Carnell Lake needs to go

I don't like saying that because he was a great player for us, but the fact of the matter is that he has failed to adequately develop any of the young secondary talent the Steelers have provided him the last few seasons. I realize that our evaluation of those players could have been lacking as well, but give me one example of when Lake has coached a young defensive back up to the next level. Somebody needs to be held accountable not only for this season's pathetic performance, but our failure in that area for the last several seasons. The Patriots fired their OL coach the day after Brady took a beating in the AFC Championship game. Instant accountability or overreaction?

I had high hopes for Lake when he was hired and even thought he may eventually be a candidate for the DC position, but he's been a disappointment. Hawthorne, Richardson, Hollimon, Grant, etc. Are you telling me that none of those players could be developed into anything? Our mid round WRs develop into superstars. Our mid round DBs are always duds.

I know many will disagree, but should Lake be held accountable for our secondary's failures while he's been at the helm? I think he should be. Tell me why I'm wrong/right.

 

How do you know the patriots ok coach wasn't already on the way out? Out production or lack there of at the CB position is disconcerting, but Knee jerk reactions are rarely good

 

I don't really like dealing with absolutes.... like XYZ MUST GO. He's been here 4 years, but I'm not ready to close the book on him..... because it's not like the draft guru's have given him much to work with....

2011:3rd Curtis Brown, 4th Cortez Allen
2012:7th Terrance Frederick
2013: 4th Shmarko Thomas, 5th Terry Hawthorne
2014: 5th Shaquille Richardson
2015: 2nd Senquez Golson (injured all year), 4th Doran Grant

Best potential draft class for DB's was last year and our highest pick was injured all year. I think you need a little more patience because Lake has been given a pile of to work with.

 

After they left here.... did any of those mid round players move on to have a successful career elsewhere? No, none of them turned out like Mike Vrabel, so yes it's likely that all those guys were duds (except I'm holding hope out for Grant)

 

You've got a point but I look at that a little differently. It's Lake's job to coach them up. If they fail after being a mediocre talent, most other teams aren't going to flock to them to sign them. It's tough to for a mid to late round talent who's failed elsewhere to get a second chance. There are too many other guys in the mix. The fact they haven't gone elsewhere and been a success isn't necessarily an acquittal of Lake. And I didn't even mention Shamarko above. His failure to develop is a huge disappointment as is Cortez Allen's. Somebody has to be held accountable, don't they? Otherwise 4-12 head coaches would be allowed to stick around year after year.

 

W. Gay has really been impressive the last 2 seasons.

 

The frustrating thing Jack is that while wanting to assign blame is one thing, we really can't speak about job performance when we simply don't know what any of these coaches are dealing with. We know Dl liked the 10 yard cushion and soft zone(bend don't break) it is hard to coach guys up when your overall scheme puts them in a twenty foot deep hole to start with. First year from Butler and he wants to be more aggressive and Tomlin wants to use some more cover 2 looks and different coverages but the personal doesn't match it yet. So how do you coach guys up when the parameters for performance are so wide spread.

 

Value. The Team just doesn't value the position enough .I hope now that the boss has spoken they will start targeting talent instead of that BPA crap . That approach only works after you have a solid Team and building blocks at each position. We have left the DB position a mess and must attack it hard and heavy if we are to recover.

 

Being that Lake had to use two guys as starting corners last season who couldn't even make rosters on other teams, i thought he did a good job.
He's stuck with a nickel corner who has to start corner.
Thomas is a draft bust, he has to he a 12 year vet at safety.
I would lay off Lake, not like the Steelers gave him tons of drafted good talent to work with.
Then to boot, you Golson the 2nd rounder get hurt and not play.

 

Be honest now about Willie Gay. How many of us cursed him game in and game out early in his career? Most everyone thought Willie Gay was horrific in pass coverage.
Maybe that gives us some hope for Blake. Could it just be the schemes they run?
As for Carnell Lake. He will be given a pass this season just due to the changing of the DC position. I think he will be more under the microscope next season though if things don't improve.

 

#Truth. Professional sports is all about having the horses. Coaching has something to do with it, but you have to have something to work with. If anything, I'd say our ability to uncover DB talent in the draft is suspect before I'd say Lake or the coaching is lacking.

 

I think the way Ross Cockrell stepped in was pretty impressive... and say what you want about Blake, his timely int's were very impressive as well. For the first time in a long time we have seen our CB's make plays on the ball.

The only thing I can really critique Lake on is that our secondary wasn't ready in the first game of the season. I don't care who you have out there, communication errors like that just looks bad.

 

Tomlin could be tied into this as well but I agree Lake needs to go. A shake up could be good just like it did the o-line wonders.

 

First I can't believe that anyone would consider Blake to be a part of a revitalized secondary. Haven't you seen enough? His couple of picks doesn't make for a body of work. He is horrible. I don't care what scheme your running. How many teams would have him starting? None. Cockrell has promise and i'm glad they resigned him. And for you Blake supporters he is an UFA. And Gay will be another year older.

As far as Lake I have been on the fence. Although in reality he has had to patchwork. Give him something to work with! Then we will see.

 

I don't think Lake is the problem. Try as you want with some people, players you can't make them faster, smarter or more talented if they don't have the attributes. Blake in my opinion is a third stringer. Gay is a solid second stringer. Then you have Allen at his age arguably the best guy in the secondary. Lake has little to nothing to work with.

 

Yeah it basically seems like our corner evaluation is just "innie-minnie-miney-mo" and that's about it. I really don't think we made a mistake letting Keenan go but I will say that he was lightyears ahead of Blake. I still doubt that we spend a high pick on a corner this year though since they spent one on Golson last year. I think we might take a safety early though.

 

Well, did they develop into anything after Lake stopped being their coach? Whether they blossomed elsewhere or not should tell us whether the problem was them or the coach. I don't think they did... I think those are drafting failures, and while I'm sure Lake has some influence, we don't know how much, and ultimately Colbert and Tomlin have much more, and the buck stops with Colbert. (By the way, I'm not including Grant in that. Way too early.)

Meanwhile, there are some guys that seemed like busts under other coaches and then improved under Lake. I'm thinking of McCain and Blake (he's still a good reserve guy, the problem is that he's starting and going against top receivers instead of #3s and #4s), and most notably William Gay, who was a laughing stock to everyone except Steelers fans, who wanted to cry watching him. He turned it all around in his fifth season, his first under Lake. And he's continued to improve into his 7th, 8th, 9th seasons. That's a little nuts if you ask me, to see that much improvement at that point in his career.

Meanwhile, by your logic, our awesome WR record should be attributed to our WR coach. Wallace, Sanders, Brown, Bryant, probably Coates... I'm gonna go out on a limb and say they'd have been excellent players anywhere. Those are just great players, great draft picks.

Ultimately, we don't really know if he's a good coach, because we're not there at practice or games. But I haven't seen any evidence that our problems are from coaching, because I don't count "This player stinks" as evidence of that. If you want to talk about underachieving, we could talk about Mike Adams and Wesley Johnson, but no one is firing Munchak. Because they also see the improvement of Kelvin Beachum and Marcus Gilbert.

 

munchak has made a lot of late rounders and castoffs look pretty good. i talked about this in another thread and still feel this way. i don't think porter and jerry as the LB'er coaches and lake as the DB coach are what we need with the young players. none of them are very experienced as coaches. those are two positions we struggle at the most.

wr has gotten better and o-line has gotten better with a couple of older vet coaches and i just think it would work wonders if we could do that at those two positions. NFL experience is so valuable and these 3 just don't have that much let alone even college coaching experience. it's not their faults either.

D-line has an old vet, o-line has an old vet, wr has an old vet, TE has an old vet, RB has an old vet and we are not struggling at these positions. i think we can make a case that we need help at LB and DB to get us over the hump. my 2 cents anyway.

 

Those names you mentioned are a joke. Lets see him get some good talent to work with before we start calling for his head.

 

I could get behind this line of thinking Mac if not for the tiny little problem that Porter and Jerry have only been in their respective positions for a single season. Before that we had old Vet who has a long long long coaching resume and yet the last five years they struggled at OLB position.

 

Yeah Glenn I mentioned in the Art II thread that they have drafted 24 Db's from 1998 til 2014 and the only two who jump out are Ike and Troy. It kinda of points to not valueing the position very highly or have bad talent evaluators.

 

Both, for sure.

Even their best FA signing, Ryan Clark, was only brought in to hold things down for half a season until Anthony Smith was ready to take over. He was practically an accidental success.

The drafting of Troy makes up for a lot, but there's really no excuse for the way they've ignored the CB position over the years.