Our current young talent

Our team is in better shape than you think. We have underachieved for nine straight years, not winning a playoff game. YES, I think we are 2 key players away from the super bowl.

They are top 12 QB, and a top 12 CB or WR. I think we just upgraded at head coach. That is a key piece.

The fact that you " maybe " we would be better with Darnold underscores your lack of football understanding.

Heck yes we would be better off.

 

I don't care that he didn't have a press conference. How he handled the situation on the way out is his business.

We will see about the rest.

I still respect Mike Tomlin and I will miss him in his role. This isn't about dislike for me at all. The vast majority of his players loved him, and with every act he performed as head coach he was doing what he believed was in the best interests of the team. It was just time and he knew it.

McCarthy has everything he needs to start the team in a new direction. Now we will see what he and the team does with it.

 

You do make up some

 

For me, the problem became that Mike Tomlin didn't know any other way to proceed than to focus on defense. Matt Canada was brought in to install his offense and then he took over as OC. That wasn't just a failure of one man. That was an epic disaster that showcased a horrible lack of understanding of how to play offensive football in the modern NFL. Eventually the mistake was corrected when they fired Canada, but far too much time had passed and much damage was done. There was zero quarterback development.

Tomlin then went after every crush he had with older quarterbacks. He couldn't help himself. Nobody can tell me that the calls to sign those quarterbacks were not 100% Tomlin requests that the team acquiesced to. He has always loved signing old players to fill holes rather than developing young talent. It became a huge weakness for him when a team should want to build something long-term by developing players but the head coach is hanging on to what he knows and doesn't adapt.

He put all his money and resources into the defense. That side of the ball has been his baby. Saying anything otherwise is simply someone not wanting to admit the obvious. The defense underperformed for years, and at some point the finger of blame points to the man that has control of the entire operation. He did the best he could while operating everything that way, but his high floor/low ceiling approach demonstrated that he couldn't take the team any further.

Time for a new path. Let's hope it leads somewhere.

 

The Pickett experiment failed so they took a chance with some older QBs and it didn't work.

 

re: It will be even more interesting to see how long fans will still defend Tomlin if the team can win a lot of games and have great success with a sixth round quarterback

FWIW, I think people will be much too busy being elated and singing the praises of the local guy if we get massive success with Howard. But that's just because that's what I'll be doing. And if it happens, then the narrative of anyone reasonable should be that the super-safe version of football Tomlin had us playing was holding a talented team back instead of dragging average talent into the playoffs.

I'm not sure what you mean by the 2nd paragraph. Personally, I didn't want to take the risk with Darnold last year because of the cost.

Re: "suffering Ben". We lived and died based no how well Ben played. That's just what happens when you have a very good QB because they take up so much of the cap. Ben is the biggest reason we won as much as we did. And he was a big reason that we lost the SB against GB, and other playoff games (e.g. Jax and Browns games).

It is was it is. He is unquestionably a 1st ballot HoF IMO (although I wonder if he'll get screwed by the new rules). And he was a very high variance player.

His most famous pass is the perfect encapsulation of what Ben was.



He could do things that other QBs just couldn't do. Which gave him the massive balls to try things other great QBs just wouldn't try.

I can't imagine many other QBs daring to throw that ball to Santonio on 2nd and goal with ~ 40 seconds left. It's 2nd down with plenty of time left for two more plays. Guys just don't throw it into triple coverage where there's alike a 3" window between getting the TD and throwing a pick in that case. But Ben had supreme (1) ability and (2) confidence.

It's the reason he could do impossible things on the field.

And it's also the reason that he has a much higher increase in his turnover rate vs. other great QBs of his generation. As was often said at the beginning of Ben's career. He was his generations Brett Favre.

And it was glorious to watch. Especially since he was on the same team as Troy for so long. Basically, the two most exciting players I've seen play football and we got to watch them play together!

Re: "people that have said and are saying that every quarterback that wasn't taken in the first couple picks of the draft wasn't worthy and that Mike Tomlin would be stuck with a substandard quarterback again"

I'm not sure what you mean here. Our problem through the post-Ben era is that we end up in the "Bills zone" (between Kelly and Allen). Where we're good enough to compete for a WC spot (especially under the new rules), but not good enough to compete to win a WC game. So we end up picking pretty late in the 1st. And the probability of finding a good QB there is bad (e.g. Kenny Pickett).

Some say we should have drafted Lamar. But I just don't think (1) we were in the market for a 1st round QB pre-Ben's injury and (2) that we would have revamped the offense like the Rats did (especially with Ben still on the roster).

I'm not sure who else we really could have drafted. Especially who else people thought would be a good call in real-time vs. in hindsight.

Re: I have to see what offensive and defensive schemes they go with. Then we need to see the talent they bring in from the draft and free agency. Things can get much worse or much better based on the approach they take, but with the amount of cap space, a roster full of young talent that is going to continue to get better, and potentially a new offense and new defense seems to point to the fact that the team isn't going to implode. There will be an adjustment period with everyone getting up to speed, but this is a team that will most likely be competing for the playoffs.

I hope that you're more right about the talent that's currently on the team than I am. I do think that we intentionally hired another high-floor coach because Rooney doesn't want to rebuild. Hopefully MM finds our next QB (or develops Howard). The odds are always against this because above average QBs are so hard to find. But I do think that MM has shown some ability to do this. And he seems to be a believer in the "get lots of lottery tickets" strategy. Which is probably a good idea. But it doesn't change the fact that the probability of getting a good QB in the draft drops off dramatically outside the first few picks. And Rooney is hell-bent on not ever picking there.

Hopefully, we get another draft with generational QB depth in a year where we're just OK. I think that's our best chance at getting someone who's anywhere near what Ben was.

 

Yep.

He certainly failed at (1) getting good OCs to install an offensive system that worked with the players we had and / or (2) acquiring above average players on offense.

 

In paragraph two, I was referring to the draft. Every year we hear the fans complaining that there is no quarterback worth taking out of the first 5 to 10 picks in the draft. They predetermined that none of the quarterbacks outside of that zone could ever be good enough to be an answer. That's why I said many fans would say that there is no chance of the team finding a franchise quarterback unless they are picking in the top ten. They would claim they are all bums. I have a different view of some players and I say so.

What I talk about who they could have taken isn't hindsight. I understand it might be for you because I didn't always post here before the draft. I was at Steelers Universe for years and I rated the quarterbacks last year and had Ward, Dart, Shough as the top three picks in that order. I knew Ward would be gone and was unrealistic to move up to #1 to take him. I really liked Dart and Shough and said that they had elite traits and that I would like to see the team draft one of them. I had Howard rated a few slots below. He wasn't my favorite, but he was a steal when you are talking about value in the sixth round. There are a couple posters here that were also at Steelers Universe and know that I give evaluations on players in the draft and let my feelings be known.

Ultimately, even if I had a high second-round grade on Dart, I knew that he had first-round traits and they would have to move up to get him.

Same for Shough. He's an older quarterback coming out, but he had some elite traits and even though most would rate him as a third-round talent because of injury history and age, I thought he had some first-round traits and was worth a shot if they could get a shot at him. I hoped he would drop, but a team in need has to pay the price to go get him if they believe in him.

Sometimes a team has to gamble at the quarterback position and do whatever they have to do to move up and secure the guy they think could be a very good quarterback. They have not been willing to do so.

 

That's cool! I'm new here this season too (from Planet Steelers...which has essentially shut down).

I'm looking forward to reading your ratings about QBs.

It does seem like MM has historically liked to take mid to late round QBs (even when he had Rodgers).

I think it's a good idea to pick up lots of lottery tickets here. Most will fail, but when you don't have a QB you have to keep trying.

FWIW, I do like that (1) we cut bait on Kenny when we realized he wasn't an NFL starter (maybe not an NFL player for long), (2) I also didn't mind the churning of vets...though I was hoping that we'd bring JF back last season because he was younger, and (3) I also liked the draft of Howard last year...maybe there were other guys we could have taken earlier.

Re: 3. I tend to dislike drafting QBs in the mid-rounds where you can get good starters isntead of a guy who's going to hold a clip board for years without really contributing. I think the drafting of Mason and Dobbs were pretty much a waste where we could have gotten guys who would have played for us. Instead of drafting rookies to be backups, I think it's better to just bring in failed high pedigree guys for cheap off the scrap heap.

Maybe this strategy is better when you already have an established QB. And drafting mid-rounds is better when you don't?

 

This seems pretty close to the truth. But here's the part that vexes me; if Tomlin was such a defensive guru and film junkie why was it so hard for him to identify what a good offense looked like? One that would be very hard to defend? Shouldn't he have looked at those teams and tried to tap their offensive coaching talent? There just didn't seem to be much effort put into that side of the team when trying to find excellent staff.

 

Tomlin was very set in his ways and how he thought the game was supposed to be played. He believed in lining up and see who the better man is. With modern offenses that use all kinds of motion and disguise that force offenses to make split second decisions combined with the rule changes that give offenses a huge advantage to begin with, defenses need to try to match that to even the game as much as they can. If an offense knows what you are doing, they are able to get into the best plays to defeat the defense.

I can't explain why he refused to adjust, and I certainly can't understand how he didn't realize that Matt Canada's offense wasn't a professional offense when he watched film of it every day. It is ultimately what convinced me that his time as the head coach of the Steelers needed to end. Watching film of the offense and not seeing its horrible design was inexcusable to me.

I also don't understand why he didn't hire better coordinators and coaches. He seemed to want total control of the operation with less staff and lacking analytics and the most modern approaches. The team was being left behind from that standpoint. I hope that the organization is taking the appropriate measures to correct that going forward, and it does appear that McCarthy is going to have a bigger coaching staff.

We will have to watch and see how it plays out.

 

I've kind of always figured that Tomlin saw the game better than his players. I don't think he saw all this pre-snap motion as all that confusing. I think he was confused as to why it broke his players brains. I dunno. Not explaining this well.

I think he expected his players to be able to line-up and figure it out.

 

When I talk about all the pre-snap motion, it's not that I think Mike Tomlin didn't understand it. It's a matter of preparing your players on how they are going to handle their responsibilities in a split second and communicate to each other in those coverages. It also comes down to doing enough in the design of the defense to confuse the offense blocking schemes and to put doubt into what every defensive player is going to do when the ball is snapped. That's deception at the line of scrimmage bringing lots of players near the line of scrimmage and disguising who is coming and who isn't. Dropping some of those players into coverage as they blitz to try to take away hot routes and create turnovers. There is a ton that can be done in that regard, and the more doubt that a quarterback has in what he sees is a good thing for the defense.

You design a defense to strain the opposing offense as much as possible, and you try to mask as much of what you're doing so that the offense doesn't know what you are doing defensively. It should be a cat and mouse game where the quarterback can't easily identify what the defense is trying to do. If every player on the offense is not sure that their called assignment is the right one because they aren't sure who they are blocking, they don't play as fast and are unsure of themselves. That doubt created by the defense's deception gives his defensive players a chance of having an advantage over just lining up and running your defensive call with very little disguise.

Offenses putting a player in motion and dragging him behind set bunch formations of receivers and tight ends changes the responsibilities of coverage as they move depending on whether the defense is in man or zone. It also has an impact on whether defensive players are trying to communicate switches. When this happens, particularly just before the snap, it creates a much more difficult situation for defensive players to be in. Multiple players then sometimes run to cover the same player and a receiver is left uncovered and wide open.

Modern offenses also look to create natural picks/rubs that happen because of route designs that look for specific coverages to attack with particular route combinations to create chaos.

After saying what I just did and knowing how it strains defenses to figure out what to do and how to match up in these situations would make you think that the head coach would demand that his team's offense needs to incorporate some of the concepts that opponents are gouging his defense with. You would think that, but Tomlin never moved to that creativity and play design. Arthur Smith did some good things and had some well-designed plays, but most of his bread-and-butter playbook is tried and true X's and O's that have been run for 50 years.

It's a long-winded answer to say that a little more could have been done to keep things a little more cutting edge on both sides of the ball. He could have put his players in better position to succeed if he had.

 

Gonna see some duds turn into studs and vice versa. New coaches have new eyes on players and may be able to unlock some things.. but they will also demand some players do things they can’t do successfully.

 

Is that guy still around?

 

Sure. That all seems reasonable.

The lack of innovation and modernization on offense is just annoying. Arthur Smith was once on the cutting edge, then he just didn't update any thing for over a decade or whatever. Canada was just a total miss by everyone within a mile of that hire. The less time discussing that disaster the better we will all be.

On defense, it seemed to my untrained eye from my couch, it was usually any DBs playing "inside" the overall formation. Those guys seemed to consistently struggle with passing recievers off to teammates who were not expecting them to be passed off or vice versa. I have always wondered if the Steelers coaches expected too much of their DBs to process each play. Or maybe they struggled to teach it? I am confused that if it was the latter, then how does Alexander keep being in demand?

 

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