Mean Joe not pleased with offense

Great read from one of my favorite Steelers:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12035/1208112-66.stm

 

Great article. I'm really glad that someone had enough heart to come out and say what he said. It was the truth and needed to be said. Mean Joe is a HOF and great defensive player. He knows something about whats going on out their on the field. He said that it was hard to watch the offense out their on the field last year. God knows that was the truth. Watching it made you want to screem. Not only last year, but since Bruce Arians was the OC. Enough was enough and I'm glad ART II stepped up and did the right thing because Arians had done enough damage to the organization with his tired philosophy.

Now its time to move on. ART II has stated that Ben must change the way he has been doing thing so that he might stay healthy. Lets hope that the new OC will work with Ben so that he will get rid of the ball quicker and make smart decisions. Hopefully our run game will become dominant which will help the passing game. They should get better in the red zone by creating good solid game plans that will run the ball when required and pass it when its required.

Arians is gone and we can proceed into the future with our new OC!

 

Great article!

Joe saw the flaws and the problems. Going forwar, who is the best potential OC to solve these? Perhaps he should be an OC assistant, since he is aware of the defensive tendencies.

 

This is just sad, a defensive lineman can see the problem we had with our OC but our head coach couldn't see it. Seriously, what on earth is Tomlin doing? If he isn't prepared to be a head coach he should get out of the way so someone else can make the tough decisions. Tomlin was hired to make the tough decisions like changing coordinators, that responsibility shouldn't have to fall to Rooney.

 

Couple of things which I see in the article which stick out:

"Greene, who attends training camp with the rest of the scouts for at least the first two weeks, said the commitment to run should start there, and he did not see that."

Well you can be pretty sure that if Greene saw it DL saw it. As much as we have talked about concern that Ben will buy in, I now am worried that Tomlin won't buy in. I hope he has had some discussions with the Rooney's.


The second Part:

"That means you have to practice it, that's the thing... "And there is always a weakness in a defense for the run, but you have to be able to look for it. You don't just call the run because you get tired of throwing it or because someone wants you to."

Wow! That to me is very, very telling about how the FO, Colbert and Rooney in particular, were looking at this past season. What does this quote say about Arians. IMO this:

1. We weren't practicing the run the way we should.
2. The FO understood that BA was running the ball with no purpose. He wasn't trying to expose a weakness. He wasn't trying to set up some other play. He wasn't trying to get 4 yards and a pile of dust even. The FO believed he ran the ball because he was told to or because he had already thrown it 7 times in a row, he was trying to keep the D honest.

WOW!! Why did play action not work for us? Because you can't do play action from the shotgun formation....

I would LOVE to see the "shotgun" stats. What percentage of times that we passed did we line up in the shotgun? How many times when lines up in the shotgun did we pass?


Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12035/12 ... z1lQ3tgwqj

 

what hurts is everyone saw it, fans, owners, players, everyone but the OC, head coach and qb.

 

Was Mean Joe Greene behind the BA firing?

I love what Mean Joe says in the attached article and he's exactly right on the money. Hmmm. Maybe he called Rooney and "urged" him to fire BA. I mean, think about it. If Mean Joe Greene calls and says fire the guy, wouldn't you fire the guy? Yeah. That's what I thought.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12035/1208112-66-0.stm

 

Re: Was Mean Joe Greene behind the BA firing?

Man, I don't know. One of 'The Fan' shows had a radio interview with Joe Greene on y'day. I don't know the reason why. The guy sounded terrible. Maybe he was just tired, maybe he was under the weather. But after listenting to him it sounded to me like they were interviewing an 85-yr old man whose faculties weren't all there. I'm not aware the Joe has any health problems, but ex-players his age all too often have them. Frankly, I surprised by his lack of lucidity, temporary as it may be.

Maybe, I caught him on a bad day or am reading too much into this. But he sure didn't sound like a guy I'd take too much advice from.

 

Dont know if he was behind it but you can bet the Rooneys listened to him. Maybe this article is a fire back at BA and his recent article bout how 'great' he was.

MJG is one of my favs and that still hasnt changed.

 

I think the OC, head coach, and QB saw it, they just thought better "execution" was what was needed to correct the situation - they all bought into the same philosophy. And execution was what was needed - the OC needed to be executed.

 

I agree with everything you said, with the one exception. Ask Ike Taylor and Ryan Mundy if you can't run play action from the shotgun.

 

Isn't honesty refreshing, no matter where it comes from? I'm glad Greene said what he said.

 

Okay, you can't run the play action with a QB who doesn't really run.

Just one more thing...why don't we ever put Ben on the move with intent. No roll outs...ever.

 

I think it can work anyway. Denver is special, but normally the threat is the running back running, not the QB running. The 49ers do it all the time, and although Alex Smith can run, he only actually kept the ball like 2 or 3 times all year long.

To me our problem is that defenses already know we don't want to run. It's common knowledge. So if BA puts a guy in there next to Ben, they know he won't get it. Not that it matters, because he mostly didn't even put a guy in there and let Ben be a sitting duck. If our new OC has a genuine interest in being balanced, this will change.

 

Agree, and MJG doesn't usually go public with his critiques.

 

I was just watching the 2005 AFCCG against Denver. The offense was night and day different, in terms of execution and imposing its will on an opponent. Yes, this is just one game, and yes Whiz didn't always call good games, but you can just see in the execution that there was a mindset and a principle behind what the offense was doing. Ben looked great. Three steps back and out came the ball--and to open receivers. They had the Broncos D on their heels.

 

Just a quick analysis of 1 game where our offense stunk. San Francisco.

We lined up in the shotgun 55 times.
We ran the ball out of the shotgun 6 times.
We lined up for 80 plays not including punts and FG attempts.

That works out to about 68% of the game we lined up in the shotgun formation. Now, granted there were some factors which may have affected this, Ben's injured foot, being behind all game, when the possessions were, but really 55 of 80? San Fran. knew we weren't going to run the ball, they had to. We only ran the ball 19 times or just under 20% of the game. This was not a balanced game. Now, you can say we were behind the whole game, but we lined up for 14 plays and were in the shotgun 8 times. We were only behind 3-0 at the end of the first. This was the gameplan, not a result of being behind.

 

"Greene blamed the Steelers loss Nov. 6 to Baltimore on the offense's inability to run the clock with the lead."

That is exactly right - when we really needed a 1st down on 3rd & short, we didn't have the heart to run it down their throats & get the 2 yards. If I'm wrong, maybe I'm confusing this game & scenario with too many others in the last several seasons - including the last SB.

 

If I were conducting the search for the next OC the interview would all hinge on one question. "Do you think BA was a good OC?" The answer to that question would either begin or end the interview. I think that is probably the way the Rooney's would start it too. Man I love Mean Joe so much!

 

Sir, that was a good one about how the interview would start. I'll answer the question for you. If the guy said yes BA was a good OC, the interview would be over. Thank you very much for your brief time but no thanks this interview is over!!!!!

And yes, everybody else knew what the situation was but the OC, HC, and Ben. Arians let Ben do what he wanted to do and Tomlin stood by and let it happen. There were so many good comments on this post. One person said that they watched the 2005 AFCCG against denver and the offense had purpose. Whisenhunt was the OC, and yes he was a good OC, better then Arians. BA had so many flaws until it was sickening, to many to list, I won't go into that. The Colts will soon find out. I bet BA will have the rookie Luck throwing the ball all over the yard. If he is sucessful, like rookie of the year like Cam Newton, will there be any questions in your minds about BEN?

 

In between the Lines says many things.

MJG is a special asst. Just what is his responsiblities? Is he the eyes and ears to Art ll.? Some-one he has full trust in?

Bruce was told by Art we need to run the ball more. Bruce should have known more meant more better. MJGs analysis was spot on as expected. I've said many time Bruce's Playing wasn't bad when broken down in overall ratios, it was bad in situational football. And everything starts on the practice field. Sorry, I'm wrong, its starts with committment and planning then the prac. field.

The 1st game showed just how unpreparred we were, The cleveland game showed it was a continuing unresolved issue. Bruce took the fall but make no mistake,Tomlin is on notice. He's the greatest sounding NFL coach with his cliches( clee-shays ) but the Org wants more than talk, they want results and Tomlin is point man. Why didn't Tomlin have the Team better prepared and if not at the begining of the season then how about into the season. 21st in scoring is unacceptable no matter what so why did Tomlin want Bruce back? Why didn't Tomlin do his job instead of Art ll having to step in and say we ain't paying for THIS crap, no contract.

Cajun-