allowed Polamalu to freelance and that killed them. I disagree I think they made the choice to play Troy closer to the line in run support which put Mitchell on an island in center field and also exposed Allen to the point of his being taken to task by every opposing QB they faced until he was benched. Everything they do is based off of stuffing the run and forcing the pass, then getting pressure and forcing bad decisions. I think if they ease off the run under Butler a slight bit and play a more traditional cover two, Cortez Allen will rebound somewhat but he has a lot of mental stuff to work through.

 

I thought this was about my mother in law too. She is huge! I let her bounce on our trampoline and she got stuck in the air. (ok, I stole that from Larry the Cable Guy) As for Allen I have a suspicion that he will be good this year. The kid has it in him!

 

So the Steelers are going to pay 25 mill over a 4 to 5 year span to keep a #4 possibly #5 CB?I think C. Allen better find his game real quickly.

 

Do you pay a guy 25 million for this? I think not.

 

what is more confusing is why worilds was then in coverage more than ever and so was timmons and spence and williams. mitchell also made a ton of tackles in the run game.

for as good as heyward and tuitt are at getting to the qb, they are not near as good against the run. throw in cam Thomas and our DE's need to pick up the run stuffing pace. we have been depending on our db's to support the run for the last two years. troy included. by choice or by design, but it has hurt our backend and corners in pass defense.

worilds stunk against the run, jj was getting better against the run but then got hurt, we may have to draft less for pass rush by our olb and more for run support, allowing our safeties to actually play the pass more. keeping at least timmons up for run support and allow shazier to help with pass coverage.

we also need a ball hawking safety on the backside supporting the pass instead of the run.

if you remember will allen, not because he is such a good cover safety, but because of scheme made a difference when he was teamed up with a corner in a high low scheme. that made two guys shutting down one side of the field, but we had nobody good enough to shut down the other side or the over the top help. dropping lb'ers was the only option they had to try to do that because of troys limitations and our corners being unable to do it alone.

add the inability to stop the run at the line and it did a few things. 1. got everyone out of their normal position against the run. 2. allowed teams to go over the top against guys that shouldn't have been covering that far down field. 3. took away pass rush pressure. 4. made db's have to watch for the run too much.

 

Well put Mac.