The more things change ... the more things remain the same.

We got very lucky yesterday in pulling out that win. If not for the special teams turnover and some great play by Rodgers that game isn’t close.

We have the highest paid defense in the league and we brought in ton of veterans to address the problems primarily run defense, pass defense and offensive line.

We have been working on correcting the offensive line for multiple years. I know it takes some time but at what point do you say they have had enough time to develop? I have heard all of the excuses for Broderick Jones, we were playing him out of position, we were moving him around to much, just get back to his natural position like as if playin less than one full season at LT in college constitutes that being his natural position. Bottom line. He isn’t ready and we don’t have the staff to develop him. Also I’m about done with Seamalu as well. He was highly touted coming in here and he has done nothing but regress when he is available. Im tired of seeing him get blown back on run plays and miss assignments in pass blocking. Enough about the olivine though it is evident to me at least we need better coaching here and Tomlin and his stubborn loyalty refuses to upgrade the coaching here. Maybe he will learn when Rodgers gets injured.

Here are my questions from yesterday.

Use of personnel -

1. Why is Darnell Washington on the sideline and not lined up next to Jones on every play helping him in pass protection?

2. Why are we staring Gainewell over Warren? It seems like ever since Smith became the OC Warren has regressed. I feel like he doesn’t trust Warren. It is clear to me Warren is a better RB than Gainwell. He is a better runner and he is just as good of a receiver. He sis significantly better at pass protection. Gainwell missed a block yesterday resulting in sack.

3. Why are we putting our 3rd best cb on the opponents #1 wr? Slay didn’t have a great game but put your guys in position to succeed. It is maddening how we play defense often rarely positioning our guys to succeed. Were so darn married to the scheme even when the scheme doesn’t align with our personnel.

4. How many free agent acquisitions and draft picks are we going to spend on the offensive line to fix the pass protection and the run game before we realize the common denominator that is and has been holding us back is the coaching. The Raven drafted Rosengarten behind Fautanu and he was an inferior talent to Fautanu in college on the same team yet he is thriving in Baltimore. Not saying Fautanu won’t thrive here but it says something about our coaching and inability to develop players at that position. Guys like Frazier grow inspite of the coaching. How many more years of this madness before we get a real offensive line coach in here.

5. The exact same thing can be said at the inside linebacker position. How many free agent acquisitions and draft picks is it going to take before we realize this isn’t a talent issue it is a schematic and coaching issue. The Defensive line doesn’t occupy the blockers up front to keep the ILB’s clean and we prioritize those guys playing the pass over the run so they are flat footed and late to react in the run game. We play extremely conservative with those guys and rarely run blitz them through the gaps. We have two of the fastest ILB’s in the league and we don’t take advantage of their speed. Cut them loose and let them play.

6. Keeanu Benton - When are we going to stop experimenting with Benton at NT. The guy was on his back how many times yesterday. We either need to get bigger Interior DT’s and ask them to occupy multiple blockers to protect our smallish athletic ILB’s or we need to get bigger ILB’s that are capable of shedding blocks. You can’t have it both ways with gap penetrating D-Lineman and smallish ILB’s. If you do we will always have a problem stopping the run. As it is right now the way we are built at minimum you can’t have the ILB’s staying back playing flat footed. One of them has to be moving forward at the stop jumping the gap and utilizing their speed.

* You look at the game yesterday and we played very vanilla and conservative on defense until the last drive by the Jets. You look at Fields yesterday and he played fantastic because he had a coach that believed in him and cut him loose and let him play. That all is very telling in how Tomlin continues to hold back talent and plays in his fears and is way to conservative. That conservative play sends a huge message to your players that you don’t have confidence in them.

We won in spite of ourselves yesterday because a few players played inspire of the constraints of the scheme and coaching at specific times like Ramsey or like Rodgers. If Tomlin is willing to change his ways (big if) this defense can be special. On the offensive side we are what we are you can’t fix the olin coaching now but you can put somebody in to replace Jones to hopefully upgrade the position slightly and play Washington more to help assist the Oline. But we won’t even do that.

 

Amazing post by you!

 

1. I get what you are saying. But at some point Jones is going to have to step up and prove he can be a legitimate starting tackle in this league. You can't give him help on every play without taking a receiving option away from Rodgers.

2. I didn't understand this either. I didn't expect KJ to play much. He isn't ready. Hopefully he gains some confidence and can contribute down the road. But to me Warren is clearly a better back than Gainwell.

3. The Steelers are never going to be a team that puts matchup over scheme. Their philosophy is to do what they do regardless of player matchup. I agree with you. It can be frustrating at times when your best corner is locked up on a slot guy and James freaking Pierre is covering Jamar Chase. The Steelers do attempt to lock down a player from time to time. Hopefully they do more of that now that Ramsey is here.

4. For sure. The talent is here. How much better would this line be if Munchak was here?

5. I don't disagree, but give the Jets some credit. Glenn had his team fired up and ready to play. Not playing together as unit during the preseason hurts as well.

6. I agree. I would love to see Yahya Black take over as NT and Benton rotate with Heyward and Harmon eventually. Benton reminds me a bit of Hargrave. Nice player, but nose isnt really the best fit.

I disagree with winning despite ourselves. Steelers never quit and played with emotion. These games are never going to be easy. I was pretty pleased with the effort.

 

I hear you but when a guy is struggling was bad as Jones was you have to recognize that and get him some help. He killed at least three drives in this game. It could have been alot worse ie. a turnover or injury to Rodgers. Your point #3 reads go arrogance to me on behalf of Tomlin. You can’t be stubborn to a fault. You have to adjust and adjust on the fly to put your team and your players in the best position to succeed. I didn’t say the team gave up or lacked emotion. I meant we won inspire of ourselves from a schematic and coaching standpoint. Meaning the talent on the team transcended above the coaching errors to overcompensate for poor coaching and scheme to win.

 

Thank You

 

The constant is Tomlin and how overrated he is. He couldn't do anything with Ben in his prime for a decade. Aaron isn't going to make a difference. National press is going to keep bringing up the non-losing season as a proof that he belongs in hall of fame. Tomlin and excellence does not belong in the same sentence. The sad thing is Tomlin believes his own hype and doesn't feel he needs to learn, adapt or improve.

 

What was exposed to me yesterday is that no matter who we put in at Defense the results are going to be the same. Bend but don’t break. Keep the game close and hope we make a turnover or two to win the game. We didn’t make the turnover yesterday but we had a QB that was efficient enough to make the difference. This team could be so much more if Tomlin would change up his philopshy and scheme.

 

Valid points. Ironically same could be said about both the Bills and Ravens (favorite SB projected teams) after each giving up 40 or more points last night. No D in NFL and no O (batting avg) in MLB. Strange times.

 

Maybe Led Zep is right, The song remains the same.

BTW, Good post

 

Yeah but Buffalo and Baltimore have a legit excuse they were going against good offenses. Were we?

 

For 1 day it appeared that way. Next week against Bills, probably not so much.

 

Not everyone, but a lot of these post show they don't really know what that are watching. They do the same things is so freaking funny for people that actually know what they are looking at. Our scheme , and how we attack at team, and even what type of match-ups we present has changed almost every year, and definitely has changed from DC to DC.

 

#3, I'm not really arguing with you on. I'm just saying that it is what it is. It is a case of arrogance to a fault. It's hard to see Tomlin changing his philosophy.

I will argue your last point. How many times have we lost a winnable game and blamed the coaches for the team being flat, or unprepared. Yesterday the team was engaged the whole way through. I also question some of the same philosophies you do. But at the end of the day there were no major coaching gaffs that hurt the team. I give the Jets a lot of credit. They were better than I thought they would be.

 

No other team we play this year will have had all off season to prepare for the 1st game, or a Qb that practiced against it.. This is why we see in college some teams beat teams they never could in the middle of the year.
That's why coming out with a win was awesome.
If our D still is having the same effects by week 4 , then I will be concerned.

 

Seattle has a good defense. This will be no cakewalk even though Seahawks have to travel 2,000 miles.

 

Nice post. Can you play LT too?

 

Co-signed.




You didn't touch on Tomlin's lousy clock management or dismal use of the red flag.

IMO, we should hire a specialty coach for this. Why not? I get it right 80% of the time watching on the network feed.

Teams will continue to pick on Queen is coverage. He is a minor liability.


For some OL coaching we might want to try screen passes on Jones' side of the field. The pass rushers are sure eager to beat him. Why not take advantage of his weakness and let Warren burn them.

A little football jujitsu.

Also let Rodgers cook a bit in play calling. He is a razor sharp QB. Audible once or twice a game? IMO, he better that some of the crap we call.

-JB

 

I agree I watched the SF vs Seattle game, going to be a very hard game. Seattle has old USC QB Sam Darnold, he can wing it.

 

‘absolutely agree been saying this for years! Tomlin ‘s ego is his own worst enemy. He is a motivator not strategy - he needed to outsource that 5 years ago.

 

I guess Edelman and many other former NFL players who comment that Pittsburgh is pretty vanilla and we don’t change much year after year don’t know what they are talking about.

 

In a lot of ways, this game was a real unique situation. As you said, both teams have had a long time to prepare for what was coming up on week one. In addition to that, both teams had a quarterback that was the starting quarterback for the other team last year. So both teams had some extra insight into what was expected.

Next week will be a much different game. I expect that Seattle will be looking for a Steelers team that is throwing the ball a lot more than expected. I think that we're going to go the other way and have a lot more runs. We really did not run much this week. I think we'll also see a lot more of Warren.

 

I guess a lot of those other players don't really watch Steelers games, and are actually just watching highlights of many teams since they have to cover all of them. Plus not every great player is a student of the game, nor have they played against every D we have run. Some never had to learn the game beyond their position, and the God talent they have been given.
See instead of actually forming your own opinion, you rely on what others say. Dude we don't even run the same personal against the same looks we did just when Edelman was playing , but You can believe what You want, that's your prerogative my friend.

 

I'm going to tag on with some of what you said. There is no shortage of critique about coaching fails over the past few seasons. Some people are even posting that this was the same look that we've had every other year. But was it?

In 2024, we averaged 29 passes and 30 rushes per game. While it is only one game, we had 20 rushes and 30 passes against the jets. Obviously, the sample size is far too small to have any kind of accurate conclusion. But that's a pretty significant difference from how we played last year.

Why is that? Is it just because we have Aaron rodgers? Is it because our o-line sucks? Is it because our running backs were not ready? Or, maybe it was because the Jets had a good run defense and a not so good past defense? If that's the case, I would say that as far as game prep went on this game, we may have done outstanding from a coaching aspect. A plan to not run as much might even explain why we didn't see Warren very much. Do you want to wear your rb1 out on a game where you don't plan to make running a big part of it?

If we go up against Seattle and see a significant change in the run to pass ratio, I'm really going to start believing that it's by design. And that is good coaching. Making a game plan to take advantage of the weaknesses of your opponent. Something we have not done in recent years.

You can point at a slew of things that happen in the game and say if this hit not done this, we would have lost. Maybe that's true. But yes the ball hadn't bounced the way it did on any particular play, everything after that was a different game. Other circumstances happen and might give us a different opportunity.

I am not ready to throw the coaching completely under the bus yet. Because I am seeing some things that look different this year. However, I am standing next to the o-line coach and eyeballing an approaching bus......lol

 

Butler and Austin didn't run similar schemes.

 

Our opponents have said otherwise; "They run the same defense every year"