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Steelers' 1st-team offense clicks early in preseason loss to Jaguars, defense shaky
- Thread starter Spike
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OK ... see, now that made me laugh. Good one. And just so you know, I bounce back and forth between optimism and "we're screwed" myself. Usually it IS about the defense. However, I'm going to hope they improve to at least decent (a few ticks north of avg). So, maybe I see things with B&G colored glasses right now. It is preseason after all.
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This is typical Tomlin chasing tails.
Notice the homer media and the spin pieces about "playing to the strength" of the new D-lineman and letting them "rush the passer" more. That's spin means we have 3-4 D-lineman that can't 2-gap anymore. Oh sure, Timmons and Shazier are going to get TONS of tackles. Christ, Shazier might get 150 this year, but half of them will be after successful runs by the offense. And lots of tackles means you're on the field for a lot of opposing offensive plays and we ALL know that's going to happen this year. 1050+ easy in my opinion.
You don't think teams and opposing coaches are going to be smart now and understand we're just a run-and-gun team? That the best way to beat us is to just run and control the clock and keep Roethlisberger and Bell and Brown off the field? Why would anyone purposely play us up-tempo or try to get into a shooting match with us?
Death by a thousand cuts. That's the name of our defense now that Tomlin has control. Gashing run plays. Bubble screens against our zone corners. Underneath routs and curls. Test the deep outs against our weak coverage safeties.
That's what's coming.
No reason to think anything more than 9-7. The offense won't nearly be as explosive out of the gate without Bell. And who knows what going 1-1 or 0-2 or 1-2 will do to the mentality of this team.
I think we are going 1-4 to start the season. We're going to lose to NE (with Brady), the Rams are going to surprise us as we look too much ahead vs. Baltimore, Baltimore now has our number and comes into our house and beats us in a close one Week 4 and then we have to go on the road after that tough Sunday night game to the West Coast against an okay San Diego team (and we are less than 30% win percentage on the west coast with Tomlin).
Chalk it up. A terrible 1-4 start, Tomlin rallies the troops to a better than .500 season (God forbid Tomlin ever goes less than .500) but it's all for naught. I can see it happening so easily with this team....
Notice the homer media and the spin pieces about "playing to the strength" of the new D-lineman and letting them "rush the passer" more. That's spin means we have 3-4 D-lineman that can't 2-gap anymore. Oh sure, Timmons and Shazier are going to get TONS of tackles. Christ, Shazier might get 150 this year, but half of them will be after successful runs by the offense. And lots of tackles means you're on the field for a lot of opposing offensive plays and we ALL know that's going to happen this year. 1050+ easy in my opinion.
You don't think teams and opposing coaches are going to be smart now and understand we're just a run-and-gun team? That the best way to beat us is to just run and control the clock and keep Roethlisberger and Bell and Brown off the field? Why would anyone purposely play us up-tempo or try to get into a shooting match with us?
Death by a thousand cuts. That's the name of our defense now that Tomlin has control. Gashing run plays. Bubble screens against our zone corners. Underneath routs and curls. Test the deep outs against our weak coverage safeties.
That's what's coming.
No reason to think anything more than 9-7. The offense won't nearly be as explosive out of the gate without Bell. And who knows what going 1-1 or 0-2 or 1-2 will do to the mentality of this team.
I think we are going 1-4 to start the season. We're going to lose to NE (with Brady), the Rams are going to surprise us as we look too much ahead vs. Baltimore, Baltimore now has our number and comes into our house and beats us in a close one Week 4 and then we have to go on the road after that tough Sunday night game to the West Coast against an okay San Diego team (and we are less than 30% win percentage on the west coast with Tomlin).
Chalk it up. A terrible 1-4 start, Tomlin rallies the troops to a better than .500 season (God forbid Tomlin ever goes less than .500) but it's all for naught. I can see it happening so easily with this team....
wrong sport ... DEFINITELY WRONG CITY ... but the sentiment is the same.
Just from following the discussion earlier, we don't give points for drops, but it sounds like we are prepared to count them as passes defensed? I did not get to see the game but if we have a defense that is only going to be successful if the other teams receivers catch like Ike Taylor we are in for a lot of problems. I listened to a discussion from labs who referred to this as what MT calls rules football. What he is looking to see is how fast the guys can rotate out of the base defense into something different based on the rules of the defense.
They are likely to fail more often than not and are often in some bad situations. The team does not look like the guys a recognizing what is going on or reacting to it fast. Those traits will likely continue somewhat into the season. Young team, new coaches in some regards, there should be a big learning curve this year with out the added new twists to the defense. Toss that in and there will likely be lots of let downs this season. I am prepared to call it rebuilding year two and believe we might need two more before we become a force again. Hopefully the offense will not get to greedy and will allow the defense to catch up.
They are likely to fail more often than not and are often in some bad situations. The team does not look like the guys a recognizing what is going on or reacting to it fast. Those traits will likely continue somewhat into the season. Young team, new coaches in some regards, there should be a big learning curve this year with out the added new twists to the defense. Toss that in and there will likely be lots of let downs this season. I am prepared to call it rebuilding year two and believe we might need two more before we become a force again. Hopefully the offense will not get to greedy and will allow the defense to catch up.
1. No, we are not going to count them as passes defensed, and I am sure that you are intelligent enough to know that's not what I was saying. My point was that the bottom line is "did they score"? Going to have to go back and rewatch that game, however I believe that on one of those drops there was a Safety barreling down on the WR. Maybe he took his eyes off the ball for just a split second to identify whether he was going to get whacked. Now, that's not a pass defensed, but the defender did influence the outcome. To be clear, that's not something I'd count on happening a lot. But it did influence the bottom line .... no TD.
2. Interesting points you raise about what Labs had to say. As I said above, I'm hoping that they can perform at a level at least a tick above average this year. If the offense is able to perform at even 3/4 of the level that its talent says it could, this could still be a very good to excellent (SB) year. I agree that it could take another year before they are way above average and another year before they are excellent if all goes well. My concerns are with the Safeties because I don't think Mitchell has the patience to be a FS and I don't think Shamarko has the skill set to perform at a high level as a Safety in the Cover 2. JJ is another concern, although it appears that they are prepared to have him dropping into coverage a whole helluva lot.
Some of you guys should open a Miss Cleo type of hotline. Read palms and give out lottery numbers lol
