Steelers vs. Jaguars Review

Overall:

Weidman, my good friend and Steelers confidant, has officially declared that we needed to lose this game. We had had too much good fortune over the last nine games to not experience a huge letdown at some point. And, we should thank our lucky stars that it was this week and not the Cincy game. Though, of course, I would prefer that the loss came outside our conference, but outside our division is good enough.

Offense:

We just laid an absolute egg on this one. I'd like to blame the line (since we only had 4 or 5 yards rushing and Ben was pressured and sacked repeatedly), but I have to blame Ben and the coaching staff on this one. It seemed as though they had a good game plan on the first drive. Play action, runs to the outside, throwing the ball aggressively down the field. Then, when Cedrick Wilson dropped/fumbled/didn't catch/couldn't be challenged/whatever the ball, it seemed like we went away from that strategy entirely. Listen. We're the Steelers! Play action will work at all times unless we're down by 17 or more in the 4th quarter. Should've kept with it. Should've kept running to the outside. But, we didn't.

Instead, hubris took over, we thought we could run between the tackles on anybody (never mind the fact that their starting end was out and their DTs have a combined weight of 1,353 pounds). And, the calls in the passing game were horrid.

Half-hearted screens, bunch formations for no reason (usually, you throw to an underneath receiver on the loaded side or take advantage of the one-on-one match-up on the weak side), and unispired routes (didn't look like there was any rhyme or reason to where the receivers were going).

But, a lot of the blame has to land on Ben. He missed a wide open Hines early in the game for a sure touchdown. He looked lost for most of the second and third quarter, and pretty much catatonic by the fourth. He missed receivers high, low, leading, and behind. AND HOW MANY TIMES DID HE THROW AWAY FROM THE BLITZ ON A HOT READ?!?!?!? I counted six times in the fourth quarter before I threw up in my mouth a little. If two guys are coming from the right side and you have two guys over there, what does that tell you about that side of the field? Possibly that it's empty? Or, at the very least, has two fewer guys on that side? And, it wasn't that the Jaguars were rolling coverage to the blitz side, because there were plenty of dudes on the other side. So, unless they had 13 or 14 players on the field, Ben made the wrong read. And it looked like Santonio Holmes was reading page 84 of the playbook and Ben was somewhere in the glossary for the entire second half.

But, like I said, needed to get the loss out of the way. Hopefully everyone comes to work with focus and intensity this week. We're going to need it against the Bengals.

Defense:

I have one complaint about the defense/special teams. When our offense couldn't find the end zone with GPS, a native guide, and a 38-piece string quartet playing Inna Gadda Da Vida, the defense or the return team needed either to score or create a turnover that would plop the offense into the red zone.

And, we didn't really change our game plan from last week, it's just that their guys blocked our guys better than Miami did. When we needed a big play, LeBeau sent 38 guys up the middle, which is the perfect way to attack Leftwich, and had a great deal of success. Bring more than they can block and bring it up the middle. He looked like a six year-old that lost his parents in the mall.

One other complaint about the defense, which ultimately was too exhausted by the end of the game to stop Jacksonville. They didn't get off the field on third down. I can understand late in the game. They'd been out there for 86 minutes or whatever Jacksonville's time of possession was. But, early in the game and into the third quarter, we continually pinned them inside their 20. If we force a three and out in any of those situations, we have a shot of actually crossing midfield and, dare I say it SCORING! But, Jax would get 2 or 3 first downs, and drive just far enough downfield to pin us inside our 10. And then we'd go three and out. You can only lose the field position battle for so long before you lose the game.

Again, a tremendous effort by the defense. But, as always, the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.

What to Do From Here:

Gotta move on. As they say in the tow truck business, a wreck is something you put behind you. At least Del Rio has class. At least he took a knee when he could've very easily made it 16-0. At least it wasn't in our division.

We got that first loss out of the way. Cincy's coming up and they look freakin' tough. Then again, they always look tough against the Division II-A teams of the league. The hated Ravens are 2-0. So are the Bengals. Gotta win next week to keep pace.

That's all I have to say about that.