2 of 14 runs were successful

Using the Football Outsiders metric discussed in other threads. Prior to the game in his interview with Labriola, Tomlin said it would be stupid to run against the Bengals 5 and 6 DL fronts they use to answer offensive heavy sets.

The 12 failed runs? All against the Bengals' heavy set.

This team has a very low football IQ.

 

Duhhhhhhhhhh

 

I think Harris had at least 5 successful runs but most of them were negated by holding calls. There was one where he was visibly dejected because he knew the OL had another penalty

 

Help me out here what is your point? Did they use heavy sets in response to the Bengals defensive alignment or did the Bengals use their 5 and 6 man heavy fronts in response to the Steelers offensive alignment. Either way misdirection and play action should have been able to chase them out of those. The Vikings yesterday showed heavy run 2 TE and Fb formation single wr and when Seattle bit on it Cousins did a 1 step drop and hit his wr on a quick slant to move the chains.

Steelers ran the bunch formation with 2 TE's and Claypool and did a frigging bubble screen. Run the route tree one seals inside one seals outside and you make thei nickel or safety play man up on maple syrup.

 

That was the one where the hold was basically the defender chicken winging his guy right?

 

I don’t recall the specific. I was as dejected as Najee to see another flag because I knew it was coming back

 

Tomlin was saying it's dumb to use heavy sets to run vs. the Bengals, and then proceeded to do just that on 12 of 14 runs. Only two successful Najee runs were out of 11-personnel.

 

Manning and Marvin Harrison ran route trees before a game. JuJu and Claypool work on a tic tic video while Ben has an ice pack on an elbow

 

Yes I got that but it's unclear if you are coming at it as the Bengals put their 5 and 6 man fronts out there first and the Steelers still tried heavy run formations when they saw the defense or are you saying the Steelers used heavy runs formations and the Bengals response was 5 or 6 man fronts jumbo run staffers. One is a reaction the other is a cause. If the Steelers went heavy and the Bengals reacted then yeah Tomlin didn't follow his own advice. I guess either way it was a failure by Tomlin and Ben to not change things and exploit the mismatch. Perfect time for a true hurry up to catch the Bengals beefy guys on the field and force them to burn a timeout.

 

Do you understand the reference? I realized after the fact that not everybody is a hockey fan. Basically the defender had his hand on the front collar of one of the lineman jersey and while trying to move toward the play he is making it look like he is being held when he is the one holding. Guys do it in hockey when they feel a guy's stick under their arm they will tighten their elbow around the blade "chicken wing" and draw a hooking call.

 

Actually Claypool plays catch with kids in the stands clearly he is not focused on football.

 

Not surprised....... I read that Najee Harris has been hit in the backfield on 70 percent of his runs so far

 

That's what I thought I saw too. once you call those back, you influence the game and the way they're trying to block things up, to try and avoid those calls.

Also the Bengals were doing a lot of the grab and turn on those cut-back runs. They call a few of those and you put them in the same position to try and make up ground.