I love your number 3.

Earthling

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2. I mulled this over and decided along the lines Ivan’s thinking. Age-wise, if Ben gets any more mature, he’ll need a cane and while JuJu’s a baby, he’s the only one so Dungy must mean as a unit, as a relationship. They’re new to this emanation of an offense, they don’t know and trust each other yet, they’re growing as a group…well that’s all I got. Maybe Tony was just talking.

3. I love Goffthesloth’s description of football as elaborate strategies resolved by a lot of shoving. (Also sounds like seventh grade romance.) I don’t think it means anything that someone was shouting bad words at someone else. And Homer’s right about Ben on the field in that situation. But I think Ben’s post-game comments speak to some real unhappiness with his OC.

Also, Ben’s Tuesday comments always make everything seem worse. The team should give out a “Gasoline on smoldering coals” media award just for him. I think he’s pretty funny, I’m sometimes curious as to how much of that is naive and how much of it is passive aggression but I don’t think we’ll ever know. I will definitely miss him when he’s gone. For the football, for those kinds of “he’s always yelling at me on the sideline but it’s okay, I don’t mind and I don’t hear him through the headset” comments. “Plus he wanted to do something stupid and I did something else…” Ben, you’re a gem.

5. Steelers have the best color rush uniforms. Titans are in baby blue footie pajamas. So as far as edges go, it’s the black and blue bowl, and the cool guys will win while the others go home in their jammies. As for LeBeau, I don’t know. I thought I’d miss him and then I didn’t. I’ll be glad to see him on the sidelines again but it doesn’t strike fear into my heart. That it’s Thursday night does. I watched the Seattle game when there seemed to be more injuries than touchdowns and it scared me.

Bonus: Rebecca, I’m flattered and thank you for even considering my opinon. but I think either it was tl;dr or just silliness on my part. However, I don’t have many strong Steeler opinions so I’m going to agree with myself. :0 Why not? Besides, it means I can agree with Ivan’s smarter point that the Steelers should trust their talent and let Ben have his way. Again why not? (I’ve worked for 12 hours straight, so I’m pretty devil may care at this moment about everything.)

This is the end of Ben’s career and if he’s unhappy, we’re probably not going much farther in the playoffs than we did last year. I haven’t always liked Ben but this is his swan song. Even if Haley is the most brilliant OC on the planet, Ben deserves to go out in Ben-fashion for what he’s given us in the last fourteen years. At the beginning of the season with all the talk of his retirement, I started rewatching the games from his first appearance onwards and I’m stunned.

If I were Haley, I’d give Ben a game or two right now to do everything his way. Unless Ben gets carted off, it could be a win-win for Haley even if we lose. If the games are terrible, Ben is chastened, takes direction with more grace and maybe stops making all those passive aggressive comments. If the games are great, Haley is a great OC for letting Ben be Ben.

Maybe it’s good I’m not Haley. My family probably thinks so too. I hope.

Earthling

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2. Timmons isn’t here, James isn’t playing, D-Will is gone, Heath is 2 years gone. Where is the veteran leadership? Ben has never been that guy.

3. Football is the only game in the world where both teams set up elaborate plans and strategies for every play, and then resolve them by shoving a lot. It lends itself to chaos and ugliness, so I’m much more impressed by poise than I am surprised that football is still frequently ugly.

4. I personally prefer % of targets and yards per target better than using percentage of team output, since what you do with a target is much more individual, but it’s roughly the same results. Right now the numbers say throw to Ju Ju more, as his yards per target (12!!) Is much higher than AB’s sub 9. Ben seems to be doing just that. I pity the team that decides to single cover AB to shift defenders toward Ju Ju.

5. I think we win a tight and ugly game, I’d be more surprised by a pretty game than a loss though.

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2. Maturity as Dungy uses the term may not speak simply to age, or responsible conduct. One of the championship details that must be mastered is learning how to win, which involves more than the application of talent, schemes and the like. Bob Labriola and others liked the Colts game precisely because it was a test learning how to win even though things were going badly. This is why some teams may have the goods to get a championship but need several tries before they figure out how to get to the top. If the Patriots hold one advantage over the rest of the league it is this knowledge, which, btw, would be difficult to teach, as are all aspects of life involving gaining maturity.

3. I think it may be time to ask if Todd Haley is getting in his own way. The late Bill Nunn argued that too much structure and complexity handcuffs and suppresses great talent. The Steelers offense is full of great talent that can probably prevail under most circumstances if placed in proper matchups, such as the deep completion from Ben to AB where the commentator said it was about creating a situation where the better athlete wins. Whether it is hubris or insecurity (needing to prove his own worth) he puts more faith in his schemes and machinations than in his players’ abilities to outperform their opponents. Why else, with arguably the best offensive lines in football, and inarguably one of the best running backs in a generation (and very good backups as well) you shy away from even the threat of running the ball in short yardage. Or having one of the most dangerous deep threats in the league running reverses and bubble screens but not very many deep patterns. Too clever by half they sometimes say.

4. In sympathy, the Ben/Brown matchup can really be magical where the chances of achieving the improbable really are quite high, though often judged as ill-advised in hindsight if it fails in closely contested games. This may speak, in part, to Earthling’s observations, though given the erratic (and anemic) performance of the offense lately it feels more comforting to play the take what they give you card rather than the high wire Ben to AB show.

5. Besides the revenge factor Pittsburgh has the advantage of talent and top to bottom knowledge.

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2. We have young players, but was he referring to Martavis?

3. Homer nailed it.

4. For each year, I compared the percentage of targets for each receiver with the percentage of yards gained. Clearly Ben got a bigger bang for the buck out of passes to AB. So, force it in and let AB make a play.

5. I’m remembering the 2011 playoff game in Denver (which we would all prefer not to remember). It was the first play of OT when Coach Dad put all eleven players on the line of scrimmage and Tim Tebow (of all people) threw the game winning TD pass on a slant to Demaryius Thomas. Game over. I think that made me no longer a fan of LeBeau. Advantage Pittsburgh.

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Also, they have had to tear down “the house that Jack built” but it was pretty good while it lasted.

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That isn’t cheating. I found the answer by accident. Wikipedia is my friend.

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2. There may be a bit of that happening with the struggles. This is a pretty young team with a lot of talent and some ego as well. Bryant’s actions could easily be taken as immature.

3. I think Homer provided a good way to look at the situation. The fact that we then scored the 2-pointer shows this may have in fact been the case.

4. I stand by the thought he was trying to force it to AB since you can see his catch % is way down. He is getting double or triple covered since we had a bunch of unknown entities opposite him. I think those numbers will change now that JJSS has shown he is a stud and Bryant (hopefully) will get into his own again.

5. Steelers do I think. Since coach dad probably hasn’t changed too much in the way the defense works.

Bonus: I won’t say since i cheated and looked it up.

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2. I have no idea, because if I knew what was ailing the offense I would hire myself out to the Steelers as a consultant. Other than the end-around to Martavis Bryant. Somehow I seem to be taking that particular play personally…

4. I think if I were Ben I would “force” the ball to the guy(s) I could rely on. Early in the season that is probably mainly AB and Bell. As the season progresses and Ben gains trust in other players he’s going to spread the ball around more.

5. We’ll find out on Thursday night.

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Love the Winnipeg Blue Bombers story. As fans we’re all guilty of assuming we know what’s “really” happening. But how much do we really know? We say “Fire Haley!” when it was a Tomlin decision. We say “Fire Tomlin!” when it was a Big Ben improve. We say “Ben’s old!” when a receiver runs the wrong route.

In the back of my mind this whole season, I keep wondering (hoping?) that the Steelers are sandbagging the whole thing. They surely know their most important football is in December / January, and right now everything else is just for show. What are they doing today that’s setting them up for then?

Maybe nothing. But Tomlin et al aren’t the idiots the interwebs would have us believe. (By the way, Haley came to Pittsburgh after putting up amazing offensive numbers with a solid, but not overwhelming KC team. I find it hard to believe he suddenly forgot how to coach.)

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