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.

The Pittsburgh Steelers officially released running back Najeh Davenport on Saturday. Davenport was affectionately known as “The Dump Truck” in reference to the infamous incident where he was arrested for pooping in a coed’s closet. Najeh, not to be confused with Giants defensive end Usi Umenyiora, who enjoys pooping on hookers instead of Jimmy Choo sandals, rushed for a career high 499 yards last season and 720 in total over his two year career with the Steelers.

This move should come as no surprise to members of Steeler Nation. Davenport sealed his fate when superstar RB Willie Parker went down with a broken leg late last year. Dookie had a good game against the hapless St. Louis Rams but did, ahem, squat in his final two games and the playoff debacle against Jacksonville.

More importantly, Davenport repeatedly proved incapable of performing in the role the Steelers envisioned for him. For years and years, short yardage situations were an easy conversion with big backs like Bam Morris and then Jerome Bettis barreling ahead. Since the Bus went into the garage, Davenport was looked on to fill that role. Despite good size and serviceable speed, he showed time and time again he wasn’t up to banging ahead for that tough yard or two when needed. If anybody here has ever scratched their head wondering why the Steelers were running quarterback draws or laterals to the flat on third and 2 or fourth and goal from the one foot line, there’s your answer.

Davenport signed a contract extension last season increasing his pay (and cap hit) to about $1 million this year. With the free agent signing of Mewelde Moore, who will assume the role of third-down/pass catching back as well as return kicks, and the drafting of first round stud Rashard Mendenhall, who will be our new big bruising wrecking ball, there was really nothing left for Davenport to contribute.

I’ll miss the Dump Truck. Not just because telling the story about the coed’s closet will never get old. Because I was really hoping he’d eventually do something notable or praise-worthy so it wouldn’t be the only thing he was ever known for. Let’s face it, how would you like to be forever associated with a stupid thing you did back in college?

I mean, who DOESN’T do crazy stuff in college? I was a nerd who went to a nerd school and I still did a few shameful things. Nothing as bad as taking a shit on a sorority girl’s cardigan but there was an incident involving a bathtub, a Pirate Parrot costume, and a beer bong which I know I wouldn’t want plastered all over the morning sports page…

Well, Mike, the wheels have officially come off. Off Fast Willie Parker and most likely off the Steelers’ chances to make do anything significant in this year’s playoffs.

For the roughly 90% of you who don’t have access to the NFL Network, thanks to either the selfish cable companies or the arrogant football league (whichever greedy corporate entity you prefer), last night’s 41-24 win over the St. Louis Rams saw Parker’s season end with a broken fibula on his very first carry. For all the bitching there’s been about the soddy tundra of Heinz Field, we forget that at least it doesn’t carry anywhere near the same level of injury risk as that damn artificial turf.

The loss of Parker, the NFL’s leading rusher going into the game, is catastrophic. Yes, the Steelers haven’t been their typical grind it out/ball control/power running team this year. And yes, we have opened up the passing game and thrown the ball more frequently than in previous seasons. But if history has taught us anything, it’s taught us to win in January, you need to have a high-powered running attack. More importantly, it’s also taught us for the Steelers to compete with the AFC Elite, like the Colts and Patriots, their only hope would be to play a ball control/grind it out type game. There’s simply no way we win a shootout against either of those teams.

Not to be a Bitter Betty but I wouldn’t get too excited about anything that happened last night against the Rams. Scoring 41 points sounds impressive except when you consider we scored them against what is quite possibly the most inept defense I’ve seen in the past two or three seasons. Seriously, they’re beyond terrible. And we play the Browns and Bengals every year so think about the territory that statement covers. I can’t believe D-coordinator Jim Haslett is associated with Pittsburgh in any way. He must have some Cleveland ancestry in him somewhere. It’s the only possible explanation.

Consider QB Ben Roethlisberger was 16 of 20 for 261 yards, with 3 touchdown passes, no interceptions, and a perfect score on the quarterback SATs. Hell, even Daniel Sepulveda, our punter, was throwing on these guys. The fat guy in the Jerome Bettis jersey wearing the black and gold beer helmet I see at every home game could probably lead an Elway-esque Drive against the Rams. I’d feel sorry for St. Louis except they won the World Series a couple years ago while we have the most abominable disgrace of a baseball franchise in recent major league history so I guess everything evens out.

Najeh Davenport ran for 123 yards on 24 carries and scored two touchdowns in relief of Willie Parker. Again, don’t get too excited about the Dump Truck because this was against a defense that would be improving if it reached a subpar-level. WR Nate Washington had two TDs, including one real nice deep ball. And Santonio Holmes played an outstanding game, especially blowing by the secondary for an 83 yard catch on the first play of the game. If nothing else, it looks like his ankle is better and he should be near 100% for the playoffs.

However, beyond the Parker injury, there were other ominous signs in this game. Both our offensive and defensive lines are still playing way below what is acceptable. The O-line gave up 4 sacks and Ben was eating the turf all day which means inserting Max Starks into the line up didn’t provide the anchor we desperately need. And defensively, we were once again getting gashed by a running back, Stephen Jackson. The only reason he didn’t have a huge game is because Marc Bulger was completing passes at will and their imbecilic head coach inexplicably decided to emulate the Pass 24/7 Patriots, except the Patriots, they ain’t.  Actually, our secondary having a terrible game actually helped in a way because the Rams would score so quickly, our offense could go right back out there and pick on their hapless defense. If St. Louis would’ve slowed things down and played more of a possession game to keep their D hidden away like that embarassing brother who lives in the basement, things might’ve gone better for them. The Steelers secondary did improve somewhat over the past couple weeks by not allowing any deep bombs (most likely because S Anthony “There isn’t a play fake I won’t bite on” Smith was replaced by Tyrone Carter) but they were giving way too much cushion which lead to a lot of easy completions, especially by slot receiver Drew Bennett. They did play a bit better in the second half but it was a 10 point game in the fourth quarter and only then, after the game had started to slip away, did the D begin to look like the D of old.

At least the Steelers have 10 days to rest and get things together for the season finale against the equally inept Baltimore Ravens. At this point in the season, to lose a crucial cog like DE Aaron Smith is one blow. To then lose your All-Pro stud running back, that’s just beyond devastating. I don’t know if Mike Tomlin walked under any ladders or broke any mirrors recently but it sure seems like if wasn’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have any luck at all.