You can’t have that much talent, generate 5 turnovers, and lose. Rudolph played about as well as could be expected, but he got no help from the running game and the secret to beating the defense, which isn’t a secret at all, is to run drag routes across the middle until they respect it and then run it up the gut. They play a marshmallow defense and then wonder why they can’t hold a lead. You can sit there watching and call it out and yet, even though it’s obvious to everyone, Butler refuses to make adjustments.
0-3 isn’t the worst they’ve been since I started doing these, but man, we still need something. There is a way back, but doing the same thing over and over and getting torched because of it isn’t that way.
I didn’t watch the game, only the 10 minute highlight video, so I may have missed some stellar play by the secondary, but the coverage I saw was pretty dismal. There were 49ers receivers wiiiiide open in soft zones all over the place, and it’s not like those dudes are household names. The INT was a fluke tip, so good for them on that but that’s just luck. The rest of the coverage looked like swiss cheese to me.
With their most recent trade, the Steelers are making it clear that after getting rid of the distractions in the locker room, they are now slowly but surely also getting rid of the distraction of the 2020 draft.
The Steelers may be bad this year, but the Dolphins are an order of magnitude worse. And I have more faith in Pittsburgh to improve fairly rapidly than Miami.
Maybe. If Ben is done (at least at a top level) and Rudolph isn’t up to the job, the Steelers are *already *in a rebuilding phase but without a sound foundation to build on. Miami has a whole lot more high draft picks coming up.
I heard this first from the handicapper RJ in Vegas, but it made sense. (And it’s covered by Velocity and Doors in posts 66 and 67 of this thread.)
This upcoming QB draft class is supposed to be amazing. Still, a team is likely going to need to pick in the 1st round to get as franchise QB. If the Steelers didn’t have the utmost faith that Rudolph was the guy, they wouldn’t have shipped off their 1st rounder to get Fitzpatrick. Especially since, if Rudolph is a dud, it’s likely the Steelers will have a poor season, and be drafting high. Of course, the Steelers might be drafting high anyway, per Doors’s post at #81.
How washed is Big Ben? My first thought was to disagree with Doors’s point that the Steelers wouldn’t be likely to draft a better QB than Ben, even if they were to get their choice, but I’m not sure. QBs start very quickly these days, and do quite well (Mahomes, Watson). Are they as good as peak Ben? Well, Mahomes is, but how likely is lightning to strike twice? But to my point, how far is Ben Now from peak Ben Then?
I think the Steelers need a new QB and have to look past the Big Ben era; he’s, what, a 15-year vet now? He’s oft-injured, too. Big Ben is tough as nails with that big burly body of his, but he’s losing foot speed and you need that in order to avoid getting knocked around. The offensive line hasn’t looked that impressive either in the games I’ve seen, so even if you go out and get a shiny new QB, you need protection, and you need a run game and wideouts to take the pressure off a newbie.
Last year, as a starter on my fantasy team, Ben was essentially tied with Matt Ryan for scoring the second most fantasy points in the entire league behind only Patrick Mahomes. As far as I’m concerned, he was still peak Ben last year.
Unfortunately I think the departure of AB and now Ben’s injury have knocked him off a cliff, ending his career abruptly. At least in my mind.
I think it was a pretty significant mistake to trade away what’s looking like a top 10 overall pick next year during a QB-heavy draft when you need to replace your franchise QB. I mean, they can stick with Rudolph, I guess, but I wouldn’t want to pin my hopes on him for the next 15 years.
Thanks for the history on Ben. I hadn’t realized he was still performing at such a high level. Having AB helped, I’m sure.
Yeah, if they don’t think Rudolph’s the guy, it was pretty stupid to trade away their 1. So they must think he is the guy, given Pittsburgh doesn’t have the rep of a badly-run team. I haven’t watched Rudolph: does he look like he could be a top third/quarter of the league QB?
I know the Bengals aren’t good, but they’re still a professional team with good players and Rudolph ate them up on the one side while the defense wrecked Dalton on the other.
Hopefully they can keep this up. Remember, they’re only one game back.
I too hope the Steelers can keep up their 1-3, beating the second worst team in the NFL, getting destroyed by the best, only one game back in the worst division pace.
They only got destroyed by the Patriots. They had the lead late against the Niners and the Seahawks. It’s closing out the games they’ve been having trouble with.
That was one of the dink-and-dunkest games i ever saw. But I’ll take it. The announcers never discussed if Rudolph was just not seeing open receivers down field, or if he was just taking what the Bengals were giving, I’d like to hear some analysis on that.
Next week should be interesting. A win against the Ravens would mean the season is very much alive, a loss would mean a long road ahead.
