Steelers Morning Huddle 8/11/13

Aug 10, 2013; Pittsburgh, PA, USA; General view as the Pittsburgh Steelers host the New York Giants during the second quarter at Heinz Field. The New York Giants won 18-13. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

The first Steelers preseason game is over and the team certainly has identified some things to work on.  Losses in the preseason don’t bother me, but plays that can make ESPN’s Sportcenter “Not Top 10” make me a tad uncomfortable.  Anyway, here are some articles from around ‘net.

Good AND Bad

Alan Robinson, of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, summarizes last night’s preseason loss to the Giants as good and bad.  Le’Veon Bell sitting out with a sore knee was surely on the bad side.  He’s a rookie and this might be another case of an “abundance of caution, but the buzz out of camp was that this guy could be a starter.  If he’s already nursing a sore knee, well, will he last the season?  The good was LaRod Stephens-Howling who worked well with the first team and was able to take advantage of the new blocking scheme to get some good yardage.  Another good thing was Jarvis Jones who, at least in this preseason game, gave hope that he will live up to the hype.  He made some great plays.  Robinson goes into more comparisons, but you get the picture.

Ed Bouchette, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, also reviews the game in a good and bad comparison.  He, as well as others, point out that Gay did not do well covering the left side due to Cortez Allen’s knee injury.  Danny Smith, the Special Teams coach, had a rough night watching his unit have a botched punt and plenty of penalties.  Marcus Gilbert looked pretty good before coming out of the game.

I thought it was interesting that never Robinson or Bouchette mentioned Landry Jones or John Parker Wilson. What’s up with that?  That was the most interesting part of the game, to me.  If you want to read about last night’s game with a touch of honest sarcasm, you need to check out Gene Collier’s summary in the Post-Gazette.

Jarvis Jones Not Perfect, but Good

Dejan Kovacevic, of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, summarized Jarvis Jones’ performance on the field – the good and the bad.  The fumble recovery was a plus but he looked slow and never actually pressured any of the quarterbacks.   Jones still has to transition from his college playbook to the NFL, but the potential is certainly there.

Don’t Jump To Any Conclusions

I saw Mark Kaboly (I think) tweeted out last night that no one should make any conclusions based off of one-preseason game.  Jaimeson Hensley, who blogs about the AFC North for ESPN, agrees.  He states the that Steelers has the sloppiest start among the AFC North teams.  But, there’s no reason to predict doom and gloom.  He also predicted it won’t be a fun couple of days with Tomlin after this performance.  Hensley at least isn’t afraid to address the Landry Jones/Baron Batch mis-communication (or whatever it was):

"To be fair, few rookie quarterbacks have stellar performances in their first preseason game. Jones finished 5-of-9 for 48 yards. Here’s how the other quarterbacks fared: Ben Roethlisberger was 4-of-8 for 36 yards, Bruce Gradkowski was 6-of-11 for 35 yards and John Parker Wilson was 4-of-5 for 35 yards.”"

Hensley also noticed that Gay didn’t do well in Cortez Allen’s place but was hopeful that Allen would be back by the opener.  I still wonder how well he will be able to perform after the knee surgery.

Tomlin’s Take

According to the transcript of the post-game new conference on Steelers.com, Tomlin was not pleased with the Steelers performance and called it the “Steelers defeating the Steelers.”  It was a typical Tomlin session with the media.

Steelers Notebook

Mark Kaboly of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review put together some notes from the Steelers that don’t fit into individual articles.  Tomlin fully expects Le’Veon Bell to be in the other preseason games to allow for in-game evaluation.  Tight End Michael Palmer started just a day after getting signed and the Steelers also resigned Mike Farrell (O-line, Penn State Alum) while cutting Buddy Jackson who they had just claimed off waivers from Kansas City.  Talk about a personnel shuffle!

Ray Fittipaldo, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, also put together some notes from the game, to include a wrap-up of the injury status.

That’s it for today.

Sorry, no featured Tweet.  I was watching the game last night and probably missed a good one, but I decided to set Twitter to the side for a while. Let us know what you think!