For the second straight year, the Pittsburgh Steelers finished the first half of the season at 6-2 after a win on Monday night football. And for the second straight year, they started the second half of the season by laying an egg at home and fell to 6-3.
However, unlike last year's lackluster 18-12 loss to the Bengals at Heinz field, last night's dismantling at the hands of the New England Patriots was quite disturbing.
The Steelers were dominated by New England in every facet of the game. Tom Brady, Mr. Steeler-killer himself, seemingly passed at will and was barely even touched by Pittsburgh's pass-rushers.
And more frightening was how New England's 29th ranked defense took advantage of Pittsburgh's patchwork offensive line and not only held the running game in check, but were in Ben Roethlisberger's face the entire time, finishing with 5 sacks and countless knock-downs and hurries. Ben passed for 387 yards, but most of them came in garbage time when the Steelers were in serious catch-up mode.
Pittsburgh had no answer for New England. It reminded me of that infamous Monday Night game in Indianapolis back in 2005 when the Colts took apart the Steelers before a national audience.
Pittsburgh had several factors going against it heading into last night's game with the Pats.
For starters, New England was coming off an embarrassing, 34-14, loss to the Cleveland Browns in their previous game. The second time in three weeks that Pittsburgh had to face a really good team the week after an uncharacteristic showing against the Browns. Much like the Saints a couple of Sunday nights ago, you just knew that Bill Belichick would have his team ready to play their best game.
Another factor was Tom Brady. As I said, he's always been a Steeler killer, and the perfect counter to Dick Lebeau's legendary zone-blitz defense. He gets rid of the ball quickly, he's deadly accurate and he kills the Steelers with his ability to spread the field and hit his underneath receivers. All of that was on display last night.
And the third, and in my opinion, most important factor were the Steelers' ever-mounting injuries. Going into the game they were without Max Starks and Chris Kemoeatu on the offensive line. Aaron Smith and Brett Keisel were gone from the defensive line. And during the game, they lost Lawrence Timmons and Hines Ward with injuries. And that doesn't even include the guys that were less than 100%, like James Harrison who was suffering from back spasms prior to last night's game.
The win by New England marked the 6th time in 8 meetings under Bill Belichick that the Patriots have defeated the Steelers in the last ten seasons. The NBC announce crew mentioned the decade-long rivalry between the two perennial AFC powers, but when history judges the teams years from now, the Steelers will be to the Patriots what the Raiders were to the Steelers in the 1970's: A team that displayed consistent excellence over a period of time but who mostly came up short against the other giant in the conference. But the Raiders of the 70's matched up better with the Super 70's Steelers than these Steelers do with the Patriots. I think after last night, even the most diehard Steeler fan must admit that it's been almost total domination by the Pats. The only way the Steelers can salvage their part in this rivalry is by defeating the Patriots in a postseason game on the way to a Super Bowl. It doesn't have to be in the AFC championship game, it just has to be in the playoffs and against Tom Brady. If I had my wish, I'd want it to be in New England just so their fans can feel what it's like to be on the other side of a postseason home loss.
But that's for another place and time. Right now, the question is how will the 2010 Steelers finish out these remaining seven games.
I can see this season going in one of three directions:
They're unable to recover from all their injuries and collapse like last season and finish out of the playoffs.
They sort of fade down the stretch like they did in 2007, back into the playoffs and go one and done.
Or, ideally, they stabilize their injury situation, and go on a championship run like they did in the '05 and '08 seasons.
What direction they go in will be determined by how well they compensate for the loss of so many key players.
I mentioned that '05 loss to the Colts. The Steelers had injury-issues at that point of that season, too. Left tackle Marvel Smith was out with an injury, and Ben Roethisberger had just returned from mid-season knee surgery. They were still a few weeks away from starting their run, and as we all know, the playoff game against the Colts had a stunningly different result.
But there weren't nearly as many key injuries in 2005 as there have been this season, and unlike five seasons ago when Marvel Smith eventually returned to the line-up, Max Starks isn't coming back in 2010 to protect Ben's blind-side. Aaron Smith may not return until the postseason, if at all. Kemoeatu and Keisel will eventually come back, but will it be enough to make up for the other losses?
I have serious doubts about that, and that's why I think they should make some adjustments to their approach on both sides of the ball.
As far as adjustments on the offensive line, I don't know what more can be done. As I said, Kemoeatu should hopefully be back soon, and he's a pretty steady, if unspectacular, left-guard so that should help. As for the left tackle spot? That's a bit more concerning. Jonathon Scott seemed completely over-matched last night. Scott was brought in to add depth and if he can't step in and fill the void that Starks left, maybe they go with Tony Hills or even Trai Essex. I know Essex is the starting right-guard, but I recall him filling in at left tackle when both Smith and Starks were injured near the end of the 2007 season. Legursky did an okay job filling in for Essex earlier this year. Just a thought, maybe I'm just grasping for straws at this point.
If changing personnel on the o-line isn't an option, maybe changing the offensive game-plan is. It's pretty obvious the Steelers' last three opponents had very little respect for the line's ability to keep the pocket clean for Roetlhisberger, and they loaded up the blitz time and time again. I'm not one of the many Arian-bashers in this town, but I think he needs to spread the offense out a bit and call more three step drops. Roethlisberger is taking way too many 5-7-step drops and by the time he completes his drop, he's having to scramble out of the way because things are breaking down too quickly.
Another option would be to use the hurry-up offense more. I know that won't be very popular with a lot of run-happy Steeler fans, but you can still run the ball out of spread formations, other teams do it, and Roethlisberger really excels out of the no-huddle. And no matter how poorly the line has played over the past few seasons, most of the time when the Steelers run the hurry-up, the offensive line does a really good job of protecting Ben. I'm not saying the Steelers need to take this kind of approach on offense exclusively, they just need to do it more often. And those that might worry that this approach would take away Ben's ability to improvise, well, it won't. Improvising occurs during breakdowns, and you don't have breakdowns in mind when you're gameplanning. Ben can still do his thing when he has to.
Another personnel move they should seriously consider on offense is using Emmanuel Sanders more as the 3rd receiver. I know Randle El was brought in here to fill that role, but he just looks really slow out there. Yes, he can still throw the football as well as any receiver in the league, but I think it's far more important for the slot receiver to make big catches underneath and then make things happen with the ball in his hands. Sanders might be a rookie, but Mike Wallace was a rookie last season and he performed really well as the number 3 receiver. Sanders could provide a much-needed spark in the passing game.
On defense, it might be as simple as letting Troy be Troy. During the NBC telecast, Cris Collinsworth said that Polamalu had relinquished a good deal of his free-lancing duties to Lawrence Timmons, and Troy has been a more conventional safety this season. With all due respect to Timmons who is having a tremendous season, he's no Troy. And I don't know if you've noticed it or not, but Polamalu has been pretty quiet the past month or so. Some have said that he's less aggressive because of the league's crack down on head-injuries, and that might be true, but it could also be because he's not improvising as much. I think we can all agree that there are few defenders in the league who make as big a difference for their team as Troy does for the Steelers, and whatever's going on with him these days, he must be the old Troy in-order for the defense to continue its dominance.
We'll find out pretty soon what kind of second half it's going to be. They play the Raiders and Bills the next two weeks, and they MUST win both of those games. If they split with Oakland and Buffalo and then lose at Baltimore, they'll be 7-5, and in the very competitive AFC, they'd have almost no margin for error. However, if they win these next two games, and lose to Baltimore on yet another Sunday night game, they'd still be in pretty good shape at 8-4 with a three-game homestand and Cincinnati and Carolina coming to town. The way things are shaping up right now, it looks like the two wildcards will be coming out of the East and the North, and I know Steeler fans want homefield advantage and a bye, but first and foremost, I want to see them make the playoffs regardless of seeding. How they're playing come the postseason will be more important then anything. They proved that much five years ago. I'm not saying they're automatically going to lose to the Ravens. They haven't lost to them with Ben under center since '06, but I'm just looking at the worst-case scenario. It goes with out saying that I'd rather see them win the division and get a week off, but no matter how they make the dance, I don't care. I just don't want to sit through another Steeler-less postseason.
I just think it's pretty strange how they have the exact same record as they did a year ago, and just like last year, some apparrent cream-puffs on their schedule that most fans will pencil in as automatic wins. I just hope it's not history repeating itself. At least not the history of last season.
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