Our Running Game Thus Far

I totally agree. I also believe if needs be we can still win by throwing it, but like you said ...we don't want 2 become one dimensional.

 

Freiermuth is just not understanding how to block on the end when it is a running play.

Both him and Gentry can be seen a couple yards down the field by themselves when Harris is getting blownup by the DE.

Najee even try to make a joke about it in camp about how he should be able to make the first player miss, but this isn't college and right now these plays are resulting in negative runs.

 

Is there evidence that the preseason results predict how the team does during the regular season?

As others have pointed out, the team plays vanilla on offense and defense.
I remember other years where fans were certain (based on the preseason) that the offense would completely stall and the defense would be like a sieve.
When the regular season started, and they schemed for the other teams, things looked very different.

 

Hey MeanJoeBlue.

I agree to an extent regarding your partial quote: " (preseason)the team plays vanilla on offense and defense....." I say to an extent because of course we do not want to show all of our cards yet; for Offense, Defense and Special Teams. However, my concern here is that we know how bad our Running Game was last year. Dead Last in the league. Ugh! Given that, we really should be going full-force per se to get this aspect of our Offense established.

I mean the word over the off-season was about returning to "Mean" and "Nasty" regarding the Offensive Line. We can at least demonstrate that much without revealing our schematic hand per se. Just good old "Smash Mouth" football that has been a Steelers' trademark for decades. Last in rushing. Unheard of in the same breath when mentioning the Pittsburgh Steelers. Totally unacceptable!

Nothing fancy just straight-up "conquer" the man across from you. 1-1 battling. Our Line against your Line. Hold your position and move everyone in front of you backwards. Strength vs. Strength. Again, that much can be demonstrated even within a "vanilla" context of play.

I hope our O-Line has been hitting the Weight Room and working on straight-up brute strength. That would be one starting point. Just beat down the man in front of you. No blocking schemes have to be revealed when engaging within this aspect of O-Line work. Again, just dominate and win the "Battle of Attrition".

I could go on all day MJB. I want that return of "Mean" and "Nasty". We all do. We have the weapons on Offense. We are loaded. I think that we took care of one major concern when we drafted Najee Harris. If he delivers as advertised then we are good there. In part, Conner just was not that guy for whatever reason. Harris is a major upgrade. Best Running Back in the Draft. Now, the second part of the equation is re-establishing a productive O-Line. Even the best of RBs can do but so much without a strong wall to run behind.

Again from what I have seen so far, our running game seemed to have dominated in the Eagles game. However, not impressed with the Dallas game and maybe some of that can be attributed to it being the first Pre-Season game. However, the most realistic test in Pre-Season is traditionally the third game. Again, statistically it was not a good showing IMO. And admittedly, again, I know that three games is such a very small work sample to go off of so I am not panicking or anything like that. I am just stating my observations and am looking for input from everyone else as to their observations and mindsets.

Ending on a more positive note here, we seem to be doing very well in Pass Protection so far in Pre-Season. We are averaging about giving up one sack per game. So that is good news.



STEELWINDS The East Side Kid

 

The Steelers had a decent running game for the first five games last year, averaging about 135 yards/game.
Based on that start, I don't think anyone was predicting for them to be dead last in the league after 17 weeks.
(If they could have sustained that average for the whole season, they would have ranked 8th for rushing yardage.)

When I asked if there was a correlation between preseason running and regular season, it wasn't rhetorical.
I have no idea.
(Really tough for me to find reliable stats for preseason games, let alone weeding out the numbers involving players who won't be around for the regular season.)

I could believe either case, that the preseason performance does or does not predict the regular season running game.
But until there is some evidence either way, I don't plan to worry about it.
(Plenty of time for that, once the actual games start.)

 

the preseason won't tell the whole story but it will tell who is making blocks on a consistent basis, know where to be blocking on any given play, can they be mobile and hit multiple targets at different levels, collapse and double team targets and peel off to different targets timely. footwork. pass sets. passing off defenders. picking up blitzes. awareness. it all works as a dance. you have one guy mess up the footwork and it affects the rest. whether it's a RB, TE, WR or lineman, it is all orchestrated to work together. one weak link starts to break it down.