Those were the Cleveland Bleeping Browns out there. No, check that, those were the Browns with Brian Hoyer at QB not long after carrying clipboards on the South Side, with a third-round rookie back out of Towson named Terrance West filling in for injured Ben Tate, with tight end Jordan Cameron joining Tate on the bench … and still, somehow, that sorry cast came full-throttle at the home side for the final 30 minutes of what wound up a 30-27 victory only through the grace of a buzzer-beating Shaun Suisham field goal.
Until that, the Browns’ second-half drive chart showed the following grizzly progression:
• 80 yards, touchdown
• 59 yards, touchdown
• 75 yards, field goal
• 51 yards, touchdown
• 54 yards, punt … but hey, they started at their 6
• Minus-11 yards, punt
Good thing for that last series, too, or the Steelers’ 82nd season opener might have ranked No. 1 on the all-time you’ve-got-to-be-kidding list in light of their 27-3 lead, as well as the 24 points and 288 yards conceded after the intermission.
It was awful, even in the context of countless early positives.
It was embarrassing to see a Pittsburgh team pushed around, run around, thrown around, by such a middling opponent. By that middling opponent.
It was, as Cam Heyward put it afterward, “Not who we are.”
Wait, what?
To that point in my postgame locker-room interview tour, I’d gotten a whole lot of “a win is a win,” per Ben Roethlisberger, or even “a win is a win is a win,” from Ryan Shazier, as if tripling it somehow would strengthen its veracity. There also were a few athletes calling the Browns “an NFL team, too,” as Willie Gay did, though that might qualify as breaking news in northeastern Ohio.
But Heyward was the first I’d heard go defiant. And he did it with almost as much gusto as he showed following his colossal sack of Hoyer for a 6-yard loss on that final Cleveland possession.
“If people want to think this is a bad defense based on the second half, good, let ’em think that,” Heyward said, biting off those last few syllables. “We know what’s in here. We know the kind of talent we have. We know we’ll learn from this and be better from it. We’ll be better for it Thursday night. We know that. We know what went wrong out there.”
Oh?
This was where the conversation found steam, not only with Heyward but then with others on the defense who confirmed the same: Once the Browns went no-huddle for the second half, the Steelers’ brains suddenly went dark.
“We weren’t communicating in time. We weren’t getting signals to each other,” Heyward continued. “There were a lot of things going on out there, and it was all happening pretty quickly.”
“We weren’t even down sometimes,” nose tackle Steve McLendon chimed in from the adjacent stall. “We weren’t getting down and set on a lot of plays.”
I took that over to Brett Keisel, who should know best among the linemen, and he added the valuable point that the Steelers were deploying a rather unorthodox — my term, not his — rotation up front that also had Cam Thomas and Stephon Tuitt in the mix:
The rotation was such a whirlwind that Keisel, a veteran of 13 NFL seasons at defensive end, confessed to once lining up at nose tackle by mistake.
But let’s take it further because, as badly as the line performed in the second half, the rest of the defense was no more productive or composed.
When the secondary accounts for the top three tacklers in the game — Troy Polamalu, Mike Mitchell and Cortez Allen — that generally means the linebackers missed a whole lot. Which they did. Shazier registered six tackles, one for a loss, and a pass defensed. But if you spotted him in the second half, you’ve got better binoculars than mine. Lawrence Timmons, the signal-caller and expected leader in tackles, had six, none of real impact. Jarvis Jones and Jason Worilds each sacked Hoyer in the first half, and then spent the second half in some other realm.
Too many young guys contributing to the miscommunication?
“It was different,” Shazier said. “It was exciting to be out there, but it was different.”
Of course it was. It had to be.
When the secondary allows a C-minus QB like Hoyer to go 19 of 31 for 230 yards without a pick, that generally means they missed a whole lot, too. Polamalu and Mitchell defended zero passes between them, Allen just one. Ike Taylor had one, too, but that would have been a pick in almost any other hands, and it extended an eventual Cleveland touchdown drive.
I’ll repeat my summer-long plea for more Gay.
In fact, I took that to Mike Tomlin after the game, asking for his assessment of Gay’s day: “Will is one of those solid veteran guys. He’s Steady Eddie and not only in terms of the splash plays, the pass breakups and the stuff that you see, but he’s a hub of communication in that sub-package defense. … He’s always available to us, and we appreciate his contributions today.”
OK, then, so if his contributions are appreciated today, if he graded out as the Steelers’ No. 1 corner in 2013 and if Taylor is looking a step slow, why not play him Thursday?
Sounds like that whole “hub of communication” trait might be especially handy.
The offense went into stall mode, too, and that shouldn’t be forgotten. Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown, Markus Wheaton and Le’Veon Bell put on a clinic in the first half, but the bright spot of the second came on a backup safety finding an open target on a fake punt. Otherwise, Joe Haden did what he does best and blanketed Brown in the second half, the Browns loaded up the box to stop the run, and the Steelers, at times laughably, ran right into it.
So with a slight cap tip to Tomlin for the fake punt call and another to Robert Golden for pulling it off, the hard question left behind is this: Why wasn’t this team ready for the second half?
And if it was ready, difficult as that case would be to make after hearing these players, why wouldn’t — or couldn’t — the staff adjust?
It’s simplistic and, in my view, silly to talk about emotional letdowns, though that’s sure to be a theme from this one. I didn’t see a Steelers team that didn’t care in the second half. I saw one that didn’t have a clue.
Tomlin’s reply when asked if the Browns’ no-huddle presented a problem was telling: “It did, and we gave ourselves some problems. I have to compliment them. They did a great job. But I also would like to compliment our guys for doing what was necessary amidst a lot of negativity there in the second half.”
The final Cleveland drive, he meant. And by “a lot of negativity,” I’ll just assume he meant detecting that his players basically didn’t know what to do.
There were six weeks to get ready for this. Three days for Baltimore.
September 7, 2014
Column: Steelers’ defense stuck at the signal
by Dejan Kovacevic • Columns • Steelers
The Steelers swarm Shaun Suisham after his winning 41-yard field goal Sunday at Heinz Field. — GETTY
DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS
The Steelers’ defense stunk.
I saw it, you saw it, and there’s no denying it.
Those were the Cleveland Bleeping Browns out there. No, check that, those were the Browns with Brian Hoyer at QB not long after carrying clipboards on the South Side, with a third-round rookie back out of Towson named Terrance West filling in for injured Ben Tate, with tight end Jordan Cameron joining Tate on the bench … and still, somehow, that sorry cast came full-throttle at the home side for the final 30 minutes of what wound up a 30-27 victory only through the grace of a buzzer-beating Shaun Suisham field goal.
Until that, the Browns’ second-half drive chart showed the following grizzly progression:
Good thing for that last series, too, or the Steelers’ 82nd season opener might have ranked No. 1 on the all-time you’ve-got-to-be-kidding list in light of their 27-3 lead, as well as the 24 points and 288 yards conceded after the intermission.
It was awful, even in the context of countless early positives.
It was embarrassing to see a Pittsburgh team pushed around, run around, thrown around, by such a middling opponent. By that middling opponent.
It was, as Cam Heyward put it afterward, “Not who we are.”
Wait, what?
To that point in my postgame locker-room interview tour, I’d gotten a whole lot of “a win is a win,” per Ben Roethlisberger, or even “a win is a win is a win,” from Ryan Shazier, as if tripling it somehow would strengthen its veracity. There also were a few athletes calling the Browns “an NFL team, too,” as Willie Gay did, though that might qualify as breaking news in northeastern Ohio.
But Heyward was the first I’d heard go defiant. And he did it with almost as much gusto as he showed following his colossal sack of Hoyer for a 6-yard loss on that final Cleveland possession.
“If people want to think this is a bad defense based on the second half, good, let ’em think that,” Heyward said, biting off those last few syllables. “We know what’s in here. We know the kind of talent we have. We know we’ll learn from this and be better from it. We’ll be better for it Thursday night. We know that. We know what went wrong out there.”
Oh?
This was where the conversation found steam, not only with Heyward but then with others on the defense who confirmed the same: Once the Browns went no-huddle for the second half, the Steelers’ brains suddenly went dark.
“We weren’t communicating in time. We weren’t getting signals to each other,” Heyward continued. “There were a lot of things going on out there, and it was all happening pretty quickly.”
“We weren’t even down sometimes,” nose tackle Steve McLendon chimed in from the adjacent stall. “We weren’t getting down and set on a lot of plays.”
I took that over to Brett Keisel, who should know best among the linemen, and he added the valuable point that the Steelers were deploying a rather unorthodox — my term, not his — rotation up front that also had Cam Thomas and Stephon Tuitt in the mix:
The rotation was such a whirlwind that Keisel, a veteran of 13 NFL seasons at defensive end, confessed to once lining up at nose tackle by mistake.
But let’s take it further because, as badly as the line performed in the second half, the rest of the defense was no more productive or composed.
When the secondary accounts for the top three tacklers in the game — Troy Polamalu, Mike Mitchell and Cortez Allen — that generally means the linebackers missed a whole lot. Which they did. Shazier registered six tackles, one for a loss, and a pass defensed. But if you spotted him in the second half, you’ve got better binoculars than mine. Lawrence Timmons, the signal-caller and expected leader in tackles, had six, none of real impact. Jarvis Jones and Jason Worilds each sacked Hoyer in the first half, and then spent the second half in some other realm.
Too many young guys contributing to the miscommunication?
“It was different,” Shazier said. “It was exciting to be out there, but it was different.”
Of course it was. It had to be.
When the secondary allows a C-minus QB like Hoyer to go 19 of 31 for 230 yards without a pick, that generally means they missed a whole lot, too. Polamalu and Mitchell defended zero passes between them, Allen just one. Ike Taylor had one, too, but that would have been a pick in almost any other hands, and it extended an eventual Cleveland touchdown drive.
I’ll repeat my summer-long plea for more Gay.
In fact, I took that to Mike Tomlin after the game, asking for his assessment of Gay’s day: “Will is one of those solid veteran guys. He’s Steady Eddie and not only in terms of the splash plays, the pass breakups and the stuff that you see, but he’s a hub of communication in that sub-package defense. … He’s always available to us, and we appreciate his contributions today.”
OK, then, so if his contributions are appreciated today, if he graded out as the Steelers’ No. 1 corner in 2013 and if Taylor is looking a step slow, why not play him Thursday?
Sounds like that whole “hub of communication” trait might be especially handy.
The offense went into stall mode, too, and that shouldn’t be forgotten. Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown, Markus Wheaton and Le’Veon Bell put on a clinic in the first half, but the bright spot of the second came on a backup safety finding an open target on a fake punt. Otherwise, Joe Haden did what he does best and blanketed Brown in the second half, the Browns loaded up the box to stop the run, and the Steelers, at times laughably, ran right into it.
So with a slight cap tip to Tomlin for the fake punt call and another to Robert Golden for pulling it off, the hard question left behind is this: Why wasn’t this team ready for the second half?
And if it was ready, difficult as that case would be to make after hearing these players, why wouldn’t — or couldn’t — the staff adjust?
It’s simplistic and, in my view, silly to talk about emotional letdowns, though that’s sure to be a theme from this one. I didn’t see a Steelers team that didn’t care in the second half. I saw one that didn’t have a clue.
Tomlin’s reply when asked if the Browns’ no-huddle presented a problem was telling: “It did, and we gave ourselves some problems. I have to compliment them. They did a great job. But I also would like to compliment our guys for doing what was necessary amidst a lot of negativity there in the second half.”
The final Cleveland drive, he meant. And by “a lot of negativity,” I’ll just assume he meant detecting that his players basically didn’t know what to do.
There were six weeks to get ready for this. Three days for Baltimore.