Steelerfury.com Post Game Report Card

Posted Sat, 12/12/2009 - 14:10 by Iron_City

 It takes a lot of will power to even dignify a game like this with any amount of time when no effort is placed on the field.  I even went so far as to attend this debacle of a football game.  After a weeks worth of planning,  a lot of money spent,  and getting my entire tailgate party on the same page we made the trip to Cleveland Browns stadium.  Our party of 12-15 landed amongst the local cretans about one o’clock in the afternoon and was greeted with a lot of rubber dog bones,  dog masks,  and 10,000 terrible towels waving back at them. 

 

Upon entering the parking lot,  and before I put all my gear on,  we set up shop to get the party started.  Several coolers of beer,  a table set up with liquor and mixers,  2 different grills set up with brats,  dogs,  burgers,  and pulled pork amongst the various appetizers we had laid out.  We brought a barrel  and some starter logs and got a nice flame going and a 15 foot enclosed travel trailor with a propane fire place burning inside of it. 

 

And let me tell you what,  after being outside for 15 minutes setting up,  the weather was no joke.  The cold air was enough to take your breath away,  and the wind gusted up to 50 mph or more for the entire day.  Enough to blow the grills over at times,  they had to be tied down. The food all had to set up in the trailer,  chairs rolling through the lot,  and in several cases I shit you not that my beer froze into a slush before I was even able to finish drinking it.  I grew up in the cold weather of western PA,  and never once in my entire 35 years have ever spent so much time in such miserable weather in my entire life.  The mercury hovered between 12-15 degrees F all afternoon but the wind chill got as bad as (-20) degrees below zero.  And it showed,  b/c the stadium was half empty at kickoff and about 1/3 of that crowd didn’t even make it till halftime,  including myself,  who sat on the south end of the end zone behind the Steelers bench and couldn’t take it.  Two pairs of pants,  sweatshirt,  2 jackets,  2 pair of socks,  2 pair of gloves,  thermal boots,  2 hats,  handwarmers in my gloves-hat-and jacket, and I still wussed out.  In nearly 120 meetings between these 2 teams,  it was the coldest game every played between the Steelers and Browns. 

 

Onto the show,  the grades portion.  This one is real easy:

 

Pittsburgh Steelers:  F 

Big fat F

 

No heart,  no imagination,  no desire.  Fighting for your playoff lives and you drop 3 in a row to the 3 worst teams in the NFL.  Outstanding effort guys, worth the price of admission (end sarcasm).  You can quantify offense,  you can quantify defense, but you there is no measurement  for heart and how bad somebody wants to win. 

 

Steeler Nation has trouble recognizing where the problems lie and where to point fingers amongst this losing streak.  Some point to coaching,  others to players,  some to scheme,  and the rest to execution.  Wrap that all into one and theres your answer.

 

Coaching --- C’MON MAN

  • Mike T.,  this ultimately falls on your shoulders.  Week in and week out,  you bring a team that is unprepared to play in this league and that falls on the head coach.  Undisciplined football,  lack of proper preparation,  and getting outcoached are signature moments of this 5 game skid. 
  • Arians—Your shit is getting old,  and your placalling is unimaginative at best.  The mark of a good coordinator is being able guess what will be thrown at you and having a plan in place to beat it.  You fail miserably at that.  You don’t seem to understand how to beat 2-man coverage.  I get what your trying to accomplish and why you call what you call,  but its not working.  You don’t have the horses to make it work. 
  • Lebeau – Where’s the magic?  Are you going to let Troy Polamalu define your career where your lost without him?  Your squad is as unprepared as any to play right now.  You continually call plays that used to work until injuries forced lesser players into those roles.  Now,  your not playing to your strengths as while we watch nearly every member of your unit underachieve.  I’ve never seen a Steeler defense consistently take such poor angles and miss tackles as I’ve seen this year.  That’s on you Dick.

 

Offense:  C’MON MAN

  • Ben – Way to spend extra time at the facility by coming in on Tuesdays,  but I gotta ask.  What the hell do you actually do in your extra time?  Its week 14 and you still don’t know who your hot receiver is?  Are you kidding me?  Didn’t you write the freakin playbook.  ?  At least half the sacks you took could’ve been avoided if you knew what the dam playcall actually was.  But instead,  you hold the ball waiting for the deepest route to develop and what once made you great,  now cost your team a season. Do you not understand in a 5 man protection your hot WR is your 6th blocker in a sense?  Teams are adjusting to you,  time for you to adjust back.  Head Coach and QB are biggest problems we’re facing right now.
  • RB’s – For as good as Mendenhall has looked,  he still doesn’t know the playbook.  He’s not sure to pick up a blitz or release as a safety valve and too often gets caught in between.  But this is one of the few positions Im not worried about going forward
  • WR’s—I don’t know what to think right now,  but I sure don’t buy what they’re saying.  This unit has underperformed to everyones expectations and I blame a lot of it on route combinations.  I don’t think your being put in a position to succeed with the route trees being called.  But I do love watching all the drops and it’s a sad day when Tyler Grisham sees the field before Limas Sweed
  • TE’s – Matt Spaeth,  your services are no longer needed.  Thanks for the memories,  but you may be the worst blocking TE in the NFL.  Yes,  worse than Heath Miller.  But at least he get open once in a while,  something David Johnson can’t do. 
  • OL – Downright abysmal.  The only reason your not taking the flack due to you this year is b/c of how bad you were last year.  You went from the worst unit in the NFL,  to bottom 1/3.  So congratulations.  The Kemo and Hartwig extensions were huge mistakes,   and I pray Willie Colon isn’t brought back.  And find me a new RG while your at it.  Max Starks sucks,  but his play is adequate enough to give him one more year.  They just don’t run behind him enough to fully expose him. 

 

DEFENSE:  C’MON MAN

  • DL:  Travis Kirscke and Brett Keisel were eaten alive in this game,  completely erased.  While Casey Hampton didn’t have his best game,  he held the point.  The DE play was abysmal and the worst I’ve seen in years from a Steeler defense.
  • ILB:  Just terrible,  another embarrassing effort. Lawrence Timmons is the king of overpursuing and allowing cutback lanes while James Farrior now scrapes off of tackles and doesn’t have the footspeed to close on an angle he could in the past. 
  • OLB:  Woodley had a decent game,  aside from being sucked in a time or two and should’ve had a pick.  Mr. Harrison,  Joe Thomas has beaten your ass every time you’ve lined up against him.  And he kicked our ass again on Thursday.  You failed to set the edge at times and lost contain at key times. 
  • CB:  Ike,  if you don’t wanna be a Steeler,  just say so.  Your effort is weak,  and the fire is gone.  Your not good enough to play at ¾ speed.  Willie Gay is a talentless try hard guy in the Ellis Hobbs mold that will never get better than what he is now.  This is his ceiling,  he needs to go.  Joe Burnett played OK for a youngster,  I’d like to see more of him.  A day 1 CB is needed in this draft.
  • Safety:  Tyrone Carter is way to slow to do what Troy did.  He doesn’t even have NFL speed and is purely a box player.  Ryan Clark was silent in this game,  but he made his name the prior 2 weeks by getting beat.  A healthy Troy will sure up this unit.

 

Special Teams:  C”MON MAN

 

Is Josh Cribbs your Kryptonite?  3 career return TD’s against you and nearly notched his 4th,  although a block in the back was missed on that return.  Speedy Logan is quietly being phased out b/c our dynamic return man just saw Santonio Holmes take reps away now in the punt game and Joe Burnett in kicking game.  That’s 4 other roster players that have been called upon to take returns away from our return man.  He’s already off of most coverage units and we now have a roster spot for a returner only that we don’t even let return.  Love the logic.  Cut him.  Dan Sepulveda is a warrior,  the football had to be a rock by the time he stepped on the field to boot it and he ran down Josh Cribbs to save a TD,  and did it sleeveless in that weather.  I couldn’t have been more impressed if he had gona all Tony Franklin on me and kicked barefooted.