Good News and Bad News: Steelers at Colts

Good news first:

1. By my math, the Steelers should've gotten half a win for Sunday night's performance, a full win for shutting out the Seahawks, and two losses for getting crushed by the hated Ravens on opening day.  That would make them 1.5-2 on the season, but, according to the way the NFL cooks the books, they're 2-1 and tied for first place.  That's good news.
2. Aside from that massive brain fart against Pierre Garcon, Ike Taylor played another excellent game.  William Gay looked solid, too.  Here's hoping he keeps the starting job opposite Taylor.
3. Troy Polamalu is on the Steelers payroll.  This is good news.
4. Marcus Gilbert was able to come back in the fourth quarter, which means that the Steelers, having only dressed seven offensive linemen, didn't need to line up a tight end or defensive end at left tackle.  If that had happened, I think Dwight Freeney would have decapitated Ben Roethlisberger.
5. Since I waited until Tuesday to post this, we had enough time for Mike Tomlin to announce that Legursky and Scott are not headed to injured reserve.  Scott's wearing a boot and Legursky is listed as Questionable for the Texans game.  Gilbert is supposed to be OK to play on Sunday.  When I saw all the injuries on Sunday night, I was really thinking that Scott and Legursky were headed to IR.
6. I... uh... I mentioned that they won, right?

Surprisingly small amount of bad news.

1. The Steelers were out-rushed by a significant margin on Sunday night.  Indianapolis is not a good running team, the Steelers were playing run-first on defense because Kerry Collins and Curtis Painter were in at quarterback, and the Colts also have a bad run defense.
2. Worse news is that they've been out-rushed on the season, 298-296.  Those numbers don't seem horrible, until you take a closer look and realize that they've attempted 79 running plays to their opponents' 65 attempts, meaning that opponents are averaging 4.6 yards per attempt and the Steelers are averaging 3.3.  As the Painter-led touchdown drive in the fourth quarter showed, the Steelers can make anyone look like an all-star if they're playing off balance on defense.  I know that the NFL is rapidly becoming a passing league and that running the ball and being able to stop the run are less important than they once were.  But, the Steeler defense has always thrived when they're able to make an opposing offense one dimensional and struggled against balanced offenses.  Then there's the fact that the defense is old and gets progressively worse when they have to stay on the field for long periods of time.  An offense that is balanced possesses the football, meaning that the defense will fare that much worse as the game wears on.
3. Houston will absolutely crush the Steelers -- like hated Ravens bad -- if they play this way against the Texans in Week 4.  I'm not saying that Houston is a rolling juggernaut, I'm saying that, when they play really well, it's when they establish the run and execute a balanced offense.  They are considerably better at that process than the Manning-less Colts, which means it will take a big effort from the Steelers defense to prevent Matt Schaub and company from getting into a rhythm.  
4. Three turnovers lost, one turnover forced.  That makes ten turnovers lost for the season and one turnover forced.  This needs to change.  I don't care what weird stuff they need Polamalu to do to change this trend, but they need to change it.  It's not even like there have been a lot of close calls.  Like, a ball gets tipped in the air and no one gets there on time to intercept it or that there have been a lot of dropped interceptions.  There haven't been a bunch of forced fumbles that the offense just happened to fall on.  There haven't been many opportunities created for turnovers, which is why there has only been one forced turnover.  Granted, it was a really critical forced turnover, but the Steelers need to work on getting over to the plus side of things.

I left the fact that Freeney and Robert Mathis treated Roethlisberger like a pinata for most of the game out of the Bad News section, since I feel as though those two guys just played tremendous games.  Yes, Gilbert and Scott were pretty easy match-ups for them, but you still have to go out and actually make the plays.  Dear God, did they ever.  So, I tip my cap to them.  I'm glad that their utter dominance didn't help carry their team to victory.

Also, I didn't want to list too many of the good things that the Colts did as bad news.  They played a much stronger game than I thought they would and deserve credit for rallying to tie the game after the sack-fumble-touchdown in the fourth quarter.  I honestly thought they'd curl up into a ball and allow the Steelers to pad their lead, but that was not the case.  I don't think that Indianapolis is a playoff team, but this is definitely a game that they can build on.  The Bills started out 0-8 last year, turned things around a little bit and finishing with a 4-4 record in their last eight games.  This season, they're building on the positive aspects of last season and they're doing well thus far in 2011.

But, since this site is not called Colts N At, I'll shut up about them already.

A win's a win.  Here's to me writing that again next week.