I took some time before posting this because, first of all, I was lazy and didn't want to do anything yesterday and, second of all, I wasn't sure how I felt about the loss. Or, maybe more accurately, I wasn't sure about how I was feeling about the loss.
I was disappointed and upset, but I wasn't angry. Usually, after a big loss like this, I'm angry for a good, long while. I complain about stuff that doesn't warrant it and I'm generally agitated for no reason. I kept thinking that I wasn't angry because it was a close game and the Steelers fought hard, even if they fell short. I kept thinking that, since I don't have anything against the Packers, that it wasn't as big of a deal. That wasn't it. Until this morning, I wasn't sure why I wasn't angry.
As I was headed into my building -- I took Monday off for obvious reasons -- a guy I work with met me at the door and said, "Well, Brad, the Steelers lost." I just nodded. Then he added, "Whose fault is it?"
Without thinking, I just said, "I don't know. Everybody?" That was my gut reaction and I think it's right. I think that I wasn't able to be angry about this game because I couldn't focus my anger on one person or group.
Roethlisberger threw two interceptions and missed a wide open Mike Wallace. He was pretty erratic for big chunks of the game and choked in the last two minutes, which he doesn't ordinarily do. He also had 263 yards and two touchdowns and kept bringing the team back into the game when it looked like all hope was lost.
Mendenhall had a fumble, sure, but he also scored a touchdown, ran hard, and averaged 4.6 yards a carry.
Suisham missed that long field goal, but it's not his fault that he was out there.
Tomlin put him out there, his guys came out flat in the first quarter, and he burned two timeouts in the third quarter to "get the right call" but didn't think to do that on fourth down inside two minutes with the game on the line. I can't stay mad at him, though. He also took a team that I thought would be 10-6 at best, got them through a season full of distractions, suspensions, and injuries, and led them to the Super Bowl.
The defense gave up 31 points, gave up a 31 yard completion on third and 10 that set up the Packers deep in Steeler territory, and didn't force a turnover. They also had what would have been a legendary goal line stand if Roethlisberger and company had pulled out the win.
It's possible they blew their chance in the first five minutes when they didn't recover that fumbled punt. It's possible that the game would have changed completely had they recovered that fumble. It's possible that they would've won without the Mendenhall fumble or if they had punted instead of having Suisham attempt what was, for him, an impossibly long field goal. A lot of things would have been possible, but none of those things happened. What happened was that the Steelers lost to the Packers in Super Bowl XL.
I can actually find a lot of positives in this game.
Hines Ward announced that he hasn't lost much off his fastball by playing a great game. Mike Wallace got involved in the short game, which opened things up deep on his fourth quarter touchdown. The offensive line gave Roethlisberger plenty of time to throw in most situations, allowed only one sack, and the team averaged 5.5 yards per carry. Lawrence Timmons and Ziggy Hood looked sharp. Troy will be healthy next season. So will Starks and Pouncey. Maybe Aaron Smith retires and we get to see Hood play every Sunday. Maybe the Steelers draft Mike Pouncey or Derek Sherrod and start to form a young, potent offensive line.
Maybe there's no season in 2011. Who knows? Always in motion is the future.
But, the past is set. The Packers beat the Steelers in the Super Bowl. No reason to be angry. I guess we just have to re-focus, continue to evaluate, and move on.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Super Bowl Preview
The moment has arrived. The moment where I unveil the winner of this year's Super Bowl.
The trouble is that I wasn't sure about this game after Championship Weekend and I'm still not sure about it.
I read pretty much every preview and prediction on the Internet. I was trying to look for some key or some strategic advantage that one team had over the other that was going to vault that team to victory. I failed.
What I found was a bunch of articles and blog posts that basically said, "Player X for the Steelers is good and Player X for the Packers is good. We think that the Packers/Steelers will win because the players on that team will be gooder and that will lead to a championship for that team." It could be that Comment sections have paralyzed writers to the point that they're afraid to actually say anything because someone, somewhere on the Internet will bring up something that they hadn't thought of. But, really, I think the issue is that these are two evenly matched teams that have a lot of strengths and not a lot of weaknesses. They're so similar and strong that it's hard to pinpoint one thing that will sway the game.
That's why I think that the team that does the best job of exposing the other team's weaknesses will win the game. If both teams take advantage of their strengths and mask their weaknesses, then I have no idea who will win. If both teams exploit all the other team's weaknesses, then it's going to be a pretty crappy game... and I'm not sure who will win.
Without further ado, here are the weaknesses for each team.
Packers Weaknesses:
Right tackle Bryan Bulaga and left tackle Chad Clifton:
Bulaga is a rookie. He hasn't played badly this season, but he also hasn't played all that great. Woodley had yet another solid season and he's had a tremendous postseason. He has at least one sack in his last six postseason games.
My guess is that the Packers give Bulaga some help, either with a tight end or a running back. If Woodley is still able to beat that, or they find that leaving that extra guy in to block is slowing down their passing game, then Aaron Rodgers will get sacked by Woodley. I don't think that Rodgers is as susceptible to getting broken down by contact as Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, but you can wear him down. This is a "kill the head and the body will die" situation, because Rodgers is what makes this offense go, even though Green Bay has a lot of talent at the receiver position.
Harrison had a big game in Super Bowl XLIII and has shown the ability to take over games in the past, so he's always someone to keep an eye on. Clifton is a good player and he's not a liability, but that's not exactly high praise.
ESPN.com broke down the top 106 players in the Super Bowl last week and I found something interesting. If you look at that list, Harrison is ranked 3rd and Woodley is ranked 13th. Clifton and Bulaga are ranked 24th and 39th, respectively.
I'm sure Dick LeBeau has something up his sleeve, but I also don't know that he needs to have something up his sleeve. Unless the Packers keep extra blockers in the formation, Woodley and Harrison should be able to win these match-ups and exploit this weakness. If they can't -- if Bulaga and Clifton have great games and/or Harrison and Woodley come out flat -- then Rodgers will be able to pick the Steelers apart since the head will not be killed and the body will not die.
This is Green Bay's biggest weakness and it's the greatest strength for the Steelers. That's why I listed it first.
SS Charlie Peprah:
The Packers have placed three strong safeties on IR this season. They're down to Peprah -- who had 11 starts this season, so he's not totally green -- but isn't a great player. Everyone else in the Green Bay secondary was voted to the Pro Bowl, so he's their weakness.
I think the Packers will try to take Mike Wallace out of the game the same way the Jets and hated Ravens were able to take him out of the game: Put their best deep cover guy on him and give that guy safety help deep. That puts Tramon Williams and Nick Collins -- who's actually very good and has been overlooked in all the Troy talk -- on Wallace. That takes Wallace out of the game -- most likely, but I still have hope that he'll do something awesome -- but it also takes out Collins and Williams out of the game, which is huge.
Charles Woodson probably draws Hines Ward and that takes Hines out of the game. That means it's up to Heath Miller and Emmanuel Sanders to carve up Peprah.
The Packers have had trouble with tight ends and third receivers all year. The reason for that is mostly Peprah, but also because there's a big drop-off from the starting corners to the third cornerback. That third cornerback -- rookie Sam Shields -- had two interceptions against the Bears, but I think that was an outlier.
The Steelers need to be able to pick on him and Peprah. Maybe Antonio Brown has another big play left in him.
The First Five Minutes and the Last Five Minutes:
The Steelers have a bunch of guys -- 17 in all -- that will be playing in their third Super Bowl on Sunday. Those guys have already won two. The Packers have a total of two players that have been to a Super Bowl and neither of those guys played for the winning team.
Now, given the fact that a lot of first time teams and teams that were lean on Super Bowl experience have won it all recently -- including the Steelers in Super Bowl XL -- I don't think that experience is a huge advantage. Where it is a slight advantage is in the first five minutes of the game.
The Green Bay coaches have been talking to their players all week about how it's just another game and they just need to focus on what they practiced, but it won't be just another game when it kicks off. The Packers players will probably be overwhelmed by the scope of the game and they may take a bad angle, or try too hard on a play, or get stuck out of position, or miss a tackle. After about five minutes of in-game experience, everything tends to calm down and they'll realize that it's just another football game and they've been playing football their entire lives.
If Green Bay slips up in that first five minutes, the Steelers need to make them pay for it.
The last five minutes of the game are where the Steelers have a clear edge. If it's a close game, the last five minutes are the most important five minutes because they're the ones at the end.
The Packers lost their six games this season by a total of 20 points. The one side of that argument is that they're probably better than their record and they proved that they deserve to be considered an elite team because they tore their way through the playoffs on the road. The other side of that argument is that they probably choked in the last five minutes of those games.
The Steelers -- on offense and defense -- seem to take care of business in the last five minutes and they've done well towards the end of games this season. If this is a close game and it comes down to the wire, the Steelers will win.
Steelers Weaknesses:
RT Flozell Adams and LT Jonathan Scott:
I've been tough on Adams this season and he really hasn't been that bad. He's a great run blocker -- most of the yards and big plays the Steelers made on the ground this season were to the right side -- and he's a decent pass blocker. But, if you look at that list I linked to, he's ranked as the 48th best player in this game. Scott is ranked 67th.
Clay Matthews is ranked 4th overall. Matthews is an incredibly talented player and he also has a knack for destroying the guy lined up across from him if there's a big talent disparity. With Adams and Scott, there's a big talent disparity. In Week 5 against the Redskins, the Packers lined Matthews up across from some rookie right tackle I'd never heard of. Matthews would have had 15 sacks in that game if he didn't get hurt midway through the second quarter. Even with the injury, he had 1.5 sacks and two tackles for loss.
A.J. Hawk is a very good player, too. This is an impressive front seven and the offensive line will need to play at least as good as they did against the Jets to score enough points to keep up with the Green Bay offense.
Packers defensive coordinator Dom Capers probably has some tricks up his sleeve as well. He'll probably try lining Matthews up at left end so that he can go after Adams. If LeBeau is the Godfather of the zone blitz defense, Capers is Tom Hagen. Remember, Capers and LeBeau designed the 3-4 defense that Bill Cowher implemented when he started coaching the Steelers in 1992. At that time, Capers was the coordinator and LeBeau was coaching the linebackers. Darren Perry and Kevin Greene are both position coaches for the Packers. There's a lot of history between the players and coaches on these teams and there's a lot of familiarity.
Both offenses have talked this week about the fact that, wrinkles aside, both teams run the same defense. That kind of familiarity with a defense favors the offense, which is a possible explanation for the fact that last year's game ended with a final score of 37-36. Anything that favors the offense favors the Packers, because they have a better offense.
C Doug Legursky:
The fact that he has an awesome football name aside, Legursky is not that great of a player. He's ranked 66th on that list. Green Bay nose tackle B.J. Raji is ranked 6th and he maybe should be ranked a little higher. Regardless of whether Pouncey or Legursky got the start on Sunday, Raji was going to have a big edge because he's an excellent player.
The fact that Legursky is starting instead of Pouncey turns this from an edge for Raji into a weakness for the Steelers. It's a big one. The way to pressure Roethlisberger is to attack him from the edges and contain the outside. The best way to sack him is to pressure him up the middle. With the guys on the edges keeping him from rolling out and making a big play, he steps up into pressure and gets sacked. Think of how much Darnell Dockery disrupted the offense in Super Bowl XLIII and you have some idea of how disruptive Raji will be.
SS Troy Polamalu:
I was going to classify this weakness as just "the secondary" but Ryan Clark isn't a weakness and it's a well-established fact that the cornerbacks aren't the strength of this Steelers defense. They haven't been for the last 20 years or so. The best way to protect the cornerbacks is to get to the quarterback. That's the way it's always been and Sunday will be no different.
The weakness here is that I think Troy is still hurt. They've insulated him the past couple of weeks by making him play center field and allowing him to come up and make plays. He played a pretty craptastic game against the hated Ravens in the Divisional round and he was slightly better against the Jets. If he's healthy, then that means he can move around and disguise his position and direction before the snap.
If he's still hurt -- and I think he is -- then Aaron Rodgers knows where he'll be. He'll be in center field. That weakens the Steeler defense because it takes away a lot of what they like to do. It gives Rodgers an advantage if he knows where Troy is at all times and where Troy will end up.
The Field:
The Steelers had the "luxury" of playing their two playoff games in Heinz Field. They know the turf. They know its strengths and weaknesses. It's a grass field and they played on in it January, which favors the defense.
This game is being played indoors. The Packers are a dome team that happens to play their games outdoors in Wisconsin. They don't have much of a running game, they have five good receivers, and they have an aggressive, highly talented quarterback. The last game they played in a dome, they put up 48 points.
I don't think they'll put up 48 points on the Steelers, but the fact that this game is being played indoors favors the offense. Anything that favors the offense favors the Packers.
What I Think Will Happen:
I think the Packers will overcome the "opening five minute jitters" or that the Steelers won't be able to capitalize on that weakness. Maybe they get a field goal out of it.
I think Green Bay will jump out to a pretty sizable early lead and go into halftime up by at least two touchdowns.
Rodgers will keep his foot on the gas, just like he did against the Falcons. The Packers will score just enough in the second half to stay well ahead.
The Steelers will attempt to mount a comeback, but they'll run out of time. That will eliminate the "last five minutes" weakness for the Packers.
I know that the Steelers have the edge of experience and confidence and that they always "find ways to win," but this is the Super Bowl. It will come down to which team has the most talent and which team has the fewest exploitable weaknesses. The Packers have more talent and fewer weaknesses.
I've spent the past two weeks trying to convince myself that the Steelers can win, but I have failed. Any time I try to convince myself that they can win, they don't. Especially if I fail to convince myself.
I hope I'm wrong. I'll be happy to be wrong. But, I think I'm right.
Prediction:
Packers 27, Steelers 17
The trouble is that I wasn't sure about this game after Championship Weekend and I'm still not sure about it.
I read pretty much every preview and prediction on the Internet. I was trying to look for some key or some strategic advantage that one team had over the other that was going to vault that team to victory. I failed.
What I found was a bunch of articles and blog posts that basically said, "Player X for the Steelers is good and Player X for the Packers is good. We think that the Packers/Steelers will win because the players on that team will be gooder and that will lead to a championship for that team." It could be that Comment sections have paralyzed writers to the point that they're afraid to actually say anything because someone, somewhere on the Internet will bring up something that they hadn't thought of. But, really, I think the issue is that these are two evenly matched teams that have a lot of strengths and not a lot of weaknesses. They're so similar and strong that it's hard to pinpoint one thing that will sway the game.
That's why I think that the team that does the best job of exposing the other team's weaknesses will win the game. If both teams take advantage of their strengths and mask their weaknesses, then I have no idea who will win. If both teams exploit all the other team's weaknesses, then it's going to be a pretty crappy game... and I'm not sure who will win.
Without further ado, here are the weaknesses for each team.
Packers Weaknesses:
Right tackle Bryan Bulaga and left tackle Chad Clifton:
Bulaga is a rookie. He hasn't played badly this season, but he also hasn't played all that great. Woodley had yet another solid season and he's had a tremendous postseason. He has at least one sack in his last six postseason games.
My guess is that the Packers give Bulaga some help, either with a tight end or a running back. If Woodley is still able to beat that, or they find that leaving that extra guy in to block is slowing down their passing game, then Aaron Rodgers will get sacked by Woodley. I don't think that Rodgers is as susceptible to getting broken down by contact as Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, but you can wear him down. This is a "kill the head and the body will die" situation, because Rodgers is what makes this offense go, even though Green Bay has a lot of talent at the receiver position.
Harrison had a big game in Super Bowl XLIII and has shown the ability to take over games in the past, so he's always someone to keep an eye on. Clifton is a good player and he's not a liability, but that's not exactly high praise.
ESPN.com broke down the top 106 players in the Super Bowl last week and I found something interesting. If you look at that list, Harrison is ranked 3rd and Woodley is ranked 13th. Clifton and Bulaga are ranked 24th and 39th, respectively.
I'm sure Dick LeBeau has something up his sleeve, but I also don't know that he needs to have something up his sleeve. Unless the Packers keep extra blockers in the formation, Woodley and Harrison should be able to win these match-ups and exploit this weakness. If they can't -- if Bulaga and Clifton have great games and/or Harrison and Woodley come out flat -- then Rodgers will be able to pick the Steelers apart since the head will not be killed and the body will not die.
This is Green Bay's biggest weakness and it's the greatest strength for the Steelers. That's why I listed it first.
SS Charlie Peprah:
The Packers have placed three strong safeties on IR this season. They're down to Peprah -- who had 11 starts this season, so he's not totally green -- but isn't a great player. Everyone else in the Green Bay secondary was voted to the Pro Bowl, so he's their weakness.
I think the Packers will try to take Mike Wallace out of the game the same way the Jets and hated Ravens were able to take him out of the game: Put their best deep cover guy on him and give that guy safety help deep. That puts Tramon Williams and Nick Collins -- who's actually very good and has been overlooked in all the Troy talk -- on Wallace. That takes Wallace out of the game -- most likely, but I still have hope that he'll do something awesome -- but it also takes out Collins and Williams out of the game, which is huge.
Charles Woodson probably draws Hines Ward and that takes Hines out of the game. That means it's up to Heath Miller and Emmanuel Sanders to carve up Peprah.
The Packers have had trouble with tight ends and third receivers all year. The reason for that is mostly Peprah, but also because there's a big drop-off from the starting corners to the third cornerback. That third cornerback -- rookie Sam Shields -- had two interceptions against the Bears, but I think that was an outlier.
The Steelers need to be able to pick on him and Peprah. Maybe Antonio Brown has another big play left in him.
The First Five Minutes and the Last Five Minutes:
The Steelers have a bunch of guys -- 17 in all -- that will be playing in their third Super Bowl on Sunday. Those guys have already won two. The Packers have a total of two players that have been to a Super Bowl and neither of those guys played for the winning team.
Now, given the fact that a lot of first time teams and teams that were lean on Super Bowl experience have won it all recently -- including the Steelers in Super Bowl XL -- I don't think that experience is a huge advantage. Where it is a slight advantage is in the first five minutes of the game.
The Green Bay coaches have been talking to their players all week about how it's just another game and they just need to focus on what they practiced, but it won't be just another game when it kicks off. The Packers players will probably be overwhelmed by the scope of the game and they may take a bad angle, or try too hard on a play, or get stuck out of position, or miss a tackle. After about five minutes of in-game experience, everything tends to calm down and they'll realize that it's just another football game and they've been playing football their entire lives.
If Green Bay slips up in that first five minutes, the Steelers need to make them pay for it.
The last five minutes of the game are where the Steelers have a clear edge. If it's a close game, the last five minutes are the most important five minutes because they're the ones at the end.
The Packers lost their six games this season by a total of 20 points. The one side of that argument is that they're probably better than their record and they proved that they deserve to be considered an elite team because they tore their way through the playoffs on the road. The other side of that argument is that they probably choked in the last five minutes of those games.
The Steelers -- on offense and defense -- seem to take care of business in the last five minutes and they've done well towards the end of games this season. If this is a close game and it comes down to the wire, the Steelers will win.
Steelers Weaknesses:
RT Flozell Adams and LT Jonathan Scott:
I've been tough on Adams this season and he really hasn't been that bad. He's a great run blocker -- most of the yards and big plays the Steelers made on the ground this season were to the right side -- and he's a decent pass blocker. But, if you look at that list I linked to, he's ranked as the 48th best player in this game. Scott is ranked 67th.
Clay Matthews is ranked 4th overall. Matthews is an incredibly talented player and he also has a knack for destroying the guy lined up across from him if there's a big talent disparity. With Adams and Scott, there's a big talent disparity. In Week 5 against the Redskins, the Packers lined Matthews up across from some rookie right tackle I'd never heard of. Matthews would have had 15 sacks in that game if he didn't get hurt midway through the second quarter. Even with the injury, he had 1.5 sacks and two tackles for loss.
A.J. Hawk is a very good player, too. This is an impressive front seven and the offensive line will need to play at least as good as they did against the Jets to score enough points to keep up with the Green Bay offense.
Packers defensive coordinator Dom Capers probably has some tricks up his sleeve as well. He'll probably try lining Matthews up at left end so that he can go after Adams. If LeBeau is the Godfather of the zone blitz defense, Capers is Tom Hagen. Remember, Capers and LeBeau designed the 3-4 defense that Bill Cowher implemented when he started coaching the Steelers in 1992. At that time, Capers was the coordinator and LeBeau was coaching the linebackers. Darren Perry and Kevin Greene are both position coaches for the Packers. There's a lot of history between the players and coaches on these teams and there's a lot of familiarity.
Both offenses have talked this week about the fact that, wrinkles aside, both teams run the same defense. That kind of familiarity with a defense favors the offense, which is a possible explanation for the fact that last year's game ended with a final score of 37-36. Anything that favors the offense favors the Packers, because they have a better offense.
C Doug Legursky:
The fact that he has an awesome football name aside, Legursky is not that great of a player. He's ranked 66th on that list. Green Bay nose tackle B.J. Raji is ranked 6th and he maybe should be ranked a little higher. Regardless of whether Pouncey or Legursky got the start on Sunday, Raji was going to have a big edge because he's an excellent player.
The fact that Legursky is starting instead of Pouncey turns this from an edge for Raji into a weakness for the Steelers. It's a big one. The way to pressure Roethlisberger is to attack him from the edges and contain the outside. The best way to sack him is to pressure him up the middle. With the guys on the edges keeping him from rolling out and making a big play, he steps up into pressure and gets sacked. Think of how much Darnell Dockery disrupted the offense in Super Bowl XLIII and you have some idea of how disruptive Raji will be.
SS Troy Polamalu:
I was going to classify this weakness as just "the secondary" but Ryan Clark isn't a weakness and it's a well-established fact that the cornerbacks aren't the strength of this Steelers defense. They haven't been for the last 20 years or so. The best way to protect the cornerbacks is to get to the quarterback. That's the way it's always been and Sunday will be no different.
The weakness here is that I think Troy is still hurt. They've insulated him the past couple of weeks by making him play center field and allowing him to come up and make plays. He played a pretty craptastic game against the hated Ravens in the Divisional round and he was slightly better against the Jets. If he's healthy, then that means he can move around and disguise his position and direction before the snap.
If he's still hurt -- and I think he is -- then Aaron Rodgers knows where he'll be. He'll be in center field. That weakens the Steeler defense because it takes away a lot of what they like to do. It gives Rodgers an advantage if he knows where Troy is at all times and where Troy will end up.
The Field:
The Steelers had the "luxury" of playing their two playoff games in Heinz Field. They know the turf. They know its strengths and weaknesses. It's a grass field and they played on in it January, which favors the defense.
This game is being played indoors. The Packers are a dome team that happens to play their games outdoors in Wisconsin. They don't have much of a running game, they have five good receivers, and they have an aggressive, highly talented quarterback. The last game they played in a dome, they put up 48 points.
I don't think they'll put up 48 points on the Steelers, but the fact that this game is being played indoors favors the offense. Anything that favors the offense favors the Packers.
What I Think Will Happen:
I think the Packers will overcome the "opening five minute jitters" or that the Steelers won't be able to capitalize on that weakness. Maybe they get a field goal out of it.
I think Green Bay will jump out to a pretty sizable early lead and go into halftime up by at least two touchdowns.
Rodgers will keep his foot on the gas, just like he did against the Falcons. The Packers will score just enough in the second half to stay well ahead.
The Steelers will attempt to mount a comeback, but they'll run out of time. That will eliminate the "last five minutes" weakness for the Packers.
I know that the Steelers have the edge of experience and confidence and that they always "find ways to win," but this is the Super Bowl. It will come down to which team has the most talent and which team has the fewest exploitable weaknesses. The Packers have more talent and fewer weaknesses.
I've spent the past two weeks trying to convince myself that the Steelers can win, but I have failed. Any time I try to convince myself that they can win, they don't. Especially if I fail to convince myself.
I hope I'm wrong. I'll be happy to be wrong. But, I think I'm right.
Prediction:
Packers 27, Steelers 17
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