That's the pics you get when they lose. Friggin Steely McBeam.
Gack, what an ugly game that turned out to be. The Steelers kinda choked harder than Superfan Farley on his chicken wing bone.
Let's start with a couple goods, before we get to the understandable bads in a loss.
Good:
- Ben, again. He airmailed a couple passes and threw into coverage, but nobody's perfect. His consistent play was the offensive saving grace.
- Sepulveda. He's been kinda overlooked, but his punting is a major improvement from Mitch Berger (wait, on second thought...) and was/is going to be instrumental in giving the opponents bad field position.
- The running game. Ok, so maybe it wasn't "good", but it was an improvement. Mendenhall looked sharp in a limited role. He should get more carries from here on out.
Bad:
- Reed. Sure he missed the two field goals, but he's been clutch for us so it's hard to get too down on him. He's not gonna make every single kick, but he still lands in the bad column just for yesterday's game.
- The defense. Yeah, we didn't give up a lot of points again and stuffed the run like they always do, but the secondary plays off the receivers too much. My biggest concern though is the pass rush. As in, where the hell is it? We have hurries, sure, but only two sacks total in the first two games isn't gonna cut it. I mean, Reed did miss kicks, but where was our defense when it mattered? We let Chicago go right down the field like they had a former Chicago superstar running back playing for them.
- Specifically with the defense is the secondary. More to the point is Tyrone Carter. Man was he terrible yesterday. He did make the big hit on Olsen, but he was slow to react to passes to the tight end up the seam and was slow to react on the Bears td that tied it up.
- Playcalling. I'm not buying into the "Holmes dropped an easy touchdown pass" in the 4th quarter. That's a tough over the should catch that he can/should make, but on 3rd and 2 with 3 minutes left just get the first down at that point. You get that first down and Chicago has to use their timeouts and it's at or just below the 2 minute warning when they get the ball back (still assuming Reed misses an even shorter kick). That was a bad play to go for the endzone there. Also, where was the no-huddle offense from the week before that worked so well? Bad, bad playcalling is an ongoing theme with Arians.
In the end though, we're 1-1. We weren't gonna go 16-0, but it does hurt to let one slip away. Let's hope that corrections are made and they take it out on the Bungles next week.
Links:
- Reed is embarassed by missing the 2 field goals. I'd say lock up all towel dispensers in the area this week so they don't get broken.
- The offense is still struggling.
- Smizik finds some silver lining.
- P-G game recap here.
- Trib recap here.
- Harris at the Trib plays some blame game.
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