You have to punt after a safety. It’s called a free kick.
If you mean why did it suck, then because Berger was playing with a pulled hamstring.
How disappointing to see the Defense play so well and lose. The offense had a few good series but really didn’t look impressive at all today. I hope they make O-line a priority for the next draft. Willie Colon is out of place at Right Tackle, I’d like to see him move inside to RG at some point.
Willie Colon looks to be out of place anytime he’s not at a buffet table. 
The long snapper was knocked out earlier in the game, so Harrison volunteered. While he did dork it up it was hardly his fault. That also explains why they went for it on 4th and 5 instead of going for the field goal.
Pittsburgh managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. You can blame it on Santonio, you can blame it on injuries, you can even blame it on the offense, but what it really comes down to is that you can’t give the defending Super Bowl champions the ball deep in your own territory repeatedly and expect to win. The defense held a ridiculous number of times… they held the Giants to 6 points on three possessions inside the 5. That is an absolutely ridiculous performance. Yet everybody in the stadium knew that they couldn’t keep it up, and sure enough they let one in. They cannot be blamed for it.
Anyway, my notes on the game:
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How do you get nailed for a horse-collar tackle when the play was precipitated by a helmet-to-helmet hit? The Giants are going to see a few fines out of this game.
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Heinz Field is phenomenal. I highly recommend that you find your way there. It’s a magnificent facility. Even the nosebleed section had great seats. As for the fans, it wasn’t at all what you might imagine. Hell, the fans were almost docile to the hosers that defiled the temple with their Giants crap.
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Speaking of fans, you don’t leave until the game is over. The exodus I witnessed was bizarre. You stay until the end for your team, dammit.
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You can’t win when you go 1-for-10 on 3rd down.
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The Giants offense is not nearly so good as its defense, at least when it’s up against a defense as good as the Steelers.
I’m off to bed now. I just spent 4 hours in a car getting back home and I’m beat. It’s a good kind of beat, though. I got to see the Steelers, finally. The only way it could have been better is if Ben had managed to complete a few more passes and helped the Steelers win. Alas, it was not to be.
You don’t have to punt,you could opt to use a tee if ya want…I think.
We’re both half right - you can punt, dropkick or place kick *without *a tee after a safety.
What’s the difference between a punt and a dropkick?
You don’t often see them in (American) football, but they’re fairly common in rugby, Aussie Rules and Gaelic football. A drop kick is the same thing as a punt (although the straight-leg American football punt is largely unknown elsewhere) except that you don’t kick the ball before it hits the ground, but immediately afterward. It’s a lot harder, IMHO, and I don’t know why anyone would choose to kick that way.
If you do it right you can kick it a hell of a lot further. All of the energy of the kick goes into the ball that is already going in the direction you’re kicking it. On a punt you’re burning up some of the energy by making the ball reverse direction.
Try it once with a soccer ball and you’ll see what I mean.
I’ve done both many times- I played rugby for years. I never ever got the same sort of distance drop kicking as I did punting, and I was pretty good. Well, at kicking, anyway.
Strange. I got at least 10 more yards on my kicks when I learned how to drop kick.
Which reminds me. With the punter hurt but Reed okay, wouldn’t it have made more sense to place-kick after the safety? I know the safety kick is generally a punt since it goes farther, but you’d think a kicker that’s able to make a 51-yard field goal could get it pretty far down the field. Sure, the ball is probably going no further than the Giants 30, but Berger didn’t get it any deeper.
It was my understanding that you can’t place-kick a free kick, which is why everyone punts it. Can anyone link to a cite?
This is overstating things. At halftime, the Giants led the Steelers in yards, time of possession, number of scoring drives, sacks, turnovers, and score. And there is no doubt the Giants outplayed the Steelers in the fourth.
If the Giants had lost, then you could have said “3 good quarters cancelled by one bad one.”
Earlier in the thread, but safety kick. You can place-kick it, but you can’t use a tee, which is why I used Reed’s career-long FG to say it might make it to the 30, though of course if he had plenty of leg it could go a few more yards. Everyone punts it because the ball generally goes a heck of a lot farther and it can be hung up there for a while.
For the Steelers a great defensive performance was canceled by a lacklustre offense. The Giants offensive line was the best the Steelers have faced this year in pass protection IMO, they deserve a lot of credit for that win. Nevertheless, the run D was solid, the pass defense was good despite not getting to Eli. The weak offense forced the D to be on the field too long; the play-calling is terrible, if I can predict most of the calls then the opposing teams can as well. Bruce Arians needs to go and the right side of the line needs serious help, especially since the Steelers run right more than half the time. Stapleton has done a decent job filling in for Simmons and Colon plays well at times but they are just not good enough to go all the way.
It was awesome to see Aaron Smith play so well. His 4-year-old son was diagnosed with Leukemia this week and he wasn’t expected to play after missing the whole week. As important as Casey Hampton is, it’s when Smith is out that I see a big drop off in run defense.
Why? The offense was pretty effective last year, and has been really effective this year, especially when Parker was healthy. It’s not Arians’ fault that Ben holds the ball too long and the line can’t block anyone.
My complaint with Arians is the predictability of the calls. You’re right that it’s not his fault about the line or Ben holding the ball to long. He is very creative at disguising draw plays and he is limited in what he can call because of the limitations of the line. I think Ben’s hanging on to the ball too long because he’s just not that good at reading zone coverage. A lot of the success on offense last year came on option routes and passes to the backs and they have got away from that.
Some changes I’d like to see: Heath Miller has great hands but isn’t good at getting separation. They need to make him the primary guy on some of the play-action rather than block-and-release every time, change it up a bit. When Willie comes back they need to throw him some screens. The Steelers have thrown to the backs fewer than any team this year, they only throw to Moore. FWP and Davenport have both shown they can handle screen passes well. On option routes this year, Ben and the receivers are not on the same page, maybe that’s Arians’ fault maybe not, but it has to improve.
I want Arians to prove me wrong but, as mentioned, if I’m sitting at home calling the plays ahead of time then the opposing team knows what’s coming as well.
I suppose you could have misrepresented that article a bit more, but it would be tough. Keisel admitted in the article that he heard the audible and flat-out guessed. He guessed right. That’s no more stealing signals than it would be eavesdropping if I heard you yelling at somebody.