TIOPS DAILY FIVE
*Rumblings, Musings, Opinions*
1. The Steelers offense showed it’s achilles heel tonight vs New England in a 28-21 loss. Whether it’s bad clock management, running a trick play at an in-opportune time to kill a drive, to Darrius Heyward-Bey’s poor awareness to have his feet in on a should be touchdown catch, it was a night of not capitalizing for the offense.
We know it’s a great yardage offense and that was on display tonight vs the Patriots but the inability to finish and turn 3’s into 7’s is what’s going to tell the story whether this group evolves into a great offense and the Steelers return to the playoffs for the second straight year.
With a defensive unit so bad, there is no room for error.
For now this group should continue to be looked at as a yardage offense not a great offense.
Until that changes don’t get your hopes up about the season.
2. Kelvin Beachum will play out the season without a new contract. According to a league source, the sides never got close and as the source described it, the Steelers were offering “right tackle” money, believed to be around $7 million per season.
The Franchise tag this season for left tackles was $12.93 million and is expected to be over $13 million in 2016. Tagging Beachum is extremely unlikely in 2016.
The Steelers trend of paying the wrong people continues. Beachum will be a significant loss.
3. How’s DeAngelo Williams going to take it two weeks from now when he goes from lead back to seeing five plays a game? Maybe not as bad as LeGarrette Blount but word earlier this week is some in the organization don’t feel like Williams is going to embrace the backup role like they thought he would and anyone who talks to Williams might feel the same way too.
Williams believes he can still play at a high level and proved it tonight as he was sensational vs the Patriots. The explosiveness is still there and Williams was a huge positive. Pittsburgh didn’t miss Bell.
4. A.J. Burnett’s career looked over just a couple pitches into his night. Burnett in the first inning looked like a pitcher throwing batting practice as he was rocked for three runs, highlighted by a two-run homer by Khris Davis that was crushed and might still not have landed.
Burnett had no movement on his fastball and his location was a mess. It looked over for him.
Burnett, though, settled in to throw four scoreless innings. Burnett’s final line:
5 IP, 3 H, 3 ER, 3 K, 2 BB, 9 ground-outs, 0 fly-outs.
Burnett threw 64 pitches, 38 for strikes.
He bought himself another start as Burnett is basically battling Charlie Morton down the stretch to be the Pirates No. 4 starter in the rotation for the playoffs.
5. 150/150 Club: Andrew McCutchen joined an exclusive club tonight.
McCutchen’s game tying home run was the 150th home run of his career, joining Barry Bonds as the only Pirates in team history with 150 home runs / 150 stolen bases.
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I thought last night was a very positive game. With our injuries to significantly win yardage/time of possession against a reasonable good team was impressive.
Front seven looks fine but not elite. Secondary is a huge problem. If you fix that somehow (New England started a waiver wire CB in the super bowl last year) then maybe you have a shot. If the secondary can go from one of the worst 3 in the leauge to simply bad they might have a shot.
I grew tired of Dejan’s penguins apology columns but his piece today on the Patriots and last night’s game is golden. Of course on this site we have shit.
Haha! NPL referencing Martavias Bryant as a 4th round pick on another message board. How did he do last night? Oh right he’s suspended, because in less than 12 months as a professional he has failed at least four drug tests. FOUR! He’s one puff away from being out of the league. Josh Gordon 2.0. Mark it down needle d ick.
I like when our resident Steelers expert spells the name of a player wrong. Makes me really value his opinion.
Tell me your thoughts on Rothlessburger
How do you refresh this piece of crap comment board.
Why do you need to refresh it? The comments update automatically.
I’m actually more optimistic about the defense now then heading in. And for the numerous people on here who claimed that the Pats would run up the score and put up 50/60 points. I dare you to combat that thought.
So you’re in for the 5-1 or 4-2 prediction 🙂
I think it’s safe to say that if the Pats wanted to run the score up and put 70 on us they easily could have. Their offense pretty much did anything they wanted most of the night but clearly their plan was to slow things down and protect their weak defense by keeping the Steelers O on the sidelines as much as possible.
This new comment format sucks more than NPL during gay pride week.
Tomlin’s pissed about the headset thing and finally showing some balls – I like it…the defense is another story – the D-line was non-existant, the secondary sucked (Blake looked like a high schooler), and our “great group of LB’s” didn’t show up except for a couple plays …how the hell can there be such awful communication problems on defense after 5 damn pre-season games?
And we just played this game without 3 Pro-Bolwers and the offense went up and down the field at will. We’ll be fine.
Haley needs to watch how other OC’s let their big gun qb’s handle red zone offense. It’s a guarantee we run the ball on 1st down and then play check down offense as soon as we hit the 20. Be aggressive and go for it, don’t play safe and settle for 3.
The odd thing with Haley: Sometimes he does show flashes of aggression and gutsiness. Remember the Atlanta game last year and the play to Heath to seal the game? But those get more than canceled out by all the wasted plays with wacky sideways stuff.
Why didn’t Boykin get a shot in there? Blake is a good special teamer, can play in a pinch, but has no business being out there every down.
Yes sir
Antwaan Blake is that bad.
How about a little more scrutiny of Big Overrated. Is he good enough to carry a team?
Holy shit its Maloni. It all makes sense now.