TheMouthPiece
☠️ Banned ☠️
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- Sep 8, 2006
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I'd first like to preface my post by saying that these are my views, if you disagree then do so, but save the childish games for the ESPN boards. There are plenty of trolls over there for you to interact with.
What to say about this Pitt game. As a Dolphins fan, this game took me in all directions. Heading into this matchup I felt it was definitively a winnable game, but even without Rothlisberger the chances weren't good given the variables. Let's list'em: Daunte's 1st regular season start since the injury with his new team, home opener for the Steelers, Pittsburg's style of ballgame, and our lack of cohesion with new pieces. Pittsburg's franchise has proven it's pedigree and you had to know all the other pieces were going to step up in Ben's absence.
Daunte Culpepper. Yep, I'm going right into the fire. You can come away from his performance feeling a bunch of different ways. On one hand, he had a pretty good 3rd quarter once the offence starting rolling. On the other hand, when the game was on the line and we needed the offense to take up the slack, what happened? He turned the ball over and twice mind you. That is absolutely not exceptable. He deserves a little bit of slack given that it was Week 1 and he's apparently going to need serious time to gel with the new unit he's working with. You still have to show at least a little bit concern with is inability to make better decisions with the football at such crucial junctures in the game. At one point the Steelers routinely fooled Daunte into going to his hot read when it wasn't necessary. Make all the excuses and apologies like it was the lack of run-game or the defense gave up this play, but the fact remains when Daunte was called upon to show this new "leadership" that all his teammates have been buzzing about he simply did not back it up. The two interceptions were terrible. He had been projecting his passes for the majority of the game and it finally nipped him. The int. by Palomalou was a lame duck into triple coverage. The second was because he was starring down his reciever, without seeing Jerry Porter in the area when he had Randy McMichael wide open to the right of where he ended up throwing it.
Again, Daunte needs some time, but his performance was lackluster. Most of the big plays were made by YAC. Welker and Booker helped make up for some of his inconsistent throws with great movement after the catch. Daunte's passes were floating, they were low and away, they were high. He looked terrible trying to attack the endzone, but one of the passes was strictly Chambers' fault. I've been reading some reviews of the game this morning and Daunte's been pretty much "We made some mistakes." Well this is obvious D, but can we get you to admit you yourself made some of those mistakes? Those int's were not a team thing.
His performance in the 3rd quarter leaves me with hope. But the game in itself at least makes you wonder what it is Vikings fans have been talking about - He looks great until the game is on the line.
Ronnie Brown is Jekyll & Hyde to me. He's a load to bring down, always fighting for that extra yard. His O-line is going to make life miserable for him unless they get better. That being said, he's still back there dancing. Unfortunately for Ronnie he doesn't have that luxury because his men are not sustaining their blocks, at all. He's got to be deliberate. He's got to learn to anticipate. What I see out there is a man just trying to run on pure instinct. He can't always be a power back stomping over people, he's got to use some brains back there. His two TD's were nice, showed great burst to the outside on the second one.
As previously stated, running game-wise the guys on the O-line were a bunch of bums. Look, I understand that Pittsburg features one of the games premiere defenses, but these are the guys you measure yourself against. Not having success against them shouldn't be written off because this just in, "oh they're good." I'd expect them to at least compete, to at least help Ronnie muster better than 30 yards in a game. The interior of the line is God aweful. They look alot better in pass protection so that's their only saving grace.
The recievers. Well it's hard to gauge really. Tonight Daunte wasn't the guy who's completion % had been like his career 64.4% stat. We left alot of plays on the field. I think when teams back off the WR's, we're doing the right thing by swinging the ball out quick to either Booker or Chambers. Welker was the saving grace tonight for this group. McMichael was absent. It just seems like this guy's story is morphing into the same one we used to hum about Rob Konrad.
The defense let me down big time tonight. That secondary has quite a bit of work to do. They were responsible for numerous breakdowns and just blatantly stupid plays (i.e. Lehan and Goodman successive penalties) which killed what little momentum we had going sometimes on D. None of the guys showed any recognition skills. We missed tackles the whole game, especially when Fast Willie had the ball. Guys were not taking good angles at all, constantly selling out their parts of the field. Zach even had his problems wrapping up. I didn't like what I saw out of the personnel tonight when it came to the blitz packages. None of them looked capable of utilizing them. Guys were selling out the blitzes like an "Everything Must Go Sale." Even with 3 sacks, I still felt like the pass rush was non-existent. When Charlie Batch goes 15 for 25 for 209 yards and 3 TD's, you know you haven't rattled him at all. As the game went on, the D-line got worn down. We couldn't get them off the field on 3rd down and we were blatantly missing the go-to-guy in Hines Ward on those very plays. I mean C'MON! Some guy in Tokyo watching his first NFL game saw those Hines Ward passes comin'. Heading into the game, the talk was all about how deep we were and how they were going to remain fresh. Didn't see it. We gave up over 140 yards rushing which is a testament to how much they wore down on into the second half.
Coaching. It's actually amazing to me how the replay flag incident with Saban turned out. Word around the street is that Nick is an attention-to-details kind of guy and I was surprised to see how lackadaisically he approached that whole review situation. He's supposed to know the rules, regardless of what his replay guys were doing. He's supposed to know he can march out there and get the ref's attention if they're not looking at him. Adjustments heading into the 3rd quarter were fantastic. Mularkey was taking what the defense was giving him, it's just too bad the defense's meltdown took away from it all.
I pin this loss on just about everybody on the team. Everyone had a hand in this one. At one point we looked like we could pull it out, but we didn't sustain it because last I checked a full game runs 4 quarters. I noticed there's only two sides of posting going on, that we're doomed or it was all the defenses fault. As I see it, the defense failed in protecting the lead, but Daunte and the offense failed when we needed them to come up big, especially in the ultra-important 4th quarter. They're both at fault, save the "dog ate my homework" excuses. And I must say, it was amazing to see just how many of my fellow fans had not given this Steeler team any cred prior to the game. I wonder sometimes what games these same guys watch on Sundays because they're definately not watchin' the NFL.
What to say about this Pitt game. As a Dolphins fan, this game took me in all directions. Heading into this matchup I felt it was definitively a winnable game, but even without Rothlisberger the chances weren't good given the variables. Let's list'em: Daunte's 1st regular season start since the injury with his new team, home opener for the Steelers, Pittsburg's style of ballgame, and our lack of cohesion with new pieces. Pittsburg's franchise has proven it's pedigree and you had to know all the other pieces were going to step up in Ben's absence.
Daunte Culpepper. Yep, I'm going right into the fire. You can come away from his performance feeling a bunch of different ways. On one hand, he had a pretty good 3rd quarter once the offence starting rolling. On the other hand, when the game was on the line and we needed the offense to take up the slack, what happened? He turned the ball over and twice mind you. That is absolutely not exceptable. He deserves a little bit of slack given that it was Week 1 and he's apparently going to need serious time to gel with the new unit he's working with. You still have to show at least a little bit concern with is inability to make better decisions with the football at such crucial junctures in the game. At one point the Steelers routinely fooled Daunte into going to his hot read when it wasn't necessary. Make all the excuses and apologies like it was the lack of run-game or the defense gave up this play, but the fact remains when Daunte was called upon to show this new "leadership" that all his teammates have been buzzing about he simply did not back it up. The two interceptions were terrible. He had been projecting his passes for the majority of the game and it finally nipped him. The int. by Palomalou was a lame duck into triple coverage. The second was because he was starring down his reciever, without seeing Jerry Porter in the area when he had Randy McMichael wide open to the right of where he ended up throwing it.
Again, Daunte needs some time, but his performance was lackluster. Most of the big plays were made by YAC. Welker and Booker helped make up for some of his inconsistent throws with great movement after the catch. Daunte's passes were floating, they were low and away, they were high. He looked terrible trying to attack the endzone, but one of the passes was strictly Chambers' fault. I've been reading some reviews of the game this morning and Daunte's been pretty much "We made some mistakes." Well this is obvious D, but can we get you to admit you yourself made some of those mistakes? Those int's were not a team thing.
His performance in the 3rd quarter leaves me with hope. But the game in itself at least makes you wonder what it is Vikings fans have been talking about - He looks great until the game is on the line.
Ronnie Brown is Jekyll & Hyde to me. He's a load to bring down, always fighting for that extra yard. His O-line is going to make life miserable for him unless they get better. That being said, he's still back there dancing. Unfortunately for Ronnie he doesn't have that luxury because his men are not sustaining their blocks, at all. He's got to be deliberate. He's got to learn to anticipate. What I see out there is a man just trying to run on pure instinct. He can't always be a power back stomping over people, he's got to use some brains back there. His two TD's were nice, showed great burst to the outside on the second one.
As previously stated, running game-wise the guys on the O-line were a bunch of bums. Look, I understand that Pittsburg features one of the games premiere defenses, but these are the guys you measure yourself against. Not having success against them shouldn't be written off because this just in, "oh they're good." I'd expect them to at least compete, to at least help Ronnie muster better than 30 yards in a game. The interior of the line is God aweful. They look alot better in pass protection so that's their only saving grace.
The recievers. Well it's hard to gauge really. Tonight Daunte wasn't the guy who's completion % had been like his career 64.4% stat. We left alot of plays on the field. I think when teams back off the WR's, we're doing the right thing by swinging the ball out quick to either Booker or Chambers. Welker was the saving grace tonight for this group. McMichael was absent. It just seems like this guy's story is morphing into the same one we used to hum about Rob Konrad.
The defense let me down big time tonight. That secondary has quite a bit of work to do. They were responsible for numerous breakdowns and just blatantly stupid plays (i.e. Lehan and Goodman successive penalties) which killed what little momentum we had going sometimes on D. None of the guys showed any recognition skills. We missed tackles the whole game, especially when Fast Willie had the ball. Guys were not taking good angles at all, constantly selling out their parts of the field. Zach even had his problems wrapping up. I didn't like what I saw out of the personnel tonight when it came to the blitz packages. None of them looked capable of utilizing them. Guys were selling out the blitzes like an "Everything Must Go Sale." Even with 3 sacks, I still felt like the pass rush was non-existent. When Charlie Batch goes 15 for 25 for 209 yards and 3 TD's, you know you haven't rattled him at all. As the game went on, the D-line got worn down. We couldn't get them off the field on 3rd down and we were blatantly missing the go-to-guy in Hines Ward on those very plays. I mean C'MON! Some guy in Tokyo watching his first NFL game saw those Hines Ward passes comin'. Heading into the game, the talk was all about how deep we were and how they were going to remain fresh. Didn't see it. We gave up over 140 yards rushing which is a testament to how much they wore down on into the second half.
Coaching. It's actually amazing to me how the replay flag incident with Saban turned out. Word around the street is that Nick is an attention-to-details kind of guy and I was surprised to see how lackadaisically he approached that whole review situation. He's supposed to know the rules, regardless of what his replay guys were doing. He's supposed to know he can march out there and get the ref's attention if they're not looking at him. Adjustments heading into the 3rd quarter were fantastic. Mularkey was taking what the defense was giving him, it's just too bad the defense's meltdown took away from it all.
I pin this loss on just about everybody on the team. Everyone had a hand in this one. At one point we looked like we could pull it out, but we didn't sustain it because last I checked a full game runs 4 quarters. I noticed there's only two sides of posting going on, that we're doomed or it was all the defenses fault. As I see it, the defense failed in protecting the lead, but Daunte and the offense failed when we needed them to come up big, especially in the ultra-important 4th quarter. They're both at fault, save the "dog ate my homework" excuses. And I must say, it was amazing to see just how many of my fellow fans had not given this Steeler team any cred prior to the game. I wonder sometimes what games these same guys watch on Sundays because they're definately not watchin' the NFL.