Playing down to the competition

We're 6-2 AFTER the bye week since Ben's rookie season (2004). The losses were Sunday night games out west (go figure). Close losses at San Diego and Denver. Our Halloween beatdown of The Brady Bunch was after a bye.

We are 4-1 after the bye week under Tomlin with the only loss coming at Invesco by a field goal. I think that's the game I won $1,500. I laid down a $20 parlay bet on eight teams and took the Steelers laying 3 1/2. It cam down to that Monday night game, it was tied late, Elam was going to kick, and I knew if he made it that 1.) The Steelers lost but 2.) I won my $1,500 parlay. I was hoping for 3.) That he missed the kick and they went into OT and the Steelers scored and won so I got the best of both worlds but, and I feel guilty saying it, I actually kinda smiled a little when that Elam kick went through the uprights.

 

I have often wandered in the pro game how this can happen, but it does.
Aren't these guys suppose to be proffessional? So when you have a Bruce Gradkowski
maul your supposedly highly ranked defense into submission and lose to the lowly ranked
Oakland Raiders, what gives? this is why I quit betting on football. On paper it doesn't compute?
I guess that is were the phrase came, (thats why they play the games.)

 

The Raiders were leading 10-7 at halftime against the Dolphins. The 85 °F temps coupled with 80% humidity seemed to beat down the Raiders players in the second half as much as the Dolphins did. They won't have that problem this week playing at home so they could possibly play better.

 

To all these, "we have this record after this and that record after that posts" I say, good work on the research. On Monday night they said Matt Ryan had x wins, second most to begin a career behind Joe Flacco. :bs: So we have two Dan Marino's here. Well, that's not even a fair comparison. Marino at least won an AFC Championship at this point in his career. Stats can certainly give a clue as to who may win a game, but they don't tell the whole story. Playing down to the competition is an appropriate thread discussion because the Steelers at times do play down to the competition. During the Tomlin era, there have been few games, where the game was decided at the beginning of the 4th quarter. Many times to inferior teams (recall the 5 game stretch in 2009). I'm hoping this is one of them, with Ben throwing 4-5 tds and Palmer throwing 4-5 picks. raying:

 

i'm not so sure that we play down , it's the competition that plays up to us.

 

that's not the league norm though. alot of teams come out flat after the bye for some reason. thanks for doing the footwork on us. :hello: there's no time like the present to start to turn the west coast losses around.

i just want to see us do good in all phases this week , not great but good, solid. we should be healed and fresh after the bye, but man it's a long way home from there.

 

that's not the league norm though. alot of teams come out flat after the bye for some reason. thanks for doing the footwork on us. :hello: there's no time like the present to start to turn the west coast losses around.

i just want to see us do good in all phases this week , not great but good, solid. we should be healed and fresh after the bye, but man it's a long way home from there.
[/quote:lgeovrnz]

Yeah, I wasn't throwing those numbers out there to dispute you or anything. Your "most teams come out flat after the bye" piqued my interest so I wanted to see how we performed. I went all the way back to 1990 (and found that we're pretty much a .500 team after the bye) but didn't really feel that how we performed after a bye week under Cowher was relevant to this team so I withheld the numbers for that.

Does anybody remember us having a season (1993) with two bye weeks? I don't. Was it a one-season experiment or some sort of in-season incident that caused that or something? I'm not remembering this.

 

Yeah, I wasn't throwing those numbers out there to dispute you or anything. Your "most teams come out flat after the bye" piqued my interest so I wanted to see how we performed. I went all the way back to 1990 (and found that we're pretty much a .500 team after the bye) but didn't really feel that how we performed after a bye week under Cowher was relevant to this team so I withheld the numbers for that.

Does anybody remember us having a season (1993) with two bye weeks? I don't. Was it a one-season experiment or some sort of in-season incident that caused that or something? I'm not remembering this.[/quote:1ybo9ey7]

i wasen't saying that as a dispute either, i had heard that number or percentage league wide several years ago and knew the winning percentage was down after the bye. we have been pretty good under MT. cowher had several and alot of people forget that under cowher we had several seasons of slow starts out of the gate. i can honestly say i don't remember two byes. i wouldn't mind one about week 10 again.

 

the first half of the game today ...this is a prime examlpe of how i say the steelers play down to the level of the competition.. we rarely ever blow a team out.. we make the worst team in FB lok competitive if not good... hopefully it changes in the second half but i doubt it .. we just dont have the killer instinct

HINES

 

I don't think we're good at perhaps many of our fans would like to think we are.

We don't have an offense that'll put up 40+pts and can score at any time like Green Bay, Detroit, New England, New Orleans, etc . . . so I don't know where the points are going to come from in these 'blowouts' everyone wants.
We are, once again, working with a patchwork offensive line.
We're working with a patchwork backfield.
Our d-line is old and what youth is there hasn't really 'arrived' yet.
Harrison's health is a major concern.
Our ILB's are average.
We don't have a second starting corner (and our first looks awful at times).
Polamalu misses a lot of games and his backup is terrible.

Don't know why we think we're blowing out any team in this league.

 

Remember the days prior to Tomlin when we would get a lead then grind out the clock with a power running game? Tomlin's mind set is all we need is 1 point more than the other team, looks like playing down to the competition is becoming contageous with 2 yards and a puff of dust running game, poor clock management, penitles, poor fundamantals and tackling. The Steelers have regressed under Tomlin, take the microphone away and he is an average coach.

 

We always do

 

I think that's every coach's mindset . . .

 

This is really getting to be a bad habit for this organization.

 

I can't wait untli we play Brady and the Patriots. The Steelers will probably put 49 points on the board and completely dominate from the initial kick off. Against the Stains though, we will lose 9-6.

 

I honestly don't believe that we are playing down to the competition. I am of the opinion that we are just as bad as the Titans. Just because we have an "elite" qb and a couple of good wr's it doesn't mean we're a good TEAM. Look at how crappy of a blocker Mike Wallace is. To play as a TEAM is what we did when we had Hines. Hines didn't have to have his number called to give it his all on a play. He would block and lay people out. Is Wallace gonna do that? Also just because we have 2 former defensive players of the year doesn't make us a good TEAM. I don't even feel like we are playing as a team because each guy has his hands full just doing his own job and therefore can't cheat over to help someone else. A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. Our defense is only as good as Ike and Keenan are.