A loss always sucks. The silver lining is that it's a non-conference loss, so it doesn't count as much. The hated Ravens sit atop the AFC North, but that's only based on a head-to-head win. They still have more conference losses.
You can't pin this loss on Heath Miller. The man has gained countless yards the past few years fighting for that extra inch. I don't want him giving up those inches because he thinks he might fumble. Having said that, he still needs to wrap up the ball in the closing minutes.
You can't pin it on the defense. They held the New Orleans Saints -- there was a graphic during the telecast that said that the Saints have averaged 26.7 points per game since 2006 -- to 20 points, which is below their average. You could argue that they could have stepped up after the Miller fumble and held the Saints to a field goal, but New Orleans would still have won 16-10.
I think that you can pin this on the offense. You can't score ten points and think that you're going to beat the Saints. You might be able to get away with that kind of output against Tampa or Cleveland, but New Orleans is going to score, so you need to keep pace.
I said in the Preview that the Saints were going to blitz and that Ben Roethlisberger was going to make more big plays than dumb mistakes. The issue was that the Steelers weren't prepared for the blitz.
Now, I'm just some idiot with a blog that has six loyal readers and gets 300 click-throughs a month from drunk yinzers that are looking for "porn n at". If I know that the blitz is coming -- and the Saints blitzed seven or eight guys on a few occasions and brought six guys numerous times -- then the Steelers coaches should have been prepared. I understand that Roethlisberger is comfortable with the offense, but, if you're Bruce Arians, you may want to have a review session with your quarterback and receivers regarding hot reads before the game. As far as I could tell, no such review session was conducted.
So, we basically, as Steeler fans, need to come to grips with the fact that either Arians or Tomlin is bad at making in-game adjustments. I may have said this before, but that explains why the offense gets a sudden "spark" when Roethlisberger goes into the two-minute, no huddle offense. He's calling plays at the line of scrimmage, adjusting to what he sees from the defense on the fly. The defense, having game planned to stop a certain scheme with certain tendencies, has no way to react. Thus, Roethlisberger, making in-game adjustments, is successful.
This great scheme, poor in-game factor would help to explain why the Steelers can't score from six inches out with three downs to play. It would help to explain why the Steelers didn't call a draw play on third and 20 in long field goal range in the first half. My buddy Joel and I discussed this -- the draw play in that situation is so predictable that I said, "Draw play," before the ball was snapped and was surprised that I was wrong -- but the draw play is the most logical call in that situation. You know that you're going to get something, even if it's only two or three yards, but you move yourself closer and you put your kicker in a better position. Instead, Arians called a standard play in an attempt to gain the full 20 yards and failed. The kick was no good, which cannot be pinned on Jeff Reed.
This would help explain why the Steelers didn't go play action after they were stuffed on their first attempt to punch it in from six inches out. It would also explain why Roethlisberger -- in a league that is hyper-sensitive about helmet-to-helmet fines and always looks to protect their quarterbacks -- didn't just try to sneak it across the line.
Arians has created an excellent system based on the talent at hand. Ben Roethlisberger is better at running that system than Dennis Dixon, Charlie Batch, or Byron Leftwich. He will keep running that system even if it doesn't work. As Steeler fans, that is the contract that we entered into.
Hopefully the system works better against the Bengals next week.
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