Time for Ben to find his own jersey....

Steelers veteran left tackle Max Starks hit the practice field for the first time since tearing his ACL.  Rookie left tackle Mike Adams also returned from his knee injury he suffered last week against the Eagles.  And, while it’s not The Octagon, this battle for left tackle just got interesting.

I’m not yet convinced that Mike Adams is the guy for the starting job.  Yet.  He’ll get there, but his poor showing against the Eagles is a cause for concern.  Enter trusty Max Starks.  Starks, though criticized for his age and size, entered last season overweight and out of shape from his most recent injury.  After being cut by the Steelers, he was resigned part way through as a final play by the team to improve the awful offensive line.  Starks, who hadn’t really practiced or taken a snap for months shined in his return.  He continued to have Ben Roethlisberger’s back the rest of the year until he went down with an ACL at the end of the season.  Starks is a solid choice at left tackle and has a realistic chance of taking that roll away from Adams.

So who will the Steelers start against the Colts on Sunday?  Does Adams get a second nod and chance to prove that he deserves that spot?  Or do the Steelers go with Starks to see if he can still handle game speed?  If Starks doesn’t start on Sunday, I would think the Steelers would put him in fairly early in the game.  Adams and Starks may share time in the 1st quarter so the coaches can asses how both men handle the 1st team defense of the Colts.  With Freeny and Mathis of the Colts still playing at a high level, both Adams and Starks will be tested often and early.

San Diego Charger fans think they got the shaft?

Last season, Steeler Nation wept as a glorious season came to an abrupt and premature end at the hands of the Jacksonville Jaguars.  The subsequent week, the Jagoffs embarrassed themselves against the New England Spycams Patriots.   This wasn’t really surprising since Jacksonville only managed to beat a badly banged-up Steeler team through the help of some of the most atrocious refereeing in playoff history.   The league’s Director of Officials even apologized afterwards, acknowledging the Jaguars horrific cheating led to their undeserving victory.  This was little consolation to Pittsburgh fans that had to sit through an entire off-season wondering what might have been.

The Jaguars were rebuilt under Jack Del Rio with the idea of getting, tall, big players on the roster at most of their positions. Guys like Marcus Stroud (now with Buffalo) and John Henderson are 6’8” tall. Matt Jones is a 6’6” wide receiver and Marcedes Lewis is 6’7” tight end. They had another 6’6” wide receiver in Ernest Wilford (now with Miami) and drafted 6’4” wide receiver Reggie Williams with the 10th overall pick.  With all that beef, the Jaguars got themselves a big quarterback in 6’4” 250 pound Byron Leftwich.

While Leftwich’s arm was enticing, he just simply could not reach his potential because he didn’t have very good pocket presence and his long delivery threw off his anticipation, something that is paramount for a QB in the NFL.  Del Rio made the bold move to give up on Leftwich, a former 8th overall pick, and go with unproven David Garrard.  The move paid off in spades for the Jaguars as Garrard, who is a big QB in his own right, had a tremendous season and far better than anything that Leftwich provided the team.  Despite a terrible performance in the playoffs, the team felt going into the season that it’s only a WR and a pass rusher away from becoming a Super Bowl contender.

Unfortunately, this season has seen Jacksonville stumble out of the gate with a 2-2 record.  A combination of a mediocre receiving corp and D-coordinators learning how to game plan Garrard has led to new challenges on offense.  Plus, they still can’t manage to get by the Indianapolis Colts.

STEELER DEFENSE vs. JAGUARS OFFENSE

Jacksonville runs a West Coast offense, but a unique one in that they do like to go deep with the passing game and love to run the ball up the middle. In fact, the past two seasons they have ran the ball up the middle close to 69% of the time. The NFL average is 51% of the time. Most West Coast Offenses run up the middle only about 40% of the time.

The big part of their offense is their running backs, perhaps the best tandem in the league.  They’re almost the perfect compliment to each other with Fred Taylor being the every down back whose size and speed make him a ferocious guy to tackle while Maurice Jones-Drew is the smaller, speedier, big play back who can do it all, be it run the ball, returns, receiving, etc.

Obviously, this game will be no different than last year’s regular season debacle where both backs rushed for 100 yards EACH against the Steelers vaunted run defense.  Of course, that Steeler team was missing DE Aaron Smith, who is very clearly the main man along the defensive line.  We will be playing with backups at the other end and NT but the key to run stopping will still be Smith.  We did a good job of bottling up Ravens RB Willis Mcgahee last week but started to falter against his backup late in the game.  The Jags will keep coming at us with Fast Freddie and Pocket Hercules so expect a lot of run-blitzes and the like as stopping the running game will be the priority.  It’s not like we have to fear QB David Garrad beating us.

The biggest knock on Garrard has been his conservative nature.  They clearly tried to protect him and turn him into a “game manager” last year.  Not that being conservative is necessarily a bad thing but it doesn’t lead to a lot of passing touchdowns, although it also doesn’t lead to too many turnovers.  Still, he averaged a lousy 27 passing attempts a game last year and in the QB driven NFL, that isn’t going to cut it.  He only had 3 picks last season and already has 4 this year which is a sign both that they’re trying to open up the offense and that he’s not ready to be put into a position to win games with his arm.

To be fair, he doesn’t have much to work with as the receivers are not much to brag about, other than Mercedes Lewis, who shows some potential. Matt Jones hasn’t made the transition to WR very well. He seems fast, but not very quick and takes awhile to get going full speed.  The guy who has scary potential is Troy Williamson whose size and speed gets him great separation, but he doesn’t understand the nuances of the game and has horrible hands.  I’ve never been a Reggie Williams fan. He just lacks separation and is not great at catching passes in closed quarters.  Key off-season pick up Jerry Porter has always been overrated. Scouts love his size and speed. But the fact is he’s never had 1,000 receiving yards in a season.  Plus he has a history of injury problems and has already missed time this year crying about some boo-boos.

Between CBs Ike Taylor, Bryant McFadden, and returning Deshea Townshend we should be more than ready to control their passing game.  Unless the running game begins to gash us, I honestly don’t see Garrard passing for more than 100 yards against our smothering secondary and hostile linebackers.

STEELER OFFENSE vs. JAGUARS DEFENSE

The Jags play a standard 4-3 Cover 2 with the pass rush being almost exclusively generated by the D-Line with fast cover linebackers and rarely blitzing. They decided after the Patriots playoff embarrassment that they desperately needed to get more pressure on the QB if they were going to take the team to the next level, so they traded up to get DE Derrick Harvey out of Florida.  His presence should give DEs Paul Spicer and Reggie Hayward some rest so they can be more effective.  John Henderson is still a stud and Rob Meier is a high motor guy who gets to the QB pretty well. That being said, they did miss old Marcus Stroud as the team finished 28th in defending runs up the middle.

Of course, running is going to be a problem for the Steelers since they’re down to 3rd down back Mewelde Moore, practice squad fodder Gary Russell, and the Dumptruck Najeh Davenport in the backfield.  It would be nice to make this a low-scoring smash mouth type game but I honestly can’t see the Steelers trying to grind out drives with such a hideous selection of backs.  Plus, we’ve seen O-coordinator Bruce Arians is a pass-happy fool and this gives him a good excuse to chuck the ball 35 times.

Unfortunately, the Jags do have some quality starting corners. I like Rashean Mathis, even though his pass defense stats are not great, he’s got a habit of making picks. Brian Williams is very solid opposite of him. They had problems last year with the nickel corner as Aaron Glenn didn’t have anything left in the tank, so they brought in Drayton Florence to help them out.  Reggie Nelson had his growing pains, but showed some flashes of brilliance and has the potential to be an All Pro some day.

Without sounding like a broken record, the entire passing game will be predicated on keeping Ben Roethlisberger vertical long enough to go vertical.  Last week, they didn’t do as bad a job as it seemed.  A bunch of the offensive disarray seemed to be Ben holding on to the ball and running around looking for a big play long after he should’ve made the quick read and got rid of it.  I don’t think the Jags pass rusher is near as ferocious as Baltimore’s but I actually think their secondary might be a tad better.  How this will play out is anybody’s guess.  I would like to see the Steelers go back to the three-step-THROW offense they ran week one against Houston.  When they went no-huddle last week, the offense came alive and I think that’s because Ben doesn’t do hot reads unless they’re running an up-tempo offense.

Playing Jacksonville in October is fitting since they’ve been a House of Horrors for the Steelers as of late.  There was the horrific showing two years ago when Ben’s brains were still scrambled from the motorcycle accident and his body hadn’t recovered from spleen removal.  Last year, we got run over at home.  Then there was the screw job in the playoffs.  I have no idea what fate awaits us this week.  I just hope the game doesn’t end 6-3 due to a last second field goal when the ref calls a phantom pass intereference penalty on Troy Polamalu.

Last week, I went a most excellent 3-1 in prognosticating post-season playoff programming. Technically, I should have been 4-0 because I did warn you all to watch out for those sneaky Lightning Bolts. My only question with them was the play of QB Phillip Rivers so had I known that when it came time for one final game-winning drive, the ball would be thrust into the hands of Mighty Billy Volek, I’d have made them my A-1 Super-Duper Bet-the-kids-trust-fund Kryptonite Lock of the Week.

Mad props go out to the surging Giants for knocking off the hated Dallas Cowboys in the other upset of the week. Tony Romo didn’t fumble away the game this time, no doubt because he spent the entire bye week down in Mexico gripping football sized objects, but it was still satisfying to see that over-rated and over-hyped doofus go down in flames. And Jerry Jones standing on the sideline after the game, staring off into space, pondering who he can blame for this, while wearing his “Somebody’s ass is getting fired” face is always priceless.

It’s great to see teams get rewarded for playing the game the right way. The tanking, injury-fearing Colts and Cowboys both got exactly what they deserved for resting their starters the final week of the regular season. Has anybody noticed that of the teams remaining, all four actually played their best players in game 16? The Giants and Pats had a brutal slugfest in the Meadowlands, San Diego kept their starters in long enough to ensure they locked up the #3 seed, and Green Bay was forced to play Bret Favre due to their backup quarterback breaking his leg, plus they weren’t worried as much about stamina since their team is the youngest in the league (seriously, Bob Costas said so and Bob wouldn’t lie).

Anyway, on to this week’s picks:

Packers over New York Football Giants – I like Eli Manning. There. And I only feel slightly dirty for saying that. Look, if you’re like me, you like the underdog. And there is no bigger underdog in the NFL than Eli Manning. Think about what a personal hell his life must be. Okay, he’s an uber-rich, uber-famous professional athlete, perhaps “personal hell” is overstating the case but it ain’t easy being Eli.

He’s grown up in the shadow of a famous father, then he had to contend with the shadow of an even more famous and successful older brother, becomes the #1 overall pick in the entire draft (no pressure there) whereby he’s anointed the guy who’ll bring untold glory to the G-men (and we all know how kind, supportive, and patient New Yorkers are) and then gets thrown under the bus by former teammate Tiki Barber, who said his attempts at leadership were “comical.” A lesser quarterback would be curled up in the fetal position, sucking his thumb, and crying for his baba by now. But Eli is still just a good ‘ol country boy. And as Hank Williams Jr. taught me years before he asked if I was ready for some football, a country boy can survive.

Anyway, yeah, I’m still running with the Pack. Farve is about to be sacked, pitches the ball underhand in desperation, and the play goes for a first down. Sure, he could’ve thrown it normally but then he wouldn’t have given the announcers another reason to suck him off. And that’s really what this post-season is about. Bret Favre’s jock.

Chargers over Patriots – No, you don’t need glasses. No, that Lasik treatment you got with a coupon isn’t backfiring on you (I use coupons for many things, ketchup, toilet paper, antacids… However, eye surgery, not really something I want at a discount). No, what your mother said about watching all those Jenna Jameson movies is not coming true. I am indeed picking the Chargers.

Allow me to paint you a picture, a picture but with words. Last season, San Diego is the #1 seed and a banged-up New England team goes out to the west coast and beats them in devastating last-minute fashion. Then, being the pillars of sportsmanship that they are, they celebrate by dancing on the Chargers logo at mid-field, no doubt to gain even more good will from fans across the league and ensure yet more little girls in Patriots jerseys get booed out of the stadium during Punt, Pass, and Kick competitions.

LaDainian Tomlinson, about the most mild-mannered player around, almost starts a Pier 6 brawl when he sees this, then makes a post-game comment about the Patriots “lacking class, something they probably get from their coach.” These shocking statements directed toward that paragon of virtue and fair play, Bill Belichick, probably still play on his mind. In fact, the whole ugly incident is probably fresh in all their minds and this week, they can have their revenge.

The Patriots have got to be running on empty, both mentally and physically. I’m sure their coaching staff and “fans” will try to concoct some sort of imagined slight or perceived insult (such as not thinking Tom Brady is the Greatest Quarterback In The History Of The Universe because he can complete a bunch of 4 yard passes against a prevent defense) to try and trump up some phony motivation. I’m sorry if I’m not as impressed as the media by a consecutive completions record when most of his passes barely traveled 5 yards in the air. Maybe I sound bitter but if some of us choose to not bask in the glory of Patriots and Tom Brady every single second, then go ahead call me a “hater.” And, for the record, I would’ve booed the little girl, too.

Sometimes, I wish I was born in Detroit. Lion fans don’t realize how good they have it. If they win a few games, you shrug your shoulders and move on. If you have a winning season, they’ve exceeded your wildest dreams. If they somehow make the playoffs, the season is a tremendous success. Hooray for diminished expectations!

Unfortunately, I was born in Pittsburgh. Our outlook is a little bit different than in the Detroits or Clevelands of the world. A winning season is a given. Making the playoffs is no big deal. Anything less than a Super Bowl title is considered total failure. Being a member of Steeler Nation is a lot like being a fan of the New York Yankees, except without the whole obnoxious prick aspect.

Which brings us to the Jacksonville Jaguars and their 31-29 victory over the Steelers on Saturday night. Yeah, I know this is two days late but I needed a good 48 hours of mourning to get my thoughts together, okay? The Steelers are the John McClanes of the NFL. Whether it’s a 1989 conference playoff game where Bubby Freakin’ Brister led us to within an inch of upsetting the heavily-favored Denver Broncos to Super Bowl XXX where Bam Morris ignited a furious comeback against the Dallas Cowboys which only fell short because Neil O’Donnell was paid off by Jerry Jones threw two poorly timed interceptions, the Steelers never go away quietly. We always Die Hard.

Anyway, what’s to say about the game? The scary part is if you read my preview a few entries down, literally EVERYTHING I said needed to be done for the Steelers to win did indeed happen. Yet, we still lost. Boomer Esiason said when we review the game tape, we’re all going to be sick over this loss. I’m with you there, Boom.

In the first meeting, we allowed Maurice Jones-Drew and Fred Taylor 225 yards rushing combined. This time we held them to a measly 50. We did indeed force QB David Garrard into throwing the ball to win the game. And, despite the media constantly pimping the guy as some underappreciated gem, we all saw what kind of stunningly mediocre quarterback he really is.

Not to get on a rant here but if you’re quoting quarterback rating or passer rating or pass/interceptions ratios as “proof” of how good a quarterback is, you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. All those stats are totally misleading because you have to take in to account the context in which they’re put up. Garrard’s numbers look good because he’s only asked to throw in certain favorable spots, such as when the running game has already piled up big yardage and the defense must crowd the line to stop them.

We pretty much stymied their offense the whole game. 14 of their 31 points came on a kickoff return and an interception return. That’s half their score, given away by areas other than the defense. The kickoff one is particularly unacceptable as we’ve had 4-6 weeks of training camp, 17 weeks of regular season play, and now a week into the playoffs and we STILL can’t cover kicks? Are you kidding me?

If Ben Roethlisberger hadn’t chosen the first half to play his worst football of the season, the game would’ve been closer much sooner. He did rebound nicely in the second half as Jacksonville couldn’t stop our passing attack. Again, as I noted in my preview, their defense couldn’t handle our wide outs the first time we met, which nobody seemed to notice when I heard them handicapping the game. I don’t mean this to sound like sour grapes but the New England Patriots are really going to blow them out something fierce because if they can’t handle our aerial attack, what are they going to do against the best air show in the league?

But this game will always be a big case of the “What ifs?” What if we had Willie Parker? What if head coach Mike Tomlin had kept kicking extra points instead of chasing 2 point conversions? What if the refs hadn’t hosed us on some really questionable penalty calls (or non-calls, as the case may be)? What if we hadn’t run that stupid quarterback draw play not once but TWICE in crucial situations, which failed both times.  Big Ben is tough to drag down, but he’s nursing a sprained ankle and he’s not exactly Kordell Stewart to begin with.

Well, if it’s and buts were candy and nuts, then every day would be Christmas. And Christmas is over, just like the Steelers’ season. For the past week, I felt smug and vaguely superior reading many of our other fine Fan-Sided Blogs because the vast majority of them are already looking to next year while we still had plans for this one. Unfortunately, now we can join them in off-season misery. As that wise prophet Porky Pig once said, “Th-th-that’s all folks.”

“I taught I taw a puddy cat…”

We did, we did see those puddy cats. Like a month ago, as a matter of fact. And, man, what a hellacious month it has been for our beloved Pittsburgh Steelers. We lost our superstar running back, Willie Parker. We lost our starting left tackle, Marvel Smith. Then, for good measure, we lost his replacement, Max Starks. We even lost to the lowly Baltimore Ravens, who couldn’t beat the even lowlier Miami Dolphins.

As a result, not many people are giving the old Black and Gold a shot this Saturday night when the Jacksonville Jaguars return to Heinz Field for their Wild Card playoff game. The degenerate gamblers have already installed the Jags as 2 point favorites. Most of this love is no doubt because of the 29-22 victory they hold over the Steelers. I already broke down the two teams here so I’m not going to do it again. Instead, I’ll concentrate on what things need to be fixed in order for a better outcome this time.

Yes, the Jags physically mauled us last time. Allowing RB Fred Taylor and Pocket Hercules (Maurice Jones-Drew) to combine for an absurd 224 yards rushing is just plain crazy. The Steelers must, absolutely must, find a way to force the Jags into throwing the ball. Stuff eight guys in the box, run blitz FS Troy Polamalu on every play, go to a Cover-2 if need be but they cannot allow any of these ridiculous rushing totals if they want to win.

If the defense can somehow clamp down on the running backs, they’ll have a very good chance at winning because I don’t believe QB David Garrard can single-handedly win the game for them. He was only 17 of 33 for 197 yards in the first meeting, which aren’t horrible numbers, but you have to factor in 55 of those yards came on one play. That play, a flea-flicker, worked because S Anthony Smith felt he had to help on run support due to their line getting gashed and because he’s an imbecile. Overall, Garrard did not look very good throwing the ball and only butterfingers in the secondary prevented us from having two more interceptions. In fact, when it came down to crunch time, the final game winning drive was put on the running backs’ shoulders, not DG’s arm.

While Garrard is an efficient quarterback, the Jags are careful not to ask him to do too much and avoid putting any pressure on him to win games. This is Garrard’s first playoff game so the pressure is already on. Being forced into a pass happy shootout would be the ideal situation because, as crazy as this sounds, the Steelers have the explosive offense in this game. Jacksonville prefers to play more of a grind-it-out/”three yards and a cloud of dust” type offense and they struggle when they can’t.

Which brings me to the Steelers offense. What people seem to forget about the first Jags game is, yeah, our defense got pushed around like the fat kid at band camp, but what did their D do to us? Willie Parker had 100 yards rushing. QB Ben Roethlisberger had three touchdown passes against no picks. Sure, they had 5 sacks but terrible defenses like the Jets and Browns got multiple sacks against our shaky line so that isn’t anything special. The Steelers were down 22-7 and the Heinz faithless headed for the exits (Where do they think they live? Cleveland? In the ‘Burgh, we stay to the end, losers!) when Big Ben engineered a furious comeback. A comeback Jacksonville was unable to stop. So if nothing else, we know we can score on them as easily as Tony Romo does with well-stacked blonde bimbos.

As strange as this is for me to say, coach Mike Tomlin and offensive coordinator Bruce Arians must totally alter how we approach offense. Instead of using the run to set up the pass, we have to steal a page from the Colts or Patriots book. The Steelers need to come out firing, using the pass to set up the run. For one, any attempt to be a run based team is doomed for failure because our offensive line is even weaker with the newest batch of injuries and RB Najeh Davenport just isn’t good enough to keep the chains moving when they know he’s coming. WR Santanio Holmes finally looked 100% healthy last week, add him to Hines Ward, trusty TE Heath Miller, and our other wide receivers, and you have the makings of a pretty explosive passing attack. Yes, Ben will get sacked but he’ll also make plays and if we can somehow get 10-13 points ahead, then you force Jacksonville out of their comfort zone. The way the Colts beat them twice was they scored early, forced them to throw to catch up, and turned the game into a shootout. We must take Advice From Peyton Manning, at least when it comes to playing the Jags and not in other areas such as wooing vaguely heterosexual country-western singers rather than oddly attractive CW actresses.

They say those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Let’s hope Mike Tomlin is a history buff. Otherwise, it’ll be a long, cold Saturday night in Pittsburgh. And a long, cold offseason for our Pittsburgh Steelers.