Ok, I gotta pipe in here.....
1) Big Biker is our best/only option at QB. Reindeer and Redskin Castoff are not the answer. They never will be.
2) Big Biker, while 39 years old, can still sling it. His arm, does in fact, look better/healthier than last year. Is he 25 again? No. But it's FAR from looking like Marino's final year.
3) Our O-Line's pass protection is far better than it's run blocking, but our O-Line has no continuity and will continue to be a work in progress. I'm not saying we have 5 All-Pros, not saying we have 5 jobbers. I'm saying we have 5 we have no idea what we have because they've played 2 games together. ALL current and former serviceable to great lines need time to gel and become one cohesive unit.
4) Pump the breaks on all the doom and gloom or the glass is half full talk. We're two games into the season. We don't know what we have because we beat a team that we probably should have lost to, and lost to a team we should have beaten handily.......based on what we thought from what we saw LAST YEAR. We don't quite know who "the players and pretenders" are quite yet. Still too early.
Now, with all of that as a caveat, I want to interject something I've brought up previously in years past. All those who are criticizing Ben, are doing it for what I feel are the wrong reasons.
The problem with Ben is his unwillingness to leave his comfort zone, to learn something new, to change those bad habits, to not listen to his OC, to not run the play that's called.
I said in another thread, jokingly, after the Bills game "I thought Canada's offense saw the QB under center as the base formation/more frequently than we've been accustomed to". I think I've seen Ben take 2 snaps under center.
Are the coaches abandoning the run game and calling all passes? Is Ben changing runs to passes because of what he's seeing? Do we not have enough run plays out of the shotgun?
It's impossible to set-up play action passing without the QB being under center.
Years ago when Haley got fired, I got to speak with Bruce Gradkowski regarding. I've also posted about this encounter at the time. Bruce flat out said Ben didn't like Haley's coaching style/play calling. And of course our franchise QB is going to win that battle......and he probably should. That's reasonable.
But remember when Tomlin was hired and Ben's buddy Bruce Arians didn't get the gig. Ben was mad and went out to dinner with Tomlin when he was hired to tell him how things should be.
After Haley was jettisoned, it was Fichtner to appease Ben, so Ben could do what he wanted.
Now it's Canada and it still looks like Fichtner because it looks like Ben's just in the shotgun ALL game long, EVERY single game.
Forget Ben's "tells" about what kind of play is coming run vs pass. Staying in shotgun the ENTIRE game EVERY series is tell enough.
I think our OCs, sans Haley, have been hamstrung by Ben's inability to do things their way instead of his way.
Say what you want, I think Haley was as big of a douche as the next guy, but his system kept Ben upright and his best statistical season. Yeah, I know, he had a better line and a run game, too. I absolutely concede that. No argument.
And no, I am not a Tomlin defender. He needs to go before Ben does. He lets the inmates run the asylum, and that's ultimately why we are where we are. He has ZERO control over this team, his coaching staff, or his players. Because it's the Steelers/Rooneys, he sadly will not be going anywhere until he wants to, though.
But we're watching Ben cling tight to what he already knows and what he's comfortable with and NOT Canada's playbook.
We either should have kept both Ben and Fichtner, or we should have let Ben walk with Fichtner. Because right now we have a hybrid of the old regime and the new. And maybe that's the plan for life after Ben, to have Canada's playbook and terminology starting to be implemented for the next QB that Canada can actually "control" and tutor with his system.
Whatever the case may be, this is going to be a fruitless season. We have the ability with our D and Ben to get Tomlin his next not losing season. But don't kid yourself. We're not winning the SB. And if we make the playoffs, it'll look much like last year. Ben wants to keep playing sandlot football. And hey, it's got us 2 more championships for the trophy case. I'm not saying it wasn't effective, or didn't serve Ben/Steelers/us well for all these years. We lived and thrived with it for years. But I reiterate. Ben isn't 25 anymore. He's slower. His body took SO many shots early in his career when we had crappy lines before and Arians doing him in with 7 and 10 step drops. But he's not adapting to new techniques/ideas to prolong his career. He wants to go out on his terms doing what he did best and what he knows he can do because he's already done it.
So we're seeing the swan song for 25 years old in the head/39 year old in the body Ben.
It'll be ride, that's for sure.
