The Todd Haley Situation

It's been quite some time since I posted anything -- a little over three weeks -- so I figured I'd try to catch up.

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.

1. 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.
2. He doesn't have an existing relationship with Ben Roethlisberger and the first few weeks of their current relationship have been rocky.
3. 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.

The Bruce Arians Situation

Basically, Art Rooney II dropped the ball.

Originally, word came out that Bruce Arians had "retired" as offensive coordinator, which led many to assume that the Steelers were being nice and decided to let him retire in peace instead of firing him.  That was Friday, January 20th.  Over the weekend and into the early part of the next week, it came to light that he was told his contract wasn't going to be renewed, then it was announced that he was retiring.  By Friday, January 27th, Arians was officially back in play and the jig was officially up: The Steelers wanted to fire Arians, but they didn't. Within a couple of days, he was named offensive coordinator for the Colts.

I've never been the man's biggest fan and, on a number of occasions, I've called for his head.  But, the thing that I've been saying about coaching changes since the first time someone suggested firing Cowher still holds true.  Before you fire a guy, you need to make sure that there's someone better out there.  Before you fire him, you need to make sure that his replacement will get hired before he finds a new job.  Basically, you need to think about how quickly another team will grab him as soon as he's in play.  Arians only lasted a couple of days after it was discovered that he still wanted to coach.  With all the other veteran coordinators and former coaches that are offensive specialists that are out there, it speaks volumes for Arians that Chuck Pagano filled his coordinator position with Bruce as soon as his availability was confirmed.

In the week and change since Arians "retired" I've started to re-think my opinion on him.  There were issues in the red zone all season, with the Steelers finishing 12th in total yardage, but 21st in scoring offense.  His decision to throw the ball more than run it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but I have to say I agree with that decision.  The offensive line has struggled with run blocking since 2008 and it's been clear for a while that Ben Roethlisberger is the most talented player on offense.  Given the talent they have at receiver, why run the ball for three or 3.5 yards a carry when throwing gets you seven or 7.5 yards an attempt?  Struggles in the run game led to struggles in the red zone.  Going back to Super Bowl XLIII, it's been clear that the Steelers knew they couldn't get a yard when they absolutely needed one.

In 2011, they didn't finish well in the offensive rankings, but they also went 12-4.  It's true that they played a pot pourri of absolutely awful quarterbacks, but they also played a lot of solid defenses: Cleveland, Cincy, and Baltimore twice, Kansas City, San Francisco, and even the Seahawks and Jaguars.  With the level of defenses they played last season and given the fact that they had half an offensive line all year, it's actually pretty impressive that they finished as well as they did.

So, I think I judged Arians too harshly.  He's in a new city, with a new coach, getting a fresh start with one of the highest rated college quarterback prospects of the last 30 years.  I hope it works out for him.  Last night, my brother texted me to say: "Arians now coordinator for Colts.  I hope Luck throws for 50 TDs next season."  Not only are Steeler fans re-evaluating Arians as a coordinator, they're hoping that he succeeds in spite of the Steelers.

At this point, it's done and can't be undone.  The biggest issue now is that the team doesn't have an offensive coordinator.  And the heir apparent is currently recovering from serious injuries.  And Art Rooney II looks like an idiot.  Actually, that's a lot of big issues, but I think the fact that Rooney dropped the ball is the biggest one.

If he had called Arians into his office on the 20th and said, "Bruce, it's my team and I want to run the ball more.  You don't want to run the ball more.  That puts us at an impasse and it's been that way for a while.  You're fired.  Maintenance came in today and specially calibrated all the doors so that they wouldn't hit you on the ass on the way out.  Have a nice day."  If he had said that and announced it, everyone would be happy that Arians was gone, that the Rooneys had finally listened to their petitions for his removal, and that a new era was about to begin.  Instead, we're re-evaluating Arians, thinking it was a mistake to let him go, and we're hoping he does well in spite of the Steelers.

It's Rooney's team.  If he didn't want Arians to be involved anymore, he should have severed ties and been done with it.  He didn't, so the Steelers look dumb and the search for a replacement continues.

Steelers-Saints Review

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.