When I heard that Todd Haley was interviewing for the offensive coordinator job, I was less than pleased. I knew the Steelers would end up hiring him and I had some serious reservations about him. The more I thought about it, the more I realized those reservations boiled down to one thing: Ken Whisenhunt had a chance to bring Haley back in the Steelers West fold and decided against it. That's really it. My thinking was, Haley is a known quantity in Arizona. I thought that, if Whisenhunt passed on the opportunity to bring Haley back, then he must be damaged goods.
Now, that could still be true, but Haley does bring a lot of positive things to the table.
- When he's had the personnel to work with, his offenses have always performed well. I'm giving him a pass for last year in Kansas City, even if the Chiefs did not.
- He doesn't have an existing relationship with Ben Roethlisberger and the first few weeks of their current relationship have been rocky.
- He's not a passing guy or a running guy. He's a guy that takes the players he has on hand and designs the offense from there.
For #1, you could look at his track record in Arizona or the fact that he helped turn Matt Cassel and Dwayne Bowe into fantasy football all-stars in 2010.
Number 2 and Number 3 are both positive and important because those two qualities make him the polar opposite of Bruce Arians. The big things that always annoyed me about Arians were the facts that he was too buddy-buddy with Roethlisberger and he was always fond of saying, "The offense is the offense." Basically, he had his design, the players would run it, and the other team's defense needed to try and stop it. When it worked, it was very effective. When it didn't, Arians was very reluctant to adjust, and the offense was not so effective.
A lot has been made about the fact that Roethlisberger wasn't happy with the decision to let Arians go and that he hasn't been very responsive to Haley since it was announced he would be the team's next offensive coordinator. I think that talk is overblown and that most of it, if not all of it, will be forgotten when the team reports back to work. Remember when Roethlisberger's suspension was supposed to divide the team? Or Rashard Mendenhall's Twitter remarks? James Harrison's Men's Journal interview? Hines Ward's DUI? None of it did. This longer room is too tight, too strong, and Mike Tomlin has these guys too focused to get derailed by any distractions.
It also couldn't hurt for Roethlisberger to feel that he has something to prove and that there are people out there that don't believe in him. He's a very self-motivated guy, but he can often become complacent. I think the Haley hiring will light a bit of a fire under him.
When Haley had Kurt Warner, Larry Fitzgerald, Anquan Boldin, and Steve Breaston, he threw the ball a lot and the offense was extremely successful. When he had Thomas Jones and Jamaal Charles, he ran the ball a lot and the offense was extremely successful. When Charles blew out his knee early in the 2011 season and Matt Cassel was placed on injured reserve, Haley did the best he could with Dexter McCluster and Tyler Palko.
Since Mendenhall will probably start the season on the PUP list and Ike Redman isn't exactly a franchise back, Haley will probably focus on throwing the ball more. He's got Roethlisberger and a bunch of talent at wide receiver -- which is similar to the situation he had in Arizona -- so it makes sense to get eight or nine yards per pass attempt instead of three or four yards per rush attempt.
The only issue there is if ownership keeps meddling with the offense. They already dropped the ball big time by completely screwing up the Arians firing/retiring/lack of contract extension. My hope is that they take more of a "hands off" approach, at least for the upcoming season, and let the football people do their jobs.
That's my hope, anyway.
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