Steelers and Sam Darnold

Fields had stretches when he played far better in Chicago than he ever did in Pittsburgh. He couldn't do it consistently.

That Rodgers was better in Pittsburgh than the **** show that is the Jets doesn't say much.

Wilson played three games for the Giants, throwing for 450 yards and three touchdowns in one of them. It seems as if he was the same inconsistent player he had been since the Seahawks traded him.

 

Let me make sure I have this correct....one pass doesn't tell us anything....except the one pass that you talk about? Just want to make sure I understand that correctly. And I was not talking about one pass. KP regularly throw behind and or low on short simple crossing routes to open WRs while under no pass rush with his feet set. He was not an accurate QB. He simply wasn't. Heck, on one of his "signature" plays in his rookie season, I'm pretty sure he missed the guy he was throwing to and got lucky their was a receiver behind him for the TD. In his seasons with the Steelers, he regularly put the ball on the wrong spot even on passes he completed.

Maybe during that one year at Pitt for 12 weeks or whatever, KP looked amazing. I am certainly not going to go back and watch whatever I "missed". But I did watch every throw he made in the NFL....and many were very not good. How many teams now agree with that assessment?

Also, how are you planning on explaining away his first 4 seasons or whatever at Pitt?

 

Don't bring this up to some people because they have no answer. I used to say the same thing, apparently they think it's some Steelers magic, and our coaching had nothing to do with this. It destroys everything they want to think.

 

I'll be sure to check next time on what football outcomes are and are not important. Good to know. It will be useful for all of us.

I guess Wilson getting benched for being totally ineffective against anyone but the Cowboys disaster of a defense is one of those not important observations?

What stretch of games was Fields better in Chicago? I must have blocked those out or drowned them away with beer and cheese curds.

 

Except the win loss record. LoL.
Yeah let's leave off the most important thing to fit your narrative. LoL

 

I dunno.

It is getting pretty deep in here that is for certain.

Maybe it was time to move on from the coaching staff. I can see that point of view. I never liked Smith. Couldn't stand pretty much everything about his offense. Austin was likely middle of the road. Personally, I think that Tomlin walks into the HOF. But I get that others don't see that.

But the idea that the outgoing staff was just some bunch of stiff barely qualified to run high school JV drills is just an unnecessary exaggeration. One can make whatever points, good or bad, one wishes to without totally distorting things.

 

shall I suggest this goofy fk

 

The two New York teams are the two worst record-wise teams of the last 10 years. Of course, the Steelers are much better than those teams.

But Wilson's season with Denver in 2023 was similar to his 2024 season, especially if we stop at 11 games, which is the number of starts Wilson had with the Steelers.

As for Fields, if we look at his time in Chicago, he had fewer turnovers with us, but he was much better as a runner in Chicago

 

Oh....well....that certainly changes everything. The Steelers had Fields performing better in his primary role as a passer of the football....but we should probably discount that because he wasn't running as well.

And a bad football team played badly...so what the QBs did there somehow doesn't count as much....and them playing better in Pittsburgh is because they were in Pittsburgh....not anything that the scheme or coaches did?

How many hurdles and contortions do you want to go through?

The Steelers squeezed more out of a variety of QBs on their roster from 2020-2025 than the entire rest of the NFL has been able to do. Heck, Duck Hodges couldn't even get a contract anywhere else. Mason Rudolph got sat down for Levis at one point....that dude is on his way out the league. KP can't even reliably keep a 2nd string job. Fields has fallen out of the starter's ranks, but the Steelers doing the same thing for his career that GB did for Malik Willis doesn't count. But Lafluer is a certified genius. The Steelers modified their entire offense to allow Wilson to do better than he has in years....but because of something....that doesn't matter either.

Just stop it already. The reality is that the Steelers got more positive on field results out of BAD Qbs over the last 5 seasons than just about anyone else in the league. The Browns have had equivalently bad QBs and as good or better defense....and how many games have they won again?

For better or worse....it needs to be realistically acknowledged that the wins and almost decent QB play the Steelers coaxed out of their roster the last several seasons is just about unprecedented across the NFL.

But, yeah, there was that time Justin Fields did the zoomies in Chi-town.

 

Willis had only 89 pass attempts and 3 starts in Green Bay in 2 seasons,so this is a very small size but he had a passing rating of 134 with Green Bay...He has been great,he was awful with the titans

Regarding Tomlin, I've already said in the past that his floor is perhaps the highest in NFL history, so I'll give him that, and you're right that he did well with his QBs record-wise.

But I don't think his philosophy is good for young QBs, being too conservative, like running the ball too often on second down and 10, regardless of who his OC was and gaving too much importance to the sacks and turnovers... It's important to pay attention to that, and that's why his floor is so high, but it reduces the ceiling when it's too much.

Kenny Pickett was awful no matter what, and I don't know if it was Khan, Tomlin, or Rooney who decided to keep Canada after 2022, but they didn't give Pickett a realistic chance to succeed. Many young QBs would have failed under Canada's coaching.

 

Go look at Ben's rookie year stats. The only underlying difference between he and Pickett was the yards per attempt. KP was only able to complete short passes. He struggled throwing deep to all areas of the field. Roethlisberger didn't. Everything else flowed from that.

KP only took 3 less sacks than Roethlisberger. Ben threw 2 more INTs. So unless Cowher has the same issues that you ID'd in Tomlin....kinda seems like a combination of being a rookie in the NFL and being kinda crappy at playing QB. And honestly, this already far too much time in my brain re-litigating KP. What's the point, some will always see this unrealized potential in KP. I never and will never see what that was. I admit, during his rookie year run, I got sucked all the way in and thought there might be something there. That hope quickly faded.

These players are not robots that you just plug some plays into and let loose to run what you draw up. They have their strengths and weaknesses as players. Far too much is just listed as "coaching" when no one knows how to explain what they are seeing on their TVs.

I also think that there is WAY too much unquestioning stock put in the idea that Tomlin was mandating the areas between the hashes as some sort of no fly zone. A look at all kinds of actual data over the years doesn't support it.

Tomlin specifically played Hodges in whatever year that was because he was willing to chuck to any spot on the field and try and make something happen. Some of the first deep shots they took with Fields were over the middle. Trubisky was also given starts because of his willingness to chuck it wherever to try and make a play. At least that was what was said at the time by the team.

But why didn't those players and others at QB maintain that, you ask? Well....look at everywhere else Fields, Wilson, Rudolph, and Trubisky have played. The data is out there. I have posted it here at least twice before. I am not doing it again. BUT....what it clearly shows in actual numbers and stuff....is that all of those guys did not and do not attack the middle of the field on teams NOT coached by Mike Tomlin. We can even add Rodgers to this discussion. When he was at the height of his powers....he would attack the middle of the field. But that faded out....even as he won another MVP under Lafluer. By the time he reached the Jets, he just wasn't doing it outside of two minute drills and other game situations that the defense was yielding over the middle throws. That trend continued in Pittsburgh.

Personally, and this is TOTAL opinion, I believe that Mike Tomlin had few steadfast beliefs about how to play football. I think he had ideas about how to approach football. And one of them was to assessing what your team was and was not capable of accomplishing successfully. And the 2020-2025 Steelers were not capable of successfully attacking the middle of the field based on who was manning the QB position.

A final number to remember, and this is critically important, the difference on those graphs between the most and least MOF passing teams....it is like 2 or 3 throws a game. That could EASILY be a QB hesitating and not pulling the trigger just as much as someone coaching out of that area of the field.

 

One of the main reasons why the number of pass attempts was low in 2004 and 2005 for Ben was because the Steelers had the lead most of the time, especially in 2004, when they were only behind for 10 minutes in 8 regular season games at home!...The other reason, of course, was because Cowher was a run-first head coach... Roethlisberger was a much better QB, even as a rookie than Pickett. His ceiling was much higher too, but he was in a much better situation too... Whiz did a great job with Ben, and even though Roethlisberger's pass attempts were low, he was often a gunslinger, like in the first game against the Browns in 2004, he was a highlight machine!



As for the rest, you make great points, so I can't disagree with them!

 

Like I said, the Steelers did a good job selling a story and quite a few folks here were suckered into believing it!

 

the Steelers seem like they want old man Rodgers again,,,why

 

I do hope you are not vaguely suggesting Pickett was ever told he would be the starter in 2024

That most certainly never happened

 

Yeah. I was by NO means attempting to imply, state, hint, allude to, or otherwise indicate that there is any universe where KP and BR are similar talents.

I miss watching someone who isn't bad at their job play QB for the Steelers. Those were fun times.

 

What story is that?

 

He’s referring to a fantasy one of our board members keeps falsely promoting

 

I think it might be weirder that there is apparently film where Kenny breaks the pocket and doesn't run directly into a DL.

 

And yet in the same year, Mitch threw over the middle more.

And so did Mason when he played.

I agree that we were playing risk averse (which was a good thing for our group of poor QBs). But Kenny was most risk averse of all of them. And that suggests that it's not all Canada (or whatever other scapegoats people want to throw out).

 

I think in most cases, any QB in his ROOKIE season is going to play more risk-averse than the guys who are not rookies. Especially in a Mike Tomlin don't-turn-the-ball-over offense that generally played not-to-lose football for 3.25 quarters.

 

I was talking about the year when Kenny, Mitch, and Mason played. Which wasn't his rookie year.

He was better in his rookie year. Probably for the same reason Ben would always say "wait until DCs have tape in year 2 before you judge a QB". My opinion is that Kenny throws a very good deep shoulder pass. And isn't really good at anything else. So when defenses took that away, he wasn't effective.

He's now failed on 4 separate teams.

On which team did he look the best? The team people say was using a system that hamstrung him. It's because that system (which probably would hamstring a good QB) makes bad QBs look at least OK.

That's not because of Canada, Tomlin, our OL in 2022 and 2023, the fact Kenny didn't get enough time to work with the starters in his first training camp, or whatever other reason Kenny fans want to put forward.

It's because Kenny isn't a good QB in the NFL.

I don't think it was unreasonable for us to make the bet when the best QB of a weak class fell to us late in the 1st. But I'm also glad that we got rid of them after he got benched for Mason. It's smart to avoid throwing good money after bad.