The Steelers secondary woes

I have been posting on here about this for the last 3-4 years, they will never win #7 until they upgrade the talent in the secondary. Will Allen and Antwan Blake have no business being starters. I wasn't a fan of the Shazier pick at all it wasn't their most pressing need. Another blunder the drafting of Dri Archer a wasted luxury pick, when they should've addressed the secondary. They tried to add talent in the last draft but still couldn't get it right, Golson is on IR Grant has been on the practice squad and Holliman was cut before the season . This is my rant on the crappy secondary.

 

And Grant was on the practice squad AFTER BEING CUT BY THE STEELERS. The secondary is a train wreck!

 

Agree that the secondary is the weak spot right now, but the wheels are in motion to seriously get it fixed.

I saw it happen first with the OL in the 2000's, when we were starting guys like Starks, Kemo, Colon, and Mahan, etc. We all knew it was a weak spot and that it needed to be fixed. We all got pissed when they didn't do it quickly enough. Then things fell right, we drafted Pouncey, Gilbert, Adams, and DeCastro all high within a short time period, and with growth and good coaching our line is good to go now.

After the OL they shifted focus to the LB's. Timmons being the old fart and out-lier, we've nabbed Jones, Shazier and Dupree recently with high picks. Not saying they are good or bad picks, I'm just saying a concentrated effort was made to fix the group.

Now they're on our DB's, and I think Mitchell was the start of the overhaul, with Golson the next step. This offseason I suspect we'll see at least another 1st or 2nd round pick on the DB's and maybe even another FA signing. Upgrades are coming. We just need our strengths to not bury their heads in the sand until the DB's get up to speed. By then, we'll be complaining about our weak WR's or the next position group to be neglected.

 

So we thought their was going to be a shake up right? Enter Boykin, put Gay on the outside, possibly replacing Allen with Golden. Here is a quote from Cockrell:

“Nothing changed in my role, and I didn't see much change in anybody else's role during practice,” Cockrell said. “It pretty much seemed to be the same.”

WTF? Yes those in reality know the secondary has been neglected over the years. Would Boykin be a savior? I don't believe so but why not TRY to find out? HOW can you put Blake back on the field as a STARTER? Give him a chance to rebound? Haven't we ALL have seen enough???? And i'm not in the film room. What does any of these coaches see that justifies not sitting him only using him on dime when needed? Unbelievable....

Here's the quote again if it hasn't sunk in:

“Nothing changed in my role, and I didn't see much change in anybody else's role during practice,” Cockrell said. “It pretty much seemed to be the same.”

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I was thinking about this earlier. If I were a betting man, I would bet the mortgage that Blake will be the starter on Sunday night! If there aren't at least two new starters in the secondary on the field to start that game Sunday night, Tomlin has lost any semblance of credibility he may have had with me and I don't want to hear the word 'accountability' come out of his mouth ever again!

 

“(Blake) had some difficulties in the game from a tackling perspective,” Tomlin said. “I think you can say the same about Ross Cockrell. We’re going to give both guys an opportunity to rebound, but we’re also going to look at other options this week, because that’s the prudent and appropriate thing to do.”

Maybe the Wednesday practice was their (Blake/Cockrell) chance to rebound, and today they'll look at the other options. I'll hold judgment until Sunday night. That's when we'll see if anything really changed.

 

GB_Steel, so you haven't seen enough Of Blake? Rebound from what? Blake's body of work speaks for itself.

 

And I'll bet Blake and Cockrell looked like the second coming of Blount and Woodson in practice this week.

Does Tomlin really believe that Blake only had problems from a "tackling perspective"? What about from a "coverage perspective" coach?!

 

For me, the problem pick in all of this has been Shamarko. Had he developed in the way we all wanted him to (based on his early work - hard hitting, ferocious, competitive etc.), then I think the secondary looks better. If you look at the big TDs we've given up, often there's a mistake from the safety going on somewhere.

We saw the same thing in Troy's last year or two as well. So I have a big question as to why we haven't addressed strong safety more urgently. At the same time, I agree with GB_Steel, in that we will likely see a big emphasis in the drafts from here on. And while we can all despair of why we keep picking LBers, the fact is we now have a fairly strong corps there (even with Shazier's injuries).

We can get on Blake's case, and rightly so. But we also won two superbowls without any gamechanging CBs - the supporting cast meant they just had to be solid enough. This year, that philosophy has been exposed, because of weak safety play (even though I admit Mitchell has improved), and the likes of Blake being asked to do a hell of a lot more as a result.

That's not a defense of Blake, though. His play has been abysmal this season, make no mistake.

 

I've seen enough of Blake as a starter this year. A trip to the bench may be what he needs at this point in order to either get his mind right or his body healed.

I wanted to provide a possible reason (Tomlin's quote) for why changes weren't immediately made on the first practice back. I wouldn't be shocked to see Blake practice all week only to be supplanted by Boykin in the actual game.

 

Tomlin was considered as a top prospect secondary coach when he hired on with the Steelers and for the most part the secondary has been very disappointing. You would think that he would address the concern in the draft but I guess he lets Colbert make the ultimate personnel decisions.

 

I think he has been letting him and he best stop...We need DB'S and we need them bad ....If not him and Colbert might be looking for work very soon...

 

I wonder if there's maybe a bit too much faith in our coaches to turn sub-par players into HOFers.

However, that said, I think there were other needs being addressed in previous drafts (there isn't half the amount of complaints about the d-line of late that there has been in recent seasons, for example). The secondary is clearly the last part of the team to be addressed, but at the same time, they did draft 3 DBs in the last draft, and sign/trade for vets - not that the results were great - and I fully expect more to be picked this coming draft.

 

May have already been mentioned , Grant is on the 53 man active roster.

 

Blake is gonna rebound us right out of a shot at the playoffs. Tomlin should shake it up and try something else but he won't. Obviously, he's stubborn. Obviously.

 

I realize that and may not have expressed myself clearly. The point I was trying to make is that Grant was actually cut from the team prior to being signed to the PS. The beat goes on with our lack of success in drafting CBs.

 

I'm not saying we have A+ talent back there, but wouldn't these observations/facts, and that it's happening with different personnel, speak to poor coaching? I believe this falls under the "fool me once..." principle.

 

There is more problems with our secondary than just tackling. Receivers are too open too many times. Sometimes the corners are nowhere in site, let alone that the safeties are never there to help over the top.

When you looked at Seatle's secondary and saw Bryant on the deep balls the safety was usually always there to help. When is the last time you saw our safeties help out and be in the right position to help the corners. They are either too slow, or slow in reaction or just confused.

 

Maybe the rebound being mentioned is after someone(front 7) else misses a shot at a tackle????

 

I'd like to go back and compare secondary alignments. Maybe playing less of a cushion and getting a jam buys the safety as well as the front 7 more time to adjust and attack?

 

Maybe our guys are just having a hard time grasping the whole "obvious " strategy of leaving your man wide open. It might take a few more years to unlearn the skill of actually being in the same zip code as your man that they've been taught since Pee Wee leagues......hmmm.

 

Or they are caught looking into the backfield and guessing run only to cheat towards the line and being out of position. I can rarely remember them using two deep safety coverage lately more using Allen and Mitchell in run support as the overload blitz and have gaps in run coverage.

 

I'm assuming we are going to see 2 pretty high picks in the secondary. The talent isn't too awesome back there now, but we do have 2 pretty nice players in Mitchell and Gay to start with. We are sorely in need of a young starting SS and probably another CB. Someone mentioned it earlier, but every time we have a particularly weak spot it gets addressed. I think it's the secondary's turn now.

I'm not worried about Boykin at this point. If he was any good he'd be in by now, so I'm not really waiting for him to get in the game.

As for the cushion... We need it. Our scheme and type of CB dictate that we have it. I'll never understand why people think pressing the receivers will all of the sudden change everything. We run too much cover 3 for the press. Maybe we will see more of it if we keep gravitating towards the cover 2, but I don't think we will. Until we start drafting a different type of CB, we won't see consistent press.