2021 Week 11 GDT Steelers at Chargers

[Neumatic]

Such a fitting end. Pass Coverage goes MIA and then the cherry on top the oline just implodes in on itself.

[MOSteelers56]

Is Finney really worse than Haeg? If so, he fell off fast. The Moore - Haeg combo is trash. 

[August4th]

I think ben play is getting better, but not good enough to overcome this poor o-line. The FO needs to make several moves to fix that unit in the offseason. I think its too late for this season with that unit to have enough positive impact for us to do any real damage this yr.

Edited November 22, 2021 by August4th

[MOSteelers56]

4 minutes ago, August4th said:

I think ben play is getting better, but not good enough to overcome this poor o-line. The FO needs to make several moves to fix that unit in the offseason. I think its too late for this season with that unit to have enough positive impact for us to do any real damage this yr.

I was thinking that before the game. Ben has improved this year for sure. I think they switch the line up next week. I can’t imagine Moore starts again. Chuks is playing well, and his natural position is LT. Moore is barely hanging in there. Dotson being out hurts a lot too. We need a speedy recovery for him. The damage may already done by the time he’s back, though. 

[DR43]

Mel Kiper Jr and Todd McShay both ranked Kenny Pickett as their top QB.  Would anyone be content with him as our first or second round pick?

[jebrick]

Pickett is not worth either pick.  Why draft an average QB when the 2023 class is so much better.

[warfelg]

This team sucks. The Claypool pass shoulda been a Tuddy but Ben can’t get it out there. No depth at anything on defense. OL was hanging on by a thread to begin with. 
 

But can’t wait for Ben to come back next year because of games like this we had no business being in. 

[VigilantZombie]

Not shocked at all that Ben threw a pick with the chance to drive down and win the game. Of course the one time our offense scores 37, our defense gives up 41.

[warfelg]

40 minutes ago, wwhickok said:

Not shocked at all that Ben threw a pick with the chance to drive down and win the game. Of course the one time our offense scores 37, our defense gives up 41.

Even at that blocked punt and the INT set up super short fields. And LAC had all backups on the DL. I wouldn’t be too excited by that 37 point “burst”. 

[MOSteelers56]

16 minutes ago, warfelg said:

Even at that blocked punt and the INT set up super short fields. And LAC had all backups on the DL. I wouldn’t be too excited by that 37 point “burst”. 

Yeah, their defense was only slightly better than ours. I did not expect to win this game. It was Cam Heyward and 10 dudes out there. I don't even think it was a realistic depth issue. No team can survive losing two studs on the D-line, best passrusher, and the best two secondary players. No amount of depth makes that survivable. 

[Dcash4]

1 hour ago, warfelg said:

No depth at anything on defense

This defense from the planning stages of the offseason was playing without Watt, Minkah, Tuitt, Alualu, Vince Williams, Joe Haden, Carlos Davis, Loudermilk, and Melvin Ingram....

You want our depth to have depth?

1 hour ago, wwhickok said:

Not shocked at all that Ben threw a pick with the chance to drive down and win the game.

I, for one, was shocked that Ben threw a pick with a chance to drive down and win the game. 

Mainly, though, because Ben did not throw a pick yesterday. 

[warfelg]

7 minutes ago, Dcash4 said:

This defense from the planning stages of the offseason was playing without Watt, Minkah, Tuitt, Alualu, Vince Williams, Joe Haden, Carlos Davis, Loudermilk, and Melvin Ingram....

You want our depth to have depth?

Ingram is really the only one of those I give a pass to the depth issue because of his thing.

The ILBer one is a complete failure.  They drafted a guy who can't even give you ST snaps.  They traded for a guy they feel to take off the field.  They spent a top 10 pick on a complete bust.

The guys playing at DB last night were the plan to be the plan from day one as depth and it was terrible.

 

Just like Haeg was the plan as the depth and he's bad.  Ditto for Finney.

 

Just as I said in the offseason, if losing Sutton and Juju meant keeping Nelson, signing a different ILB, getting better DL depth, then yea.

[warfelg]

I guess my view is it just gets old seeing teams roll out backups and seem perfectly fine, yet we need to be perfect to avoid anything bad with backups.

[Dcash4]

1 hour ago, warfelg said:

I guess my view is it just gets old seeing teams roll out backups and seem perfectly fine, yet we need to be perfect to avoid anything bad with backups.

I think "seem" is the key word. And even then, you are talking individual changes not mass wholesale chaos like we got hit with yesterday. No team in the NFL survives missing 2 All Pro guys, one of their top CB's, and one of the top 20 players at their position and keeps rolling. Yesterday should have zero reflection on anything. It was the perfect storm of facing an extremely talented offense and being so limited on personnel.

The defensive line and the OLB group was deep and it was talented. That was always meant to be the straw that stirred the drink. 3 of those guys are not here anymore. The best 1 wasn't available last night. That's going to make it difficult on any team and even moreso when you are playing one of the more talented teams in the league. 

The only starters of that original group -- Cam and Highsmith -- played really, really well last night. There is no team that can thrive after losing that many guys. 

[warfelg]

43 minutes ago, Dcash4 said:

I think "seem" is the key word. And even then, you are talking individual changes not mass wholesale chaos like we got hit with yesterday. No team in the NFL survives missing 2 All Pro guys, one of their top CB's, and one of the top 20 players at their position and keeps rolling. Yesterday should have zero reflection on anything. It was the perfect storm of facing an extremely talented offense and being so limited on personnel.

The defensive line and the OLB group was deep and it was talented. That was always meant to be the straw that stirred the drink. 3 of those guys are not here anymore. The best 1 wasn't available last night. That's going to make it difficult on any team and even moreso when you are playing one of the more talented teams in the league. 

The only starters of that original group -- Cam and Highsmith -- played really, really well last night. There is no team that can thrive after losing that many guys. 

I could counter that plenty of teams have seen this in the past.

I know we disagree on some on the philosophy on teambuilding, but I think last night was a good example of the meaning of "depth" to me.  

Depth isn't just the quality players of behind the starters, but just the depth of the starters. We spent a ton of draft capital and cap capital on the DL and OLB's.  That leaves less for other areas.

And example I can give you:

Would you rather have Tuitt on the line and miss about 40% of snaps (that's his average missed snaps on a year FWIW) OR average 3-4 DL and an average #2 CB.  Think of this one like Tuitt OR Jahad Ward and Steven Nelson.

Would you have rather had Juju (with our deep WR corps) OR an average LBer and average slot WR.  Think of this one as Juju OR Jayon Brown and Cedric Wilson. 

This isn't to go on about Colbert doing a bad job, ut when you are very top heavy with talent, you are typically top heavy with salary, which means you are relying on cheaper players at other positions.  When you historically aren't great at drafting a position (DB) you are relying on free agents to fill it, and if you can't afford the top end you end up scraping the barrel for talent. 

Just play the "What if" game with me here for a second:  What if in 2019 we stay at 20 and don't move to 10.  We keep 20, 52, and 2020 3rd.  Let's play the 20th the same, so we end up with Noah Fant at that pick.  At 52 we end up taking Metcalf because he fits what Ben likes in big downfield WR's. 

So if we go down that line, in 2020 we don't take Claypool in the 2nd because we don't need that, so we take JK Dobbins who we were tied to.  So in the 3rd you take Lloyd Cushenberry who Denver took.

Now in 2021 what that does is open up Stokes, Newsome, Barmore, Jenkins (I know he hasn't played).  In the second you could be open to a player like Bolton.  Heck maybe you are moving up in the 1st this year for one of the OT's instead because you have your OC, RB, WR, TE sorted out.

 

I know we can go down big rabbit holes of the "what ifs" and how that effects things.  I know there's easy to put down games as "missing players" as well.  But the truth is this offense isn't good and the defense is too reliable on 3 guys to be good.  There's no depth to this team.  No ability to miss players and keep some level of play going.  For a team as good as some think we are, we go down way too fast without one or two guys.  It's a problem to me.