Thoughts – defense good, offense rough. Why does Joey Porter Jr. keep wearing his yellow gloves? He always gets penalties with them cursed jersey grabbers

One encouraging sign from the offense is that it looked good at times but a lot of those times were brought back on penalty. That won’t always be the case.

One discouraging sign for the defense, you won’t always face a quarterback that’s inaccurate under pressure. If you want to win in the playoffs, these open WRs will be hit by Stroud/Mahomes and you need to play a little better to make it work.

Why is Arthur bringing back the 3rd down Canada special of just running stop routes? It’s super predictable and as we see easily defendable. Look at the better playcallers, they all have route concepts that put defenders into conflict.
-now I’m not saying all stops is bad, I’ve just seen it too often in that situation where it becomes predictable and the Steelers don’t have separators other than Pickens to make it truly work.
-also with a QB that can move and likes to scramble, having your players all stop momentum on critical downs really reduces the power level of your QB since the WRs can’t be as effective with no momentum to get open
-if next game Arthur doesn’t run some stop and go’s on 3rd and long I know he’s washed

I am concerned with Donte Jackson, not just due to injury but because he seems to get beat deep. Feels like he’s a top athlete that doesn’t stay disciplined in coverage. He’s going to pay for it one day. The pass rush won’t always be able to bail him out. Some team will see it on tape and take a designed shot over his head.

Spencer Anderson isn’t great. And he’s one of the reasons why the run game isn’t as effective as it could be…but then I just watched a run go right behind him and he drove his guy back like 4 yards.
-I think Mr. Anderson is a little inconsistent but not at all unusable
-I’ve mentioned a lot of power runs vs. zone runs but I will say that Spencer Anderson’s strength doesn’t seem to be pulling and hitting hard. I feel like he doesn’t have that mean streak you want in an o-lineman, he doesn’t seem to have the downblock mentality.

I haven’t see much out of Connor Heyward this year, feels like he got a lot of his role eaten by Pruitt since Arthur seems to really like him.

I just watched Justin Fields watching a 6 man double mug look with a 5 wide set and he didn’t even care to motion in a blocker. Has he ever played Madden or know anything about numbers?
-he actually ended up escaping the pocket and picking up a good gain because he’s a great athlete
-He also makes reads like a bad madden player, if there’s a blitz, he’s throwing to the sideline as the hot read instead of the middle from where the blitz came from (with some exception)
-Also, stop being an idiot and throwing downfield sideline shots to anyone but Pickens

But I’m concerned that Fields has no ability to change blocking/anything at the line and it’s going to be a MAJOR issue against good teams with quality d-coordinators
-this is me doubting Fields is smart enough to do it. PROVE ME WRONG YOU FUCKING COWARD.
(I just watched Fields shout something at the line of scrimmage and it looks like they switched from a pass to the kill play, a run)

The more I watch of Friermuth the more I have no idea why they paid him. Is TE play that bad in the league?
-bad blocker, can’t separate. Hope he can find a role like Witten could getting open against zone. But so few passes have been schemed up for him over the middle.
-AND he doesn’t show effort in the scramble drills from what I’ve seen so far

Dear Arthur, please more inside zone split if you’re going to be running a lot of zone
-split has a blocker coming back to block the backside pursuit, unutilized a lot by the Rams a few years ago, provides a nice cutback lane for the RB (but the Rams have moved more to a power scheme recently)

I actually don’t hate Scotty Miller, I see him go HARD AF on his wind sprints (distraction routes)

Whats interesting is that the Steelers are playing a lot of zone of defense. I wonder if they thought running that against a rookie QB was the best path forward. Make it more confusing for him making reads vs. a man to man style defense.
-because there are players open against the zone, but Bo Nix is having trouble finding them. (it’s much easier to find them when you can pause and rewind than in the 1.85 seconds he has)

Just when I was getting worried about BENTON and not seeing him much this game (after I thought he had a down game last week) he immediately pops like a weasel and forces a super quick throw on 3rd down where it’s inaccurate and Denver has to punt.

And hold up…Dan Moore…is he finally a good tackle? I don’t know how to feel. It might be clicking. We’ll see if the Steelers can now afford to pay him going forward. Do all the dev work together and lose the stud. feelsbadman.
-wait, he kinda sucks
-I think this means he’s league average. I don’t know how to feel.

Arthur Smiths got all these funky routes for Pickens stretching the defense deep. It’s not that hard, have him on the outside, send him on a streak, get 40 yard gain.
-(although I’m saying that half in cheek, they do need to move him around)

Broderick Jones…he had the worst day anyone at his position could have. Go in, draw 3 penalties in a short period and be pulled for the rest. And he looked bad during a lot of the rest of it. But sometimes you can see he’s got that mean streak and athleticism to be a good tackle in the league. For example, he had a play at 10:09 of the 2nd quarter where he collapse the DT then moved to the 2nd level and made a bone rattler on the 2nd level defender. Cleared the way for a 15 yard gain by Najee.

2nd and long after Broderick’s first holding, what does Arthur Smith call, all stops. Fields is able to scramble out and make a crazy good dot to Pickens who once again got the best of Surtian. But Jones gets another holding, this time a little more justified than the first but still a little iffy. Regardless, let’s talk about how stops is not great when it’s used so much.
-stops is not great when it’s used so much. There, we talked.

Next play is 2nd and longer and they go with all 5 yard outs with a RB checkdown. I don’t love it but I guess Arthur is playing for the punt at this point. And a called pass no matter how safe and short gets people less angry than a “give up” run even though they’re both practically the same.

2nd half you see more blitzes, and that what it looks like Fields is struggling with. He locks on to targets a little too much instead of reading the defense and knowing where players are going and deciding on where to throw based on that movement

You don’t need me to tell you but George Pickens doing what he did to Pat Surtain this week was very impressive. Back to back difference making against two of the best CBs in the NFL. Just wild work from him.

It was interesting hearing from Tomlin that their gameplan was to stop the run first and foremost and make the rookie make plays. The Steelers were in 3 interior linemen and the two edges much more often than against Atlanta, where they were more in a nickel set with 2 interiors, 2 edges. So we saw TJ/Highsmith drop a bit more in Denver.
-and Bo did miss quite a few throws, so it worked out pretty well

Minkah is back playing deep safety and it’s everything I ever wanted.

Pruitt, the new “blocking” TE ain’t great in space at all. Both blocking and receiving. Sadly we only have one Darnell Washington 😦