I had no idea the Rams defense was that bad in all aspects of the game.
Looks like Troy Smith will be starting for the rats. I don’t expect them to have too much of a chance - Pittsburgh gets 10 days to prepare, their team is in shambles and sucks, etc.
But I can hope they can muster it up and play for pride. Maybe they’ll hate you enough to really want to play spoiler.
Here’s Troy’s chance to redeem himself to half of Ohio. If he can knock the Steelers off in the last game, I know a lot of people who will forgive his national championship performance.
The NFL Network sucks. IK can’t ever recall the NFL miscalculating so badly before. And the outcry will be huge coming up when the Giants play the Patriots, assuming that they beat Miami.
The game last night was a good effort by the Steelers, but I gotta know one thing: where was the protection? Ben was on the ground far too frequently, in marked contrast to Bulger who rarely got touched until toward the end of the game.
It sucks that Willie is finished, but Najeh had a good game, and the truth is that at this point I’m happier with Najeh in the backfield. Willie’s running style never really appealed to me. Najeh is a banger, a bruiser, which is what Steelers football really is. Willie is a scat back, and I find him to be too hit-and-miss for my taste.
Anyway, the division is within the Steelers’ grasp and the playoffs are all but assured. The Ravens, pride or not, are going to be doormats in this last game. Pittsburgh stopped at 38 points last time, I think that they should go for 138 and get the damn Ratbirds off my TV for the rest of the year. Hell, I hope the Steelers hit them so hard they want to go back to Cleveland where they belong anyway.
What did you think of Bryant Gumbel? I was actually embarrassed for the NFL Network. I think Jane Pauley probably could call a game better, and I’m sure she knows more about football than he does.
I don’t think our protection was any different than usual. I think the main difference was that Ben just escaped fewer attempted sacks than he usually does. For some reason, the Steelers and Bruce Arians cannot see that the short passing game is the only way the Steelers are going to be successful. It has to come out quick, with our line. Anytime Ben drops back seven steps, he’s either going to get sacked or will be scrambling and escaping. Nevertheless, most of our pass calls are long rather than short.
As for our pass pressure, I don’t think our “exotic” blitzing schemes are fooling anyone. In almost every case, we end up with a linebacker or a d-back trying to bullrush an O lineman. The only time we have success is when an outside blitzer comes free and the qb holds on to the ball too long, or if one of the o-linemen just really gets beat bad. I think we oughta be thinking about a 4-3 defense, if we want to put pressure on the QB. This year, our secondary has been far superior to what it usually is, but I don’t think we can count on that, and it isn’t superior when facing a good passing offense, like the Patriots or the Rams.
What do you think about switching to the 4-3 and possibly seeing another Steel Curtain D like the old days?
Willie is like a home run hitter who routinely strikes out early in the game with runners in scoring position, and then hits solo homers late in the game when you’re already down by 6.
My father says he’s like Franco was: 20 runs for two yards each and one big one for 80 to pad the stats and make him look better than he really was. I think Willie’s better than that, but he gets too much negative yardage from the jump. He really picks up at the end of the game when everybody’s tired and he’s fresh because the coaches got tired of seeing him get stuffed early on so they stopped using him.
As for Bryant Gumbel, give me Madden’s Captain Obvious schtick anyday. And tell “Prahm-Tahm!” to shut his piehole, while you’re at it. It’s hard to believe that he could do something worse than tight coverage on a second-rate receiver, but he eats it in the booth. Thank God I was at a bar and very infrequently had to hear them.
If Tennessee and Cleveland win this weekend then for week 17:
You win, you win the division. You lose, Tennessee loses, Cleveland wins, you win the #6 seed. You lose, TEN loses, CLE loses, you win the division. You lose, TEN wins, you don’t make the playoffs.
You know what makes a division winner? Coming through in the clutch. Cleveland is choking like a 75-year-old man who put too much steak in his mouth.
The division title, barring a total reversal from Cleveland, will finally rest where it belongs, right on the confluence, where it has been so many times before.
That was hilarious! Classic choke job. That has to be the worst two minute offense I’ve ever seen. They completed about 100 passes on that drive, and still would have needed a hail mary to score.
That game should have ended long before it did. After the turnover, the Bengals come out needing to kill about 5 minutes or so. So they pass! Run the ball - get the clock moving. My goodness, what division is this? You think these guys should get the picture.
On that reverse, the Bengals cost themselves another 40 seconds of clock-killing because ocho bonehead ran out of bounds. That game was a clash of the incompetents.
Anyone know what that little pixie figure is on the backs of the Browns’ sideline coats? Not a very inspiring or intimidating figure, is it? I hope we never see Steely McBeam on anything the Steelers wear.
By the way, it was interesting to hear that both teams had allowed only 17 sacks all year. Given that neither team has control of their playoff hopes, kinda goes to show what weight one might give to the relative strength of pass blocking over run blocking.
Should we be hoping for Tennessee to win the wildcard, or the Browns?
Wow, dude, you solved it. The proper balance of the roles that running and passing play in the game of football, and how particular O-line skills can affect that - years of NFL history, changing strategy, and all that - and all it takes is two teams with bad defenses to not have control of their playoff chances to resolve the issue.
Well done.
If I were you, I’d shut up about this issue before you sound even more ridiculous.
The most dominant team in NFL history not having much use for a running game might provide just a slight counterpoint.
Yeah, I’m bitchy because I’m irritated, but I’ve been respectful to the non-jackass Steeler fans in this thread. Your refusal to acknowledge that the Browns offense isn’t the same as years past despite obvious evidence, your assertion that a very core element of playing good football just doesn’t matter, and your assertion that the Cleveland O-line “sucks” even still are pretty absurd.
I give you credit for showing your face in this thread this time. Better than when the Steelers beat the Browns this time.
As for your observations… yeah, if you have the Patriots offense, perhaps you can have no running game. Do you really think their offense is typical? I’m wondering how many years you’ve been watching football? Did you just get interested when the new iteration of the Browns came into being?
Silly me, only letting food poisoning so severe that I couldn’t leave the couch for days without puking my guts out keep me from posting after the game.
I’ve only been watching football for around 6 or 7 years. But I almost certainly know more than you about the game. You sound like the people who say “if you run 35 times in a game, there’s a 95% chance you win” and think it’s causation and not correlation. As in… if you just went out and made your first 35 plays running plays, you’d win 19/20 games, rather than realizing that teams that have a lead tend to run, and teams with a lead tend to win, therefore teams that have a lot of runs tend to win. I’m guessing that sort of logic is what you’re using to saying that pass blocking isn’t strongly connected to winning football.
Because the statement is absurd. The passing game is heavily reliant on pass protection, and in the modern (past 30 or 40 years or so) NFL passing is as important a component of the game as running. Moreso for some teams, less for others, but there’s no team in which the passing game is unimportant. To say that it doesn’t particularly matter in terms of playing good football is pretty much absurd on the face of it. It’s also amusing that you imply that Cleveland’s O-line is more responsible for losing than their 32nd-ranked defense.
The rest of the post notwithstanding, the offense (if not exactly the offensive line) IS responsible for the loss today. The defense gave up 6 legit points. The offense gave up the rest through turnovers, which gave Cinci outstanding field position in one case and an outright score in the other.
With a game like that I would think you would want to hang the blame where it belongs rather than holding forth on a silly argument that for all intents and purposes reached impasse 4 pages ago, especially after this game where they do bear some of the blame.
