Ask Behind The Steel Curtain: A Steelers Blog

DYMS is the expert, but I’ll pitch in. There have been a lot of penalties for sure, and many of them have brought back first downs. Also, we have missed a field goal a game, two in the chicago one.

The steelers have been pretty good at not giving up turnovers this year. Ben has gotten picked on hail mary’s, blown routes by the receivers, his arm getting bumped mid-throw. We haven’t seen too much Bad Ben where he throws 3 picks in 3 straight possessions. Bad Ben usually comes about due to pressure generated, and our line has been very solid in pass protecting, something they were terrible at last year.

Speaking of Ben. He has been playing very well as of late. He had a string of poor play in the chicago game, but otherwise he has been very accurate, comfortable in the pocket, good at hitting his hot routes, etc. He is still good for a boneheaded play a game, but that’s our guy. Right now he is playing very good football though.

The problem so far often seems to be the receivers. After the first game Holmes has dropped a lot of balls and been off on routes many times. We can’t win games with our “star WR” dropping half his catches, not with the amount that we have been passing lately. The steelers have been exceptional this year at marching down the field to about the 30, getting stuffed on 1st down, and throwing two straight incompletions. Our offense collapses near the end zone, even if it looks good all game. On top of that, we can’t even rely upon our field goal kicker.

Are you at all concerned going into this game, seeing as how the Steelers have had trouble with defense in the fourth quarter and the Chargers have done their best offensive work in the fourth quarter (30 out of 73 points scored in the 4th quarter)?

Anyone who says no is a goddamn liar.

A big issue this season has been the height of opposing CBs. The Raiders were able to keep the Chargers passing game mostly in check with their tall CBs. The Ravens should’ve lost because of their short CBs. The Dolphins lost because their tall CBs were not experienced enough and so a short CB (Allen) had to try to cover Vincent Jackson. With 3 receivers (including Gates) that are 6’4" or taller, how will the Steelers defend?

For the most part you can scratch whoever Ike Taylor is defending. Our other CBs are all fairly short. One of our safeties is 6’1" with a good leap and has been seeing a lot of time lately. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see him play when we need an extra DB on the field.

I expect that the steelers will attempt to apply pressure readily to Rivers, and your receivers catching will probably come down to that. If it’s a jump ball between one of our shorties and a 6’5" CB, we can guess who is going to win. All I can say is our safeties hit like trucks. One of your WRs is not going to finish the game if they are always going for the jump.

The steelers philosophy has been about preventing the big play for a very long time. They are good at it, and a lot of that is because deep balls haven’t been consistently accurate due to our pass rush. The pass rush hasn’t looked great this year, but the chargers will still need to devote extra effort to it.

If there is no pass rush this game, the backs won’t be able to cover. If there is, our backs are very skilled at punching receivers in the mouth at the right time. If the steelers can’t provide pressure, our WRs are going to need to start catching balls.

I should also note here that Mike Wallace, our WR, is impossible to cover by anyone on anyone’s team.

IMO, DYMS may differ, the losses cannot be attributed to one person. Our defense is hurt without him, but it moves on. Talking heads like to pin our defensive struggles solely upon him, but there are a lot of other things going on that I won’t get into because I’ve already written a ton. Troy was basically benched against you guys last year in the playoffs, and we did okay.

Lawrence Timmons will be on Gates, a lot. He is new to the steelers defense party and is fast and tough enough to cover him from the flat most of the way into the deep zone.

Great questions.

i watch every steelers game family reaons without troy they velvabe in the passing game and they keep teams in the game harrison is haveing a bad start to the season i notiec his speed is slower this year they bad on 3rd and 1 r meandall is a disponnant

If the 2 minute defense plays like it did in Chicago and Cincinnati the short answer is we won’t.

I expect Dick LeBeau and Mike Tomlin to figure out a way to minimize some of the weaknesses we have been experiencing during the two minute area and really the defense needs to create some turnovers or big-plays during the crunch time. They have yet to do that.

The steelers couldn’t run last year at all, but I do seem to recall a game where Willie did well. Somewhere in the playoffs I think, hrm…hrm…

The Steelers running game didn’t look bad in Chicago and it really looked good against the Bengals.

Ben holds onto the ball forever, it seems.

Bad Ben is the guy that played against NYG last year (1 TD, 4 INT), IND (0 TD, 3 INT), and others. Ben is definitely mortal but he looks pretty good so far this year.

What was causing that last year was it pressure or coverage? Are things improved this year?

This is a very good question. Last year it was a very poor offensive line combined with Ben’s unwillingness to take check-downs and the short stuff, and on top of that not always having guys open. Our OC Arians likes to run a lot of bunch routes, the problem with those is that it takes time for the WRs to get open (if they can). Last year our O-line was consistently unable to provide Ben with enough time for those routes to break open.

Ben is always looking downfield even when he has three sumo wrestlers hanging off of him, but last year he tended to skip the RB in the flat and keep looking further, and it took Holmes and Ward too long to get open. This year we still have the same problem with guys getting open. In the first game Holmes was burning everyone who covered him, since then he has been bottled up and when he has been open has made mistakes.

This year the O-line play (thus far) has improved dramatically. Most sacks have clearly been Ben’s fault and he has taken us out of field goal range twice by running backwards 19 yards in one instance (seriously). Giving Ben more time has given our receivers more time…sometimes enough that turtles could get open. It takes longer for guys to get open because we are seeing a lot of four man rushes. Last year four man rushes could consistently get to Ben, this year not so much.

The single biggest improvement Ben has made is to TAKE THE CHECKDOWN. He has gotten much better at passing it off to the flat or big Heath, perhaps because of Parker’s newfound ability to catch the ball. He won’t get rid of the ball, and he will try to go as deep as he can (he likes the middle stuff), but he will actually get rid of it or just take a few yards this year, and that is nice to see.

He still has a penchant for getting hit by 300 pound guys though.

I think you are a bit misinformed there John.

Ben asked Vince if he could go in and receive some training on the proper way to take hits from guys running at full speed. He believes this will help him with the forthcoming season.

Our O-line’s presence is completely justified as they are working on protecting themselves from the stunts and moves of their opponents.

While I agree with you and personally think it is stupid I don’t think it will actually be that much of a distraction in the long run. If I had my choice they wouldn’t be doing it.

It’s not something that I personally lose sleep over, but sure it is a concern but so is him getting his shoulder busted up or having a different career threatening injury. Ben Roethlisberger is not likely to play until he is 45 years old like a Brett Farve, but hey he has two Super Bowl rings and looks poised to add to that even if his window of opportunity might be a bit smaller. It comes with the territory.

As far as the defenses age coming into account for them stalling late in games, I guess it could be a factor but really I don’t think it boils down to that. I think teams are playing us a bit differently than they have in the past and it may take a few losses to teach the defense how to adjust to the new schemes and it simply requires extra effort and execution to get the job done.

I was hoping someone else would take a stab at this, since I’m a little out of my depth talking about line play. I’ll give it a go though. As a foreword:

The steelers over the last few years have also been focusing on “skill” positions, especially as relates to the offensive line. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but up until 2004 or 2005 or so the steelers had on their O-line a heavy dosing of top picks. First rounders, second rounders, third rounders – great talent. In Superbowl XL are line was anchored by Jeff Hartings (1st round), flanked by Faneca (1st round), Kendall Simmons (1st round), on the outside Max Starks (3rd round) and Marvel Smith (2nd round). Blitzburgh has a nice article that touches on this here: http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2009/1/9/715194/steelers-2005-super-bowl-r

Those are a lot of draft picks (though Hartings picked up in FA) that the steelers used on their line, and a lot of talent. Through that era the steelers also had coaches that could coach up their offensive line. Now the steelers are rolling with lesser talent and a coach has proven nothing, besides the fact that he has been using fat unathletic guys to play finesse football for the past two years. Coincidentally, our O-line has been pretty sad the last two years. Perhaps the steelers philosophy on the O-line is lead by…

Their philosophy on the D-line. The steelers current D-line is a hodgepodge of “raw” talent from 1st round keep-him-away-from-buffet’s Hampton to Aaron Smith (4th) and Keisel (7th). Their philosophy on that department has been to take guys with the body type they like later, and mold them into what they need from their 3-4 DEs. We have a phenomenal DL coach who is widely regarded to be LeBeau’s heir apparent who has been coaching them up. It is not a coincidence that our DL coach is the longest tenured member on the steelers staff, and has been doing it for 16 years.

The main thing the steelers need from their DL is work and unselfishness. Those guys work themselves to the bone every single play. They are the ultimate team players, never doing anything flashy and extremely unlikely to earn high accolades. Without that work ethic during the football games, they can’t succeed. Perhaps it is easier to find that sort of work ethic further down the draft chain where egos are less? The steelers have taken all sorts of guys in the draft and turned them into solid linemen, and it is their ability to learn footwork and handwork that I think turns them into such soldiers.

The steelers will use free agency when they have to. I don’t like it, and they don’t like it, as a stop-gap measure. If you get yourself into a hole where you need a stop-gap, then it can be necessary, the steelers certainly aren’t perfect in this regard.

Interestingly, the steelers invested a first round draft pick this past year on DE ziggy hood. Since the steelers typically do not invest high draft picks in linemen, there is talk that the steelers could be converting to a different style of line-play, but that’s premature at this point.

I believe he is the number 3 quarterback. Many in steeler nation believe that he would see active playing time if Ben went down in spot situations, and perhaps get a chance to start. For a guy to close out a game though, right now the coaches are trusting Batch.

Almost everyone likes Dixon in steel city. He hasn’t looked amazing, but he has looked pretty good, and certainly competent. In a year many expect he could slide into the number two slot, and be a good number two at that.

Maybe the browns will trade their entire team to us at that point for him. Hell, they’ll probably do it this off-season.

He can’t hold onto deep passes. He looked solid in preseason on short routes, but he drops the ball going deep.

I was a big Limas Sweed fan and still have faith in the guy

Sweed has us all excited in the preseason as he made some amazing catches and routinely got open deep. He had a very impressive jump catch on a 45 yard bomb from Charlie Batch where he bet the receiver, came back, leaped into the sky and plucked it

However, why he hasnt been able to bring that to the regular season is beyond us. As one of the more patient members of our fanbase, Im starting to get sick of his big time drops as well

To me, his problem is mental. Too much thinking about what happens after the catch.

Look at Mike Wallace this season. Every catch he almost pauses to make sure he has cradled the ball correctly, then he worries about YAC. Sweed just needs to get his head in the game a bit better. We dont need him to be over flashy, we have a very good WR core, just need him to catch the damn ball

the Steelers D line, like most 3-4 lines, is focused mostly on occupying blockers and allowing the linebackers to make plays. Casey Hampton did have a sack last week, equalling his total from last year. That said, if the interior of your line is as weak as suggested above, expect the pocket to collapse fairly quickly, and at least one sack out of Aaron Smith, Brett Keisel, or both. After the relatively poor showing in the pass rush department so far, expect it to be a point of pride to ratchet the pressure up this week…

If the ravens had a big game against you, the steelers will too.

Big Snack has been dominating the line of scrimmage this year. They will clog up running lanes and push the pocket.

but I had to take the opportunity to let DYMS know I envy hs NN.

To put this on topic….

What do you think of Mendenhall’s chances of making an impact this year, and is he really in Tomlin’s doghouse?

Ok..here goes trying to answer all your questions.

BTSC has a fantasy league and I am also 1-2 in it, although my team isn’t bad I just haven’t gotten any breaks. My team name is also “Drink Your Milkshake.” So no worries on draggin it down to mediocrity.

I am a huge PTA fan, although I am not a huge fan of Boogie Nights like most PTA fans, I much prefer Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, and even Hard Eight to Boogie Nights (Not to mention There Will Be Blood). I personally think that There Will Be Blood is the best movie of the decade and will be remember as such years from now. (I love the Coen Brothers, but No Country is not as good).

As far as Mendenhall I have no damn idea what he is going to do in a steelers uniform this year or next and anyone who does is a damn lair. He has been inconsistent in the little playing time he has had in the regular season so far and consistent questions have arisen about his work ethic and motivation. In the preseason both years he has got a decent amount of playing time and has had fumbling issues. There are lots of questions about Mendenhall to say the least.

was there an announcement, or are you speculating on his practice status?

I assumed he’d sit through the bye.

Cedric Benson did have some success against us – 16 carries for 76 yards. However, the best way to run on the Steelers is to get the ball to a back in space – RB screens tend to be fairly effective. That said, Lawrence Timmons has been recovering from an ankle injury and looks to be in good shape this week – he has tremendous closing speed, and tends to take that part of a team’s game away.

This is the meaning. Now go see the movie.

DRAINAGE!!!!!!!!!

Thanks we try to keep that type of attitude on our blog as well as when we visit others. Of course their are few blogs that manage to bring out the worst in us, but BFTB certainly seems to have a style and sense of respect for other bloggers like we do.

It’s okay, but he’s off-base with a lot of what he says about the Chargers (which doesn’t surprise me, considering he can’t possibly watch them as much as a Chargers fan). Here’s a run-down of things that are wrong

-“Jeromey Clary is a bum.” Maybe so last season, but he’s been phenomenal in 2009.
-“William Gay will cover Vincent Jackson.” Why would you put Gay (5’10") on Jackson(6’5") and Taylor (6’2") on Chambers (5’10")?
-“Kiesel is the laziest pass rusher in the NFL.” He does not understand the point of a 3-4 DE, does he?
-“Cromartie has been abused for the past 20 games” Nope. Cromartie was abused in 2008 when he played with a broken hip. He wasn’t even abused, he just looked average. In 2009 QBs have been throwing away from him and outside of one blown play he’s been as solid as any CB in the league.
-“Ward can be Jammer in coverage.” No he can’t.
-“Mendenhall will rush for 100 yards.” Ummmm….

While I think the guy makes some good points, it seems he used the Steeleres two 2008 victories against the Chargers to scout the 2009 team.