Damn you, Airman Doors and your classy sportsmanship! You take all of the fun out of gloating!
LeBeau prepped and played a very good defense for everything that Tebow has put on tape this last year. I don’t fault him at all.
From my view, the fault lies in the guys LeBeau put his faith in, that secondary. Polamalu, Taylor, Gay, and Mundy absolutely gave the game away. The Broncos playcalling was excellent, but it was those guys not executing that cost the Steelers the game. They all bit on plays, couldn’t keep up with Demaryius, and made bad decision after bad decision.
You can certainly fault LeBeau for not adjusting his defense, but I think the reason he didn’t was that he trusted his guys in the secondary. He kept believing in them, that they could make a play, or even just stop sucking so much. He could have gone to a much more conservative defense, but he trusted his guys in the secondary. And they let him down.
If Airman Doors were the only Steeler fan in this thread, you’d be right. But some of the others in this thread? Some of those guys, it sure is fun to taunt.
I agree with everything you say here but I don’t think the secondary was quite as much to blame (which is not to say they don’t share any of the blame). With Hampton and Keisel out that left 3 linemen to play every down. There was no way to keep them from wearing out and with them wearing down meant the linebackers weren’t going to get the pressure then the secondary have to cover way longer than usual. The whole unit has to share the fault for their performance. The linebackers look like stars when the big guys up front make space for them but when that doesn’t happen the secondary ends up looking bad partially because of the LBs looking ordinary.
Injuries are part of the game and they couldn’t overcome that plus the Broncos outschemed them.
Thanks for the thread Airman, I always enjoy it. I look forward to visiting all you bastards again for the 10th Annual March. 
You can not beat the magical Tebow. I hear he has unicorn blood flowing in his veins.
I never thought I’d see someone throw duck wobbles for 300 yards in one game.
As a Broncos fan who has been watching all year, my opinion is that the Steelers didn’t have the tape of this game to study and prepare for in the first place. The Broncos ran a run-heavy offense like they’ve been doing, but their game plan seemed different from the rest of the season. Tebow throws a bomb now and then, but this has not been a team that goes deep as a matter of course like they seemed to do against the Steelers.
I think the Steelers were expecting something else. That’s why I said the Steelers didn’t seem to know what to do. I suspect they weren’t ready for the Broncos offense because they put a different offense on the field for this game. It didn’t hurt that they succeeded in what they attempted as much as they did- I think they played their best game of the year last night.
Sorry for all you Steelers fans’ hurt. I’m not out to put a stick in anyone’s eye. I just want to dance around for awhile since it is obviously such a great victory over a great opponent.
Of all the things I’ve been reading and hearing over the last 24 hours, the one thing I think will always bother me is the impact (or lack thereof) of Ryan Clark, having to sit out because of the sickle cell issue, combined with the loss of Casey Hampton in the first series of downs.
Clark was a key part of the secondary. The Steelers may have still lost, but I don’t think they would have had four 40+ yard completions against them. That’s just awful. The Steelers gave up two 40+ yard completions all season. and Tebow got them for 4! That’s huge right there.
The Steelers had zero pass rush, and I’m not sure if that was by design or the Broncos just blocked the Steeler rush all day. But where were the linebackers? Where were the blitzes and the sacks? If Lebeau had folks laying back to shadow Tebow, that might explain some of it, but I don’t think that was the case. I think the Broncos just flat out beat the Steelers at the point of attack.
Here’s how I look at it. Even if the Steelers had the injuries to key players (and they did), and perhaps the most significant injury was the one to Big Ben’s ankle that made him a virtual statue when he went back to pass, they really lost the playoffs during the regular season when they had a chance to take over the number one seed in the AFC and blew the game in SF. That would have changed so much, including the all important week off to heal. Without that, they went from the 1st seed to the 5th seed, and sent them to Denver where Clark couldn’t play.
In many ways, it was a perfect storm. But whatever it was, the Broncos deserved to win the game. I will be rooting for them and the Texans from the AFC. I’d love to see Tebow to win a Super Bowl and throw the football world on its head.
In My last post, I speculated that Lebeau might retire. It appears that I’m not the only one thinking it. I hope he stays for at least one more season… the Steelers have a couple of runs left in them for the Super Bowl, and I’d like to see him come back for at least next year.
I really didn’t see a different gameplan by the Broncos, just a QB who took more chances and had more opportunities downfield. The difference I saw was that when Tebow had time to throw (whether through his feet or great blocking), he actually threw the ball downfield instead of running for it or dumping it off to the back.
Again, the only difference I saw was a QB making more throws. The play calling heavily favored the run, as usual, there was a lot of read/option plays, as usual, and the WR ran the same route combinations (with some minor changes) as usual. The Steelers knew they wanted to do (stop the run, contain Tebow, cover the underneath routes, and leave the WR in man) against this offense, they just didn’t do it. The game LeBeau called put a lot of pressure on the secondary to cover, and the secondary simply didn’t do it. The Steelers dared Tebow to beat them … and he did. They got burned repeatedly not because it was a new offense, but because they couldn’t cover DeMaryius Thomas worth crap. To me it wasn’t a problem with game plan, it was a problem with execution. Polamalu, Taylor, Mundy, and Gay just sucked.
Don’t apologize to them. Dance away!
I’m not sure I agree with that. I really hate doing the “I know better than the coaches” thing, but if you’re going load the box and play man defense – not a bad idea – ISTM you shouldn’t have the corners in a tight press. The Broncos under Tebow threw deep all season (he had one of the highest yards-per-completion in the league). Give them the underneath routes and force him to try and repeatedly complete high-percentage passes.
If you have faith in your CB’s and safeties, you can do it. It certainly is a much more risky way of playing defense and it puts a lot of pressure on the secondary, but it throws off the timing of the routes and stops the run. Up until Sunday, I hadn’t see Tebow show that he had the skills to beat that defense. And if the secondary didn’t mess up on those 5 or 6 plays, it might have worked.
The Broncos games I watched (which was too many because of the cult of Tebow), those drives that killed the teams at the end were Tebow throwing the underneath routes that the defense was giving him.
The defense the Steelers played was designed to put pressure on the QB and force him to make accurate throws, something that Tebow hadn’t shown he could do at all. But he finally did it. Mostly because Thomas kept beating the shit out the guys who were supposed to be covering him, but it worked.
It’s a high risk defense that puts pressure on the secondary, a secondary that up until that game had played pretty well for most of the season. If you have faith in your cover guys, it can (and has all season) work. But in that game, the secondary just sucked out loud. I suppose you could blame LeBeau for putting his faith in his secondary or for not adjusting his calls after the second quarter when they got repeatedly burned, but he trusted his guys and they did pretty well in the first quarter and in the second half of the game. But when they melted down, it cost them.
if a few games, he moved the ball against loose zone prevent defenses late in games, yes. But in the main, he stuggled to hit the quick slants and outs and curls, both against zone or man. Those are timing routes in the NFL, and AFAICT what he’s struggled with more than anything is being willing/able to throw timing routes before guys break open, which you have to do in the NFL, (e.g. “pull the trigger”) and he didn’t in college. He can and has hit slow-developing plays, including the long ball, because that’s something he’s used to. It just seems to me when a guy only hits on 46%, the odds say to force him to dink and dunk.
But, as you say, any scheme is dependant on execution; the Steelers DBs and pass rush (including Polamalu and Harrison) simply didn’t, and Tebow did.
It’ll be interesting to see what Belichick does come Saturday. I suspect a lot of blitzing.
Love him or hate him, Timmy does make things interesting.
Yeah, you don’t have to worry too much about timing throws, but you do have to defend him running. You do that by playing zone, with all your defenders facing the backfield so they can react to a scramble. BUT: don’t bite 'til he’s crossed the line of scrimmage.
It seemed like the pressure was something Tebow could handle. He was showing near-Roethlisberger levels of evasiveness.
I actually don’t expect Belichick to order many blitzes.
I’m sorry it hurts, may all beings be at peace and free from suffering and all that. But I’m not sorry we won, I’m not sorry at all! 
Yah well a lot of the Tebow tuck-and-run came as a result of good coverage in the KC game for instance. Which I suppose supports your theory. Then again I don’t recall any wildcat formations.
I really thought I’d see more out of Polamalu. Even his hair seemed a little flat. And off what you said, Tebow was especially agile this game with the pocket collapsing around him- stiff arms, bounce off your guy and run, scampering around. He dodged some sacks that I thing would have got another guy. But you’re right, he stayed behind the line and hunted out pass opportunities. The change I am picking up is just generally from a run-dependent to a pass-dependent plan. And of course it looks completely different when the passes are on-target.
Despite him making the All-Pro team again, he has been slowly losing his skills. I think they would have beaten the Packers last year with Polamalu at the top of his game. But I fear that we’ve seen the last of that Polamalu. With the way he plays, I’m surprised he’s lasted this long.
While Polamalu was destroyed numerous times, I think the worst offender in that secondary was Ike Taylor. He wasn’t just bad, he was catastrophically bad. Like worst CB performance of the year bad. He gave up 204 yards and a couple TD’s (not always because of outright bad coverage, but certainly not great), including the game winner in OT. Taylor had a pretty good year, but this one game, he gave up almost half of all the yardage he had given up the entire year.
Maybe not; Belichick isn’t especially aggressive in his playcalls.
But ISTM that as much as he struggles with accuracy, Tebow’s bigger problem is with decisionmaking; he’s an instinctive, passionate athlete, not a decisive, cerebral technician. Give him complexity, and force him to beat you with his head. Complicated zone blitzes are a big part of that.
Even though I don’t too much care for the Steelers, Polamalu has long been a personal superstar. If his skills are declining or he’s slowing down it is only because he was intemperate in his ass-kicking for too many years. If that’s the end for Polamalu, here’s a great big salute for a glorious career 
I don’t believe that is the last we’ve seen of him though.
And we ought to offer more props to the wonderful Denver Defense. The Steelers were capable of scoring more points than they got. Miller and Dumervil both scored sacks as I predicted, but we also got one out of Bunkley and TWO out of Ayers :eek: The Steelers had many more total plays, 68 to 55, and also more TOP, but that difference was negated by sacks ratio and monster Denver plays.