Week 12: Steelers 19, Bills 16 (OT)

Steelers RB Rashard Mendenhall is now 37 yards from another 1,000 yard season.

The Steelers took a trip to beautiful upstate New York this past weekend, and came within inches of leaving with a huge loss to a terrible Buffalo Bills team.  Nobody could have seen this performance coming after the whooping the Steelers put on the Raiders last weekend, but now the team heads into the biggest game of the 2010 season with many questions.

The Steelers seemed to have this game under wraps by halftime, but in keeping with recent tradition, they allowed an inferior team to hang around.  By the end of regulation, Buffalo PK Ryan Lindell was booting the game tying FG and the Steelers were a coin toss away from a tough road loss.  That coin flip went the way of the Buffalo, but the Bills couldn't finish the job.  Pittsburgh eventually got their act together in time to salvage a 19-16 victory, and remain within one prime-time road victory next weekend in Baltimore of another AFC North title.  Of course, if the Steelers play like they did in Week 12 next week, they will be watching the Wild Card race very carefully through the Holidays.

The penaltyfest that has been 2010 continued in Buffalo.  The patchwork offensive line accounted for numerous painful flags, and it was obvious that Chris Kemoeatu and Ramon Foster were totally overmatched all day.  This glaring issue will be even more obvious against the powerful Ravens.  CB Ike Taylor followed up one of the best games of his career against Oakland with possibly his worst in Buffalo, and if WR Steve Johnson hadn't pulled a "Limas" on the game winning bread basket pass from QB Ryan Fitzpatrick, the entire Steeler Nation would be calling for Ike's head this week.

Injuries have ravaged this team, and young players such as CB Keenan Lewis are now seeing the field more often.  Facing another pass happy offense, Defensive Coordinator Dick LeBeau began employing a full time nickel and even a dime defense on every down.  Watching CB Anthony Madison - a virtual Pro Bowl special teams player - try to play Cover 2?  Ouch.  The offseason decision to not re-sign CB Deshea Townsend is looking bad right now.  Injuries are a part of the NFL, but in Week 13 - vs. their biggest rival in what essentially boils down to a Playoff game - the Steelers could very well have a starting DE spot filled by practice squad player Steve McClendon.  Let that news sink in real fast, then go pray to the Black and Gold football Gods that Brett Kiesel is back to 100%.

The Buffalo Bills showed this week that the NFL really does mean "Not For Long" if the league gets a sniff of your weaknesses.  Drew Brees, Tom Brady, and now Ryan Fitzpatrick have officially broken the door down on how to push this defense to the brink.  Fast 3 step drops, short passes......all Kryptonite to this team.  You can bet that QB Joe Flacco will be under strict orders to not hold the ball on passing downs.  With the NFL creating new anti-Steelers rules each week, the pass rushing skills of James Harrison have been negated.  When teams employ the 3 step drop strategy, the Steelers have been dropping the LB group into coverage.  This is not good. 

The Steelers have one more week to hit that high note.  If they come out flat on Sunday Night Football, the Ravens will bury them.  This team - injuries or not - has the experience and skill to make one more Super Bowl run if they can overcome the odds and take a win from Baltimore.  The schedule shines on Pittsburgh over the last month of the season.  The Steelers play 3 straight games at Heinz Field starting in Week 14, with only a game against the upstart New York Jets as a battle of winning records.  Home games against the 2 win Bengals and 1 win Panthers round out the home schedule, while another potential trap game looms at Cleveland in Week 17.  If the Steelers can top the Ravens this week, they have a legit shot at winning 13 games and still will be well within striking distance of home field advantage in the AFC playoffs.  The Ravens finish out 2010 with a slate that includes a Monday Night road game at Houston and a home game against the defending Super Bowl champion Saints.  Needless to say, this week will be the biggest of the season.

State of the Nation: Where do we go from here?

Heading into their Week 9 prime-time battle with New England, the Steelers had spent time at the top of just about every "Power Ranking" out there.  Once again, Pittsburgh was the center of the NFL media world. 

Its safe to say that after Sunday night, it will be some time before they reach that level again.

The Steelers were outplayed from whistle to whistle.  They were outhustled in their house, outcoached by a mortal enemy of Steeler Nation, torn apart on defense by another.  The last time this team was outplayed so soundly was Week 16 in 2008 - a season that ended in Tampa with a sixth Super Bowl championship.  That week, the Steelers traveled to Tennessee, and proceeded to get beat in every phase of the game by a Titans team that would be the top seed in the AFC.  That game was on the road in a tough environment, and will forever be remembered as the day Lendale White trounced a mock Terrible Towel on the sideline. 

You have to go back to 2006 to find this team outplayed at home in this fashion.  Week 16 of that Super Bowl XL hangover season, the Steelers still had playoff life when they played host to the hated Baltimore Ravens in what ended up being the final home game in the long career of head coach Bill Cowher.  On that fateful day, the Steelers got hammered 31-7 by their rivals.  In the history of Heinz Field, the team had rarely had such an off day.....until this past week.

The New England Patriots have long understood what 30 other NFL teams have never been able to figure out.  They hold the patent for the blueprint on beating the Steelers.  Unfortunately for the 64,000 fans in Heinz Field Sunday night, Tom Brady has memorized that blueprint.  Brady tormented the Steelers with 3 step drops and quick underneath passes throughout the 1st half.  By the time the defense caught onto what was happening, they were looking up the ass end of a 2 score deficit.  Once the Steelers got it within a TD at Halftime, the game was already in the books.  The pass rush had been nullified, the secondary exposed.  The Patriots came out after half and systematically rammed the ball down the throats of everyone in that stadium. 

Game. Set. Match.

So what went wrong?  Why did the Steelers no-show a prime time game at home for the first time since Monica Lewinsky was a household name?  It would be easy to blame Jeff Reed, whose missed 26-yard FG in the 3rd Quarter essentially ended his star-crossed Steelers career.  It would be even easier to blame injuries.  A team playing without DE Aaron Smith and Brett Kiesel isn't going to get a push on a hardened O-Line like New England.  A team playing without WR Hines Ward isn't going to be able to find that key 3rd down catch.  A team playing without half its starting Offensive Line isn't going to be able to hold off the pass rush long enough to allow its QB to go through his progressions, or give a talented RB a chance to build on his successful season.  Of course we can blame injuries, or Skippy, or even CB William Gay - thats the guy wearing #22 and running 5 yards behind every Patriots player with the ball in the red-zone.  Sure, we could blame all of them.

Or we could cast blame on Mike Tomlin, who obviously did not have this team prepared for a game of this magnitude.  Hell, we could even blame the Heinz Field Jumbotron team.  The new videos were lame, and seemed to never end.  Stick with "Renegade" guys, everything else is fail city. 

Bottom line, this team just isn't who we though they were.  The next 7 days will determine whether or not the Steelers are a true force in the AFC.  The Oakland Raiders are coming to town, and they mean business.  If the Steelers are not ready for this game, it could be 2009 all over again. 

I'm betting that this team will not have 2 bad outings in a row.  If anything, we can be hopeful for a renewed commitment to the elements that brought us here.

And maybe - if we are lucky - we may see a kickoff or two into the endzone for the first time in 9 years.

Go Steelers!

Week 9 Steelers @ Bengals - Monday Night Football

The Steelers/Bengals rivalry has seen its share of brutal battles over the past decades.  The Bengals have tamed the Steelers Defense more times than any other team in the NFL, and have parlayed that into a season sweep in 2009.  Go back farther, and you will find memories of Boomer Esiason, Ickey Woods, James Brooks, and a virtual potpourri of average players who turned into superstars for one or two games in this rivalry.  The Bengals had a few nice years in the 1980's, only to find Joe Montana and the dynasty 49ers waiting behind the door on both occasions.  The Steelers have spent the better part of the last 30 years using the Bengals as a steppingstone to 6 Super Bowl Championships.  During Jerome Bettis' tenure with the Steelers,  he routinely used Cincinnati as practice dummies.  The Steelers have had some slips however, the aforementioned sweep in 2009, the Ricardo Colclough game at Heinz Field a few years back, and a very poorly played game vs. a bad Bengals team in 2002.

The Steelers used the Bengals to open Heinz Field, taking home the victory on that somber September 2001 day.  Years - heck, decades - of two teams who simply do not like each other.  With the Baltimore Ravens, the Steelers have an opponent they truly hate - but respect.  The Bengals do not have that respect.  The trash talk gets brutal in game weeks, and loudmouth Bengals players seem to keep the fire fueled all season long.

This Monday night, the Steelers will take their 3 week road show to the Riverfront city and Paul Brown Stadium.  Its a foregone conclusion the stadium will be close to 50/50 in terms of fan support, as hard as the Bengals try....they just can't get past Steeler Nation.  We will be there, as always.

The Bengals will try to throw the ball 40-50 times Monday night, QB Carson Palmer will attempt to get out of his season-long fog against the Steelers dynamic pass rush.  WR Terrell Owens and Chad OchoCinco will try to live up to their trash talk and take a few deep balls to the house.  The onus is on Ike Taylor, Bryant McFadden, Troy Polamalu and Ryan Clark to keep that from happening. 

The Steelers will try to hammer the ball with the Rashard Mendenhall show.  OLB LaMarr Woodley and James Harrison will be ready to pounce, and the returning DE Brett Kiesel will keep the lanes open for those blitzes.  QB Ben Roethlisberger will do his part to find WR Hines Ward (who has OWNED the Bungles in his career), utilize the deep threat that is WR Mike Wallace, and use the short middle to get TE Heath Miller involved in enough big plays to forget his fumble in New Orleans last week. 

The Steelers will own this game from start to finish.  They will win going away, possibly to the point that we will see the "Other" Palmer Bros. - Jordan - taking snaps for the Bengals in the 4th Quarter.

The 2010 Pittsburgh Steelers have a gear that the NFL has not seen yet,. and this is the week they crank it up a notch, hit that gear, and show the entire National TV audience that they are the favorite to take Lombardi #7 home to its rightful spot at the South Side Complex.

Steelers 37, Bengals 10

Week 8 Review - Saints 20, Steelers 10

Goal line problems.

Key 3rd Down defensive failures.

A horrendous turnover that essentially handed the game to the opponent.

One look at the calender shows that this is 2010, but anyone who watched the entire Sunday Night Football showdown between the Steelers and the Saints may have thought it was 2009 all over again.

In the end, even with managing to get stuffed on an entire series from the 6-inch line, allowing New Orleans and their Pro Bowl QB to endlessly convert 3rd Down after 3rd Down, and looking like a team that was a shade slower all night long.......the game was there for the taking.

The end came when TE Heath Miller - one of the most dependable players for this franchise during their two Super Bowl runs - fumbled a huge pass from QB Ben Roethlisberger that would have put the Steelers in line for a game tying field goal or go ahead TD.  The momentum that had built up for the team was gone at that point, and the Saints easily put the game away.  Watching from the sideline, Miller looked like a kid who had lost his puppy.  While everyone watching the game knew that Darren Sharper - a Pro Bowl defender - had simply made a Pro Bowl play, the Steelers TE simply couldn't believe his misfortune.

So in the end, the Steelers visited Louisiana and came back with an L that could have easily been a W, and the Steeler Nation is left wondering whether or not this team has the extra gear it is going to need to win a tough AFC North. 

So let us take inventory from Week 8 of the 2010 Steelers season:

Positives

1.  DE Ziggy Hood - In his first NFL start, Ziggy Hood showed the promise that made him a 1st Round Draft Pick.  The return of DE Brett Keisel in Week 9 should only make him that much better.  While the absence of Aaron Smith could be sensed by the lack of aggressive blitz packages on early downs, Hood showed the power and speed needed to handle the double teams he will have to take on as the season progresses. 

2.  Woodley's Hammy - The hamstring injury of OLB LaMarr Woodley was overlooked during the week leading up to this game, overshadowed by the possible season-ending injury to Smith.  For a player like Woodley, speed is a key factor to his effectiveness.  Seeing him get around the end last night was a good sign.

3.  CB's Ike Taylor and Bryant McFadden -  Both starting CB's have stepped their game up this season.  McFadden seems to have gotten better in his one year vacation in Glendale.  Ike has actually been "Swaggin" this year, making big open field tackles and getting his butterfingers around an INT last night.

4.  When a Loss isn't really a Loss - Yes, the Steelers now have 2 losses.  Yes, the confidence of this team may be a bit shaken by the way the 4th Quarter played out.  The positive?  This wasn't a Conference or Divisional game.  If a loss was going to happen during this road trip, THIS was the game for it to occur.

Negatives

1.  Goal Line issues return - an old friend returned last night.....isn't this why RB Issac Redman is on the roster?

2.  CB William Gay - even playing in the Nickel, the shortcomings of Gay are exploited.  He misses assignments, misses tackles, and flat out looks like he has no business on the field.  If the Steelers have one defensive weakness, it's pass defense on 3rd downs.  The Nickel CB is a prime candidate to be picked on every week, so Gay needs to pick up his game - pronto Tonto.

3.   Lack of timing/communication on pass routes - The potential TD that WR Emmanuel Sanders stole from Hines Ward was only the tip of the iceberg for the Steelers.  The timing of the passing game was seriously disrupted by an average pass rushing team, and the results were a terrible 1st half by Ben.  The running game has managed to break off a few big TD's this year, but until the passing game gets on track (which could take weeks considering the amount of time Ben was away from this team), the Steelers are going to have problems.

The biggest negative for the week?  How about the loss of OLB Thaddeus Gibson to San Fransisco on waivers today.  For a team that relies on always having a LB ready to step in and play, the loss of Gibson now puts the team in the position of being one big injury away from having to tap a weak free agency pool for a backup.

The team now heads to Cincinnati with a chop-licking game against a struggling Bengals squad.  No matter the outcome, its safe to say that we will know alot more about where the Steelers are heading after this game.