5 ups and 5 downs for the Steelers 2017 regular season.

[Livewire]

Lets hear your five ups and five downs for the Steelers crazy 2017 season.

[August4th]

UP

getting quality production from our 1st two picks

Joe haden

the team coming through in clutch situations

Heyward

Brown

Down

injury to shazier

steelers inability to escape drama

secondary play when Haden went down

offense sluggish start

 

 

[3rivers]

5 hours ago, August4th said:

UP

getting quality production from our 1st two picks

Joe haden

the team coming through in clutch situations

Heyward

Brown

Down

injury to shazier

steelers inability to escape drama

secondary play when Haden went down

offense sluggish start

 

 

for the 5th down I will add how Harrison was mistreated . 

[JLambert58]

It's been a great season so far, huge ups and downs and lots of drama.  Never a dull moment.

UP:

1. The emergence of JuJu and Watt.  What a spectacular 1-2 punch of draft picks.  Another great draft for the braintrust. 

2. Joe Haden & Mike Hilton adding them to the secondary has been a huge boost.  Great finds both.  OK Cockrell haters, Crow nachos for me. 

3. Vince Williams taking over for Timmons.  8 sacks and a lot of great plays.  Not perfect, but he's proved he can handle  a full season at the Buck.

4. Cam Heyward coming back from injury like he never missed a beat.  12 sacks and some ferocious play on his part. 

5. Coaching staff:  Mike Tomlin and his staff deserves a lot of credit.  13-3 in the NFL is major accomplishment.  Tomlin held the team together through a tsunami of distractions.  Butler's defense set the team record for sacks at 56.  Not crazy about the run defense, but the overall result has been good.  Haley, after a dreadful start, called some really good games down the stretch.

6. Of course, Ben (after the Jags game), Bell (after the first few games) and Brown (missing the last 2,5 games) were spectacular.  We are spoiled watching these guys week in and week out. 

DOWN:

1. Shazier's injury.  Awful, devastating situation.

2. Gilbert's suspension.  4 games including NE was an issue.  Hubbard played well in his absence, but it weakened the team.

3. Bud Dupree - has not had the season we had hoped for.  Not terrible overall, but disappointing.

4. Martavis Bryant - between his social media fallouts and his sub-par play on the field (until recently) he has not been the player we had hoped for coming back from  year long suspension. 

5. The Mishandling of James Harrison.  We will all continue to debate this one, but having an asset of his caliber and not giving him reps in preseason and camp and then keeping him inactive for most of the season was a mistake.  He could have contributed to our defense, but he was not given a proper opportunity to show what he still had left in the tank - ultimately being released and signing with a sworn enemy.  

6. Run defense has been very shaky at times.  As a collective unit the defense has played pretty well for the most part, but there have been times when they have looked spectacularly bad.  If we are hoping to advance to the Super Bowl, the good version of this defense will have to be on display in the playoffs. 

[cjfollett]

Pretty well comvered already, so I'll just add a couple of each.

Up: 

Huge win over the Ravens after that crapfest in Chicago. Steelers thoroughly dominated the Ravens on the road. 

Boswell has been studly clutch.

Down:

A little picky here, but games versus Packers, Bengals, and Ravens leading up to the Patriots were all a lot closer than they should have been. They were wins, so calling them downs are a bit much. That said, many weaknesses were exposed in those games.

Losing to NE that way. A damn fine game overall ruined by a dropped INT, not figuring out how to cover Gronk, and not knowing what to do on 3rd down with seconds left on the clock.