Missed Opportunities

That defines this season from my perspective. I can blow the first game in Baltimore off as it being the Ravens Super Bowl combined with a Super Bowl hangover for our guys. I can even accept the Houston loss. They were a good team who had AJ not been hurt during the game, we wouldn't even have been close.

The 2 which will haunt me are last night and the home game against Baltimore.

Last night, this team appeared to have spent the week hoping Ben would be able to play and not doing any planning, and I mean ANY. What were we trying to accomplish last night on offense. Can someone tell me? Anyone? Was the goal to throw slants since Ben couldn't plant? Was the goal to run the ball back to Legursky at the line of scrimmage? We ran 63 plays...63! We scored 3 points. Yep, Ben through for 300 yards. 300 meaningless yards. This is where we get back to the fact that BA argues his offense is good because they put up a lot of yardage. Last time I looked, it was points that mattered, not yardage. Just for you stat junkies:

Steelers: Yardage - 12th, Scoring - 22nd

Green Bay: Yardage - 4th, Scoring - 1st
Philadelphia: Yardage - 3rd, Scoring - 9th (They are 6-8)

Home against Baltimore just bothers me because of what it means right now, even if we lost last night. We would be 11-3. Balt. would be 9-5. One win by us would clinch the division and 2 would give us the #1 overall seed, even if we sucked like we did last night.

 

Just go back over several games and see how many times we have failed when we get on the other team's side of the ball. Last week, Hines fumbles inside the 20, Miller fumbles inside the 10, 4 shots from the one and nothing, etc. How many times last night we had drives going but failed when we got on the other side of the 50. We just can't finish. Bad play calling and bad execution. We have no screen game and are way to predictable when we get down there. Frustrating to say the least

 

Then you should do the same for last night's game. Similar to that 1st Baltimore game you won't beat any team in the NFL by turning the ball over 4 times. Teams that lose the turnover battle lose the game 80% of the time no matter who they are or what kind of offensive game plan they have.

 

I can't do it. The team had EVERYTHING to play for last night...and they didn't show up. Poor.

 

Not necessarily. You say "They" didn't show up but one guy and one guy alone was responsible for those 4 turnovers. He gets an A for guts and grit but unfortunately an F- for performance. We were the walking wounded last night playing a playoff team with the #1 D in their house. Vince Lombardi himself could have given the Steelers the pre game pep talk last night and it wouldn't have made any difference.