That’s twice that Pittsburgh has been jobbed tonight. These refs are ridiculous. They overturned a call without conclusive proof that overturned a touchdown and then they gave the Chargers the ball back on that ludicrous fumble call which gave them three points.
If Pittsburgh loses this by less than 14 these refs should be fired by tomorrow morning. This is horrible all across the board, including that holding call on the Chargers that gave the Seelers four more shots at the end zone from the one in the first half.
Touchdown Miller. I’m sure during this commercial break that Triplett is reviewing the play, ready to call some obscure AFL rule about two tight ends being on the same side, 10 yards downfield during a forward pass.
Fuck this bullshit. This game was going to be hard enough without getting an ass-reaming by the refs.
Pittsburgh wins, but at what cost? This was a good game marred by bush league officiating on both sides, causing Pittsburgh to press at the end when they should have been cruising and maybe costing the Steelers their quarterback.I say it again: unbefrickinlievable.
IANAD, but from the looks of the replay, and the fact that Ben was able to walk off the field leads me to believe it’s not too serious of an injury. At least let’s hope not.
Fantastic game guys. You got a little sloppy in the second half but were able to pull it back together. Jaguars here we come.
Well, it’s hard to feel good with my stomach still churning with anger, but all in all, we handled the Chargers pretty well. We scored four touchdowns on them, even if only three of them counted.
We held the second coming of Christ to 62 yards on 18 carries. Brees looked pretty mediocre. I was impressed with Gates, but we largely handled him well. Keenan McCardell has a history of killing us, but he ended up with 1 catch for five yards.
It’s clear that Willie Parker can’t get the job done. Bettis was making yards fairly consistently, particularly some huge with a capital huge third down conversions.
We also need to change up our blitz package. We seem to get to the quarterback pretty well in the first quarter, but rarely touch them in the second half.
We need to shoot every single person on kick coverage teams. They are awful. We would be better off kicking the ball out of bounds every time. Okay, shooting them is a little much, but how about snapping them in the ass with a wet towel until they cry? They blew the Patriots game for us. They wanted to blow this one too.
We also got lucky that the refs blew a pretty obvious 15 yard facemask call on that last kick return. I don’t think it would have put the Chargers in any sort of field goal range.
Hines Ward was just interviewed on the local newscast, and he said, in effect, IANAD but it looks like a hyperextension of Ben’s knee. Cowher’s news conference will be on in a few minutes…
Also kind of interesting, over the last couple weeks Pittsburgh, New England and SD have gone 1-1 against each other, with the road team winning all 3 games. This is the kind of hidden indicator that is essential to an insider’s understanding of the game. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it means.
In all honesty, I think Plax is a superstar who never was and never would be utilized properly in Pittsburgh, so it wasn’t necessarily a foolish move on their part.
Well, Buress did show me more in that game a couple weeks back than I ever saw here. I guess I’m still begrudging the label, or characterization of him as anything close to superstar, but you are right that the Steelers were never going to use him as well as he could be used.
The only quibble I’ll make is that, as productive as he’s been, the Giants still have to throw his way an awful lot. At least, in reading over the play-by-play on NFL.com, you still see a lot of incompletions to him. Given that the Steelers are only going to throw the ball about a third of the time, we really have to have someone reliable to be our premiere receiver. Hines Ward is money, and he works his ass off. In context, Plax’s temperament and inconsistency stood out like a sore thumb and made the decision between the receivers very easy, in my book.
I would also point out that we have not at all suffered in the ability to stretch the field deep - I’m not going to check the stats right now, but I’d bet the Steelers receivers have more long passes completed than Plax does. As for the touchdowns race - if I lose the non-wager because Rothlisberger hits his tight ends for more touchdowns this year, I guess I’ll have to suffer the embarrassment! (I still should be able to count the Hines Ward touchdown that Jeff Triplett fucked up last night.)
But the bottom line is, to this point, Plax has been better than I would have given him credit for. I’ll still predict that his attitude will catch up with him by the end of the year, but I can admit that, as of now, he’s proven me wrong about him.
Ugh, the dreaded line by line reply. My apologies in advance.
Fair point, in that he does have a bunch of incompletions, and that’s something the Steelers’ gameplan can ill afford. How many of those are drops, bad throws, or simply well defended (bad decisions) is pretty much moot; your point still stands.
I didn’t check the actual stat, but Ward has a longer average and Randle El has an inhumanly large average. Plax is being used as the possession receiver, and he’s doing extremely well in that role. If I had to pick between Ward and Burress for that role, I probably would have picked Ward as well. But that was last year. If offered Ward for Burress straight up right now, I would decline.
You’re seriously going to argue that tight ends deplete your WR touchdowns? Is Miller now all of a sudden better than Shockey?
Yeah, Plax had one called back from an illegal formation call when Toomer didn’t cover the end. So we’re a wash on that score.
Actually, his attitude caught up with him in the third week of the season, but hopefully General Tom hammered that out of him. We’ll have to wait and see.
I hope so. Plaxico can be a great receiver. He can also be a spoiled brat who doesn’t realized being a first round draft choice doesn’t count for much after you get your contract signed. My impression of his career with the Steelers was he’d whine about not getting the ball enough but, when they did throw to him, he had too many drops and misses. He’s not someone I’d count on in a clutch. I can understand how he’d come by such an attitude and he was better than Troy Edwards; I just hope he does grow up.
No, Miller is a rookie and Shockey is a very good veteran tight end. Ask me again in a year or two.
My point was that Hal Briston qualified his bet to include only WRs, not TEs. But yes, a pass to a TE is, by necessity, one less pass to a WR, and a touchdown to a TE ends that particular opportunity for a touchdown to a WR. How could it be otherwise?
I’m just pleased to see the Steelers throw more to the tight ends. Miller has two TD’s already, which, by the way, ties Shockey in that category.
You’re selling your smack potential short; Miller’s two TD catches ties Shockey’s entire rookie year, as far as touchdowns go. Due to your system, Miller will never have the overall production of Shockey, who is almost tripling Miller so far. (17 catches to 6.) More relevant would be percentage of all team catches they represent individually.
My point was that while Miller may indeed draw passes away from the WRs, Plaxico faces a bigger obstacle in that Shockey draws a much higher percentage of the team’s throws than Miller does, making it an argument that goes more against you than for you. (We won’t even mention Tiki.)
A question for the group: anyone here know anything about the Titans? I keep hearing about how they’re the youngest team in the NFL. Is that good young or bad young? As in, do they have any potential to become a contender in the next couple years? Who are the key young playmakers over there, if any? (I know all about Volek, but that’s about it.)
I heard on the radio a little bit ago that the word on Roethlisberger is a hyperextension with a bruise. He’s not been ruled out for the game this Sun against JAX.
