The Point After - Week 4 vs. Texans

Recap the Steelers Week 4 loss to the Texans

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is the point After presented by Parks Casino. Is
today your Lucky Day bet Parks by Brian Patton and
the associates. It's all about the benefits and by the
Steelers Pro Shop get it direct from the team at
shop dot Steelers dot com. Coming to you following the
Steelers very surprising thirty to six loss to the Houston Texans.

(00:31):
Alongside Matt Williamson and Craig Wolfley, I'm rob king, Thanks
very much for being with us. This look back segment
is brought to you by Brian Patton and associates. It's
all about the benefits and I'm gonna start. Yeah, I'm
gonna start with the positives of this game. Actually it's singular.
You ready, I'm gonna go first, Naji Harris.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
I was gonna throw Alex Higsmith on there. Okay, if
you were gonna ask man, I was preparing for this.
If you're to say, Matt, what good came out of this?
I'm saying Nausey was from nominal high. Smith was really good.
And then I was not going to say anything else.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Well, you've doubled the list.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Maybe anybody else at in there? Yeah? I thought both
the bos and bread Wing were good, there you go, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Enough for job by brad Wing coming in absolutely yeah
and kicking away. So this was, as we take our
continued look back at this game, this was not at
all what any of us expected to see. I was
talking in the locker room with Max and Wolf earlier today,
and you know, I made the point Matt, and well,

(01:35):
I guess we can begin with you that. You know,
if you told me, hey, final score De mar is
going to be thirty to six, I thought, well, okay,
that's a little bit more of a blowout than I expected.
But you're building off that Vegas game.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
That's great.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
But to see the loss go the other way to
a Texans team that was twelve fifty and one in
its last you know, sixty three, it's stunning.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, I mean that Texans team had more.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Short twelve wins in the last fifty three games.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
I was trying to carry the one on you.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Ye, that's a Texans team that had played the most
rookie snaps of any team in the league, very young.
We know exactly what they're doing. New coach, new quarterback,
new defensive star, et cetera. Let's build for the future,
and they came off of a nice win against the Jaguars.
But watching the Jags game, no offense to the Texans.
They took advantage of the opportunities given to them. But

(02:27):
Jacksonville really lost that game more than this situation where
Houston took it to the opponent. I never would have
saw this coming. I thought Pittsburgh would handle them well
it really. I'm sure that there's much strife about the offense,
deservedly so, but the fact that that team that couldn't
run on anyone all year ran with consistency from the

(02:49):
start was maybe the most disheartening thing to me, especially
with the offensive line they were trotting.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Now, I totally agree.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
You know, when I looked at that offensive I'm thinking
to myself, it reminded me years ago of when Mark
Malone was making a start against the New York Giants
and we were eating pregame meal together and it was
Mike Webster tounched myself, the great Larry Brown, you know,
sitting around Mark, sitting at the end of the table
with the hogs, you know, as we're slopping down some food,
and you know, we're talking about the pepper Johnson. We're

(03:18):
talking about Lawrence Taylor, We're talking about Harry Carson, We're
talking about all these great past rushers, George Martin and
so forth. There abounded on the Giants team, and I
could see that Mark was struggling to eat his eggs. Look, yeah,
he's looking at one another, you know. And I could
see that all of a sudden, Mike Webster goes Mark
my advice to use to throw throw the ball quickly,

(03:41):
you know. But that's you know, I mean, the thing
about it was, you expected that offensive line that you
were going to get some meat on on Stroud, and
the fact of the matter was to not even put
him on the dirt and a legitimate sack one time.
And Alex Highsmith got three hits and he got after
but the fact was he was unloading the ball well

(04:02):
and quickly and accurately.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Well, I think a couple of things. First of all,
having seen Houston play this game, and they played a
terrific game. And CJ. Stroud is really good. I mean,
he had a really good quarterback rating against the Colts,
who got him out on the ground what five or
six times in that game, over one hundred quarterback rating.
This is the guy who's not easily rattled. He's extremely accurate,

(04:26):
he's mobile enough to get out of the pocket and
make some plays down the field. There's a reason he
was the second overall pick in the draft. He is
really really good, looks really good. So if you said, hey, listen,
they're going to find their running game with Pierce Stroud's
gonna have a pretty good game, Okay, then maybe you
win twenty three to seventeen. You don't lose thirty to six.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
Wolf do you? No? And not at all? And you
know what, this is the discouraging part of pro football. Look,
I've been in games like this and in situations like
this over the years, and you go into that locker
room and you shap your head because you're trying to
figure out how miserable is this year going to be
if this continues. And that's something that you know there
there was a fighting spirit within every locker room. Some

(05:10):
do a greater extent, some do a lesser extent, and
you've got to be able to find that and realize
that along with everybody else, or this season is going
to be over before you even begin to fight. And
that's something that comes from within deep within, and they've
got to find that fighting spirit come this weekend.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, it really worried me that the Steelers weren't able
to dominate that offensive line. And as I mentioned, they
came out running the ball successfully and were able to
pretty much the entire game. And then I love to
give the opponent's credit because, for whatever reason, Pittsburgh's never
think the opponents have anything to do with the game.

(05:48):
I don't know why that is, but man, they do.
It's always Steelers followed or the Steelers are great. It's
never the opponents that's something right or wrong. And Robb's
one hundred percent right. Stroud's definitely a keeper.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
I like their group.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
I was a big Nico Collins fan even coming into this,
but still, like you know, I like numbers and this
makes me crazy though, when the Steelers were on defense.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
That's why I don't follow the statistics all the time.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
So Houston snapped the ball sixty nine times, only twelve
of those are on third down, So like a really
high percentage of their snaps are on first and second.
They're getting first downs without even having to get the
third down. They were never in bad situations.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
They dictated this game from the jump from the opening
drive and then shutting the Steelers offense down again early.
The Steelers couldn't get anything going again in the first
half of this game. That has become a problem. And
for this Texans team that can't run the football, hasn't
been able to run the football to consistently pounded at

(06:50):
the Steelers to consistently then open up the passing game.
You know, to me, Wolf, the Steelers have not been
able to stop the run and they have not been
able to stop elite pass catchers. That's not a good combination.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
No, it's not. And it's only going to get worse
until you start to shut some of this off and
that requires both guys stepping up their play and their communication. Again,
as we were talking about some of the things that
are occurring in within their coverages, you've got to be
more on the same page. There were a couple of
bus there that you know, you could tell created problems

(07:27):
for them, you know, and you might want to blame
one guy, you know, this guy Pat Peterson or this
guy Levi Wallace or whatever, but you've got to look
at the whole network of what the coverage is all about.
Who's taking leverage who's got outside inside leverage that sort
of thing. And so it's not necessarily who what you
think it is, you know, and so it's just one
of those things that you've got to do something to

(07:49):
start stepping this up. And I say, how do I
put this? You know, they say that the Pyramids were
made by guys dragging, you know, ton stone blocks up
a ramp, you know, and they started off with a
thousand guys trying to drag a stone. Then the emperor said, okay,
off with half of them. And half of them are
off and they couldn't get up, and they said off

(08:09):
with another half of them. The next thing, you know,
two hundred and fifty guys are doing with a thousand.
Good that's called intensity. Okay, that's that's desire to get
the job done over and above, you know, what's required.
And to me, that's where you're approaching. Now. You've got
to up your game intensity. And I think sometimes some
guys don't necessarily enter the game with the same sort

(08:32):
of mental RPMs as the opponents.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
We'll be dancing back and forth between this game and
maybe taking a larger look at some of the problems
that the Steelers are facing. I will say this, Matt.
You know, when you look at the score, the final score,
final score in this game is thirty to six. The
final score against San Francisco, who is looking very much
like maybe they're the best team in the NFL right now,
they beat him thirty to seven. You were man handled

(08:56):
in the same fashion by a Houston team that you
were by, saying Francisco team, a team perceived to be
among the worst, maybe the worst in the NFL. You
were trounced the same way by them as you were
by the forty nine ers. That's gonna require a whole
lot of soul searching. And you know, Mike Tomlin said
he was asked about first of all, I called it
an ugly product, And he was asked, are there going

(09:18):
to be changes? And he says said, hell, yeah, there
have to be changes. So I think that's that's startling
to me that you would lose by an even worst score,
only by a point to a team score r right,
to a team that's regarded as one of the worst,
as you did by a team that's regarded as maybe
the best.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Now, I'm not gonna fight you on this because I
don't believe it to be true. But maybe maybe we
look back on the season and like, wow, Houston end
up winning ten games in a playoff game, and when
they won that division, maybe they were better.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Than that's right.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Maybe I don't think we're gonna say, boy, the Niners
were worse than we thought, Nor do I think we're
going to say that about Houston. I think this is
a rebuild year for them. But what's interesting to me is, Okay,
you got to make changes. Does that mean how you
prepped during the week, what kind of mental RPMs you
bring on game day? Does that mean burning down the
whole facility and firing everybody in starting from scratch. Does

(10:06):
that mean new starters? I don't know. I'm curious what.
Probably tomorrow will start to see some of that stuff.
But now, unfortunately, you're probably gonna have him mister Bisky starting,
not necessarily because Kenny got benched, but because he's injured.
You know, now, there's some injuries that hinder your options
to make changes that you want.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Well, you're gonna have to make some changes. Some changes
were made for you, exactly. Some of the changes were
made for you exactly.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
That's that's perfectly put. I will say this. You know,
I'm it's hard right now. And again, you know, there's
there's several choices that can be made about where the
Steelers stand right now. Are they a team that for
whatever reason is not as good as we thought? Well,
if you're not as good as we thought, then there's
a problem. There's one of two problems. And if that's

(10:52):
if that's the answer, one is that it's the coaching,
and the second is that it's the personel or I
guess three is that it's a combination of those two things.
You're not quite as good personnel wise as you thought.
You need to make some adjustments coaching style. The other
thing is, and this is possible that because it's not

(11:14):
always a linear movement from from point A to point B,
that this could just simply be they laid an egg,
they come back against the Ravens and they play well,
and we think, well, that was a bizarre game. But
it doesn't feel like it's that based on the fact
that they again defensively, have not been able to stop
really anybody running the ball or throwing the ball, and

(11:36):
two they really haven't been able to move the ball
on anybody. So it doesn't feel like category B a
one game blip to me.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
Wolf, No, it could be a four game blip. You're saying.
You know, I am the eternal optimist only because my
experience has been when you're within the four confines of
that wall of that locker room, when you're in there,
there's nowhere to hide, all right, there's nowhere to go. Well, gee,
I think I'll just check out for a month, guys,

(12:05):
I'll see I'm going to Italy, you know, for a
couple of weeks or something like. No. I mean you
you got to stay there, and you got to decide
I you know, I want to be part of the solution,
not part of the problem, you know. And so that's
that's a defining moment that comes from each and every player.
And certainly one of the things that you got to
try to do is up the level of the guys
who are playing. I mean, I get it. Coaches make mistakes,

(12:28):
you know, I don't. Tom Moore, in my mind is
he's a He's a quarterback whisper. He's one of the
greatest offensive coordinators I've ever seen been around in my
entire life. I Mean, this is guy who worked with Brady,
with Peyton, Manning, and I mean this guy was up
in Minnesota and with Terry Bradshaw and everything. Tom Moore
is a great mind. Yet Tom Moore was forced out

(12:48):
in Pittsburgh. Okay. The fact of the matter is there
are always self serving elements that are out there, and
you might have a situation where, you know, things, one
guy's pointing at this and another guy's pointing at that. Look,
it's the bottom line is this. You gotta play whatever
is called in the dead gum huddle, right, That's it.

(13:10):
You play the play and you do it, you know,
And that's where it comes down to it. And I
understand about strategicy and all that other stuff, but the
fact of the matter is I still say you got
the play, and make the play.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
You know.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
John Madden used to say, don't worry that the horse
is blind, just load the wagon, right, So I mean,
just go out and execute it. And I do think
wolf Madden to Wolfe's point. And we'll get more into
this in the next segment of the point after. But
no stone can be left untermed. Everything has to be examined.
I mean from and I'm sure Mike Tomlin is having

(13:45):
a self evaluation process, right now I'm sure he's gonna
evaluate his his coordinators, his position, coaches, his personnel. When
you have games like this, everything is on the table
when you talk about what changes there's gonna be. We
don't know what changes are going to be, but everything
has to be under the microscope without question.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
I think it'd be malpractice or not to be. I mean,
the way that they performed in this game reflects on
the entire organization, the entire coaching stash, every player, even
Nausey and Highsmith who played well, and the kickers. You know,
you have to and what's crazy and what people don't
think about with this sport because the Penguins have a
bad game, they go out next day and you know,
say it as a hat trick or whatever. A week

(14:27):
isn't very long, you know, for all that self inspection,
self scouting, look in the mirror. As you mentioned with
the Madden conversation, that wagon trains going to lest no
matter what. And if your horse is blind, you don't
have as much time to prepare as people think for
the next one.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
That was well put, well wrapped up. It's very nice.
I like that. So that is the look back segment
brought to you by Brian Patton and Associates. It's all
about the benefits. I'll still look back a little bit,
We'll also look forward a little bit. This is the
point after on one O two point five DVE and
Steerer Nation Radio. This is the point after for Ceneviye

(15:12):
Parks Casino is today your Lucky Day bet Parks by
Brian Patten and Associates. It is all about the benefits
and by this Steelers Pro shop get it direct from
the team at shop dot Steelers dot com. Alongside Craig
Wolfley and Matt Williamson, I'm rob king, okay more delving
into what's going on here with the Steelers and of
course the great debate Wolfe will start here with you

(15:35):
on this one. Is you know, Matt Canada completely under
the microscope, of course, But I think again, when you
look at this game, I'm sure that you know Kenny
Pickett would have loved to thrown that ball to Calvin
Austin a little deeper down the middle, you know, throwing
them open as he was maybe pulling away there, just
slightly underthrown. Great interception obviously on the other end, that's

(15:56):
a good play, but well you got to throw that
ball a little bit deeper and let Austin run onunderneath it.
There are plays here and there, blocks here and there
that are missed. So it's hard to just say one
thing is the issue, because the offense, which looked like
it was building something towards the latter half of last year,
does not look at all like it's built upon what

(16:17):
they the foundation they lay last year and in the
preseason for that matter.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
Well, one of the things, yes, Sporadically throughout this game,
we saw instances where that preseason offense started to look
like the preseason offense, like they were getting something going,
Like you're turning that big old iron horse Nagy loose
and he's running straight up the gut north and south.
Because what we saw from this team was you saw
some undersized defensive linemen. You know, Malie Collins and Jonathan

(16:45):
Sheldon Rankins, they're both like six to two. They take
it on the double team and they bury their head
in the chest of the offensive linemen. They don't even
see the back going by. We saw instances where they
rolled them back and then instances where all of a sudden,
you got run through linebackers and you can't have that
the inconsistency that that occurs is troublesome because when you
as Naji Harris, you're you're you know, breaking three or

(17:09):
four tackles, you get back to the line of scrimmage,
you got issues. But yet at the same time you're
you lead the league in some explosive runs like of
over fifteen yards. He said, he's done some really good
stuff there. He had a nice twenty three yarder. Bustin loose,
go and lay at it like crazy you want, but
you can't have the negative plays that that accompany that.

(17:29):
And that's where I think that the hidden vigoroushes. Bob
Prince used to talk about those hidden yards and minuses
that create the getting off schedule behind the chains way
too many. Would you still get some good pluses, I mean,
look at the explosive plays that are happening.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
But I would say this, Wolf, I think that this
is a team that's not built for big down the
field plays. And so, yes, you love to see the
twenty yard explosive plays, and yes, that needs to be
part of your offense, but so does moving the ball
down the field more. I mean, you know, second and

(18:06):
eighteen or second and sixteen feels like it's it's okay,
let's get in a good position to punt, you know,
if you're the Chiefs.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Or the bill penalty or any Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
Mean, any negative play seems like a killer. And so
when you have these negative plays, it feels oftentimes like
this is a Steeler offense that's trying to get into
third and manageable. You mentioned only twelve Matt, only twelve
third down plays run by Houston. It feels like the Steelers.
Let's get into third and three and then see what happens.
As opposed to let's make some plays. And if you

(18:40):
get and I understand that you're trying to grow and
develop that well, if you're trying to grow and develop
that you can't have these negative plays.

Speaker 3 (18:45):
But you put me in third and three anytime, and
I'll be glad.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Sure. But when it's third and eight, no, No.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Third and eight, no, second and eighteen, No, that's the
negative part of it. But I mean, if you can
get into third and three, man, I'll take that all.
You know. The fact of the matter is those big
blows where you have the big negative plays that put
you in that precarious position of trying to gobble up
a lot of yards. Those things you've got to somehow

(19:15):
iron out. And I'm not the shell answer man for
all of that. I don't know. I only remember being
tabbed a few times by Chuck going, you got to
do such and such a thing, you know, and you
and you got to run that and you got to
learn and it was one eleventh of that offense. Each
man's got to take an accountability for it. I believe
that a thing like I having Deonte coming back sure

(19:36):
would be nice. But the fact of the matter is,
even while he's gone, George Pickens has to hit be
more detailed on his route running. You know, all the
guys you take Austin at Calvin Austin when he ran
that route, you know at the top where you stem
a little bit, you got to put maybe a little
more wiggle to be able to draw a Steven Nelson
who's seen that play before. You know, you got to

(19:56):
draw him in more to give your quarterback some room
to be able to that slight post it run in there.
Those sorts of things that details are so important in
the professional game.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
But it does feel like this isn't an offense Matt
that can pick up eight ten twelve fifteen yards. In
the passing game, it feels very much like if you're
if you're second and fifteen, now you're third and nine.
Maybe if you've run and executed a good play, and
then where are You're third and nine. You're not third

(20:27):
and three, you know, And it just feels like it's
let's manage just to get to third and three and
if we can't, and then we'll take the occasional shot
down the field, up the sideliner, down the middle of
the field, as opposed to having more plays that stretch
the defense and make them have to worry about the
vertical or intermediate routes.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Oh, I think that's really well said, and you hear
it even from the coaching staff. Well, we're not really
built to get chunk plays, so we have to get
what we can. Well, basically, to me in today's NFL,
that's admitting we're not good enough, because chunk plays make
the world go round. And to the Steelers credit, these
are facts. They were the youngest offense in the league

(21:08):
last year, and they got better and better and better,
and by a wide margin, they were the youngest in
the league, and the second half of the season they
were doing a lot of good stuff, but what they
were doing the second half of the season was not
taking negative plays, not turning the ball over right. There
weren't explosives, but there was a lot of really long,
sustained drives. That's wonderful. That's a nice foundation to pour

(21:30):
that you can start building the house that you can
live in. But it's also not sustainable. I mean, the
Chiefs and the Steelers had the most ten plus play
drives last year, and one of them is Mahomes because
they're scared to death of them and they're all playing
too deep and he's not getting chunk plays because there's
so much space underneath where the Steelers were doing it

(21:51):
the hard way. They were carrying the rocks up up
the hill to build the pyramid and eventually your back's
gonna break.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Like, it's just not a sustainable formula. And now we
did see a few explosives this year, but the foundation
that was there before is gone. There isn't working.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Are we talking about the Steelers now? Our geeza, I
can't remember what I lost track here.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Just remember this, man, You can't have chunkie soup without chunk,
all right, Yeah, that's your offense. You've got to have
chunk in all of because it takes too long and
too many plays to go down the field eighty yards consistently.
I mean, you've got to have the ability to have
some explosive stuff, but like you said, limiting the amount
of negative yardage that you get, that's the key. And

(22:36):
that all comes from pre snap, post snap penalties, from
mental errors, all sorts of things like that.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
You know what I find troublesome is and you know
you mentioned that driving inst the Raiders. I think we
talked about that last week and I remember writing that.
The word I wrote down was authoritative. It just you
know it again like Houston came out and dictated this
to the Steelers this game. They were authoritative in this game.
This is what we're gonna do. You can't stop us.
Here we come. They had that one to six play

(23:02):
drive against the Raiders the Steelers did where they were
like three run repass. It was Chris, Yeah, it was authoritative. Yeah,
it looked great. Where is that early? Why is it
taking this? Steelers? When they find any offense they found,
they keep finding it as the game goes on. You
talked about the middle eight last week, you know, towards

(23:24):
the middle part of the second quarter. Okay, now you're
starting to get that offense going against the Raiders, well
in the second half. Now it's starting to go against
the Texans. That's troublesome because a lot of times you're
just simply too far behind. That doesn't really make that
much of a difference. And you need to be able
to find that balance, that offense defense balance where the
defense isn't like the minute you squirt some water in

(23:47):
your mouth and you take your helmet off, all right,
punt team and then you're back out there on the
field again. I mean, you need to be able to
find that more early in the games. And when Mike
Tomlin is talking about things have to change, maybe that's
one of the and I don't know whether again that's
preparation or scheme or personnel. Well, if this team has
to start on offense and defense, but let's just talk

(24:08):
about the offense, they have to start faster than they've
been starting.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
There's no question. And we went through this last year
when they went fourteen games in between opening drive touchdowns.
If you remember last year, and we talked about it
in the preseason, we saw it in the preseason, but
it just has not for some reason, whatever the reasons are,
at the moment, manifested itself in playing out on the field.
But again, break down each play. Who's getting their man,

(24:34):
who's not, who's running the route correctly, who's not, who's
throwing the accurate ball, and who's not you know, I mean,
these are all you are so interdependent on each other,
it's amazing, you know. And so when one thing is
out is out of kilter, you got all kinds of problems.
You know, If that tackle sits a little too deep

(24:54):
and they run a me game and they run a
game where the defensive end crashes and the guy over
the go runs a twist and is a trailer like that,
you got major problems. And they had some issues going
on there when they had a situation like that. And
you get a guy in between you and the tackle
and all hec's breaking loose and you're trying not to
follow the guy at the same time you try to

(25:15):
stop the pass rush, and these are this is just
one minor thing along the way. They've got to iron
out those negative plays, which are they're ready to go
at any moment, you know, just when you think here's
the thing. Just when you think you're okay, I'm good,
I'm buy that, I said, bamo, something else pops up.
It's like that, and you got to stay on top
of it.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
So a good friend of mine, Mike Sander that I
used to work at ESPN, he does a Monday column
for The Athletic and one of the things he wrote
about this morning was the first fifteen plays of every
game for every offense across the league. And he picked
fifteen because talking to coaches around the league, generally, that's
your scripted time. You know, we're going to come out,
try to accomplish this, and people don't quite understand what

(25:57):
scripted me. I mean, when you script plays, it's time
to collect data. You know, if I throw out two
tight ends, are they gonna pla bas they gonna play Nickel?

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Good, and put that in the data banks and we'll
roll with it for tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
Throw the motion yeah, you know, okay?

Speaker 2 (26:09):
And if we do this shift, how do they adjust?
You know, do they check the cover two?

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Great?

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Then we're gonna run a cover two beater next time
we do that, Okay, et cetera. So Mike's column was
who are the best in the league at this And
if they're all the natural ones, it's Buffalo, it's Kansas City,
et cetera. And the last paragraph he said, we're only
talking about the best ones, but I bet you'd be
interested to know who's struggling. The Steelers are last by
a mile, by a mile, and it's only fifteen plays.

(26:34):
Maybe if we picked twenty, they'd be twenty ninth May
if we picked ten, they'd be, you know, thirties or whatever.
But they're at the bottom of the league. Those first
couple drives and it's not even close, and they can't
crow out of it. That's what they need to fix immediately.
And I've been saying this all week, like that's the symptom.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
You go to the.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Doctor saying this hurts, this hurts, this hurts. Well, your
first fifte team plays hurt Then the doctor said, well,
you have this disease or you have this ailment to fix.
They need to figure out what the ailment is. We
can all figure out what the symptoms are.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
I used to go to the doctor and say this hurts.
He said, don't do that.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Unfortunately, the disease is not more cow bell. They need
something and we're going to talk about what those somethings
might be when we continue on with Matt Williamson, Craig Wolfy,
I'm rob king. You're listening to the Point After on
one O two point five DVE and Steelers Nation Radio.

(27:39):
This is the Point After presented by Parks Casino. Is
today your Lucky Day bet Parks by Brian Patton and associates.
It's all about the benefits and by the Steelers Pro Shop.
Get it direct from the team at shop dot Steelers
dot com. Okay, Matt, I want to pick up something
you were talking about, and that scripted plays and the

(28:00):
Steelers being at the bottom of the league. On that
with the article you cited from The Athletic. One of
the things I find troublesome, and I think a couple
of anouncers have picked up on it, is that there
seems to be times when the opposing defense is making
an educated guess or maybe knows what the Steelers are

(28:20):
gonna do, and that is causing some of these negative plays.
Motion away, motion right to left, You're gonna run it
to the left, and now all of a sudden, the
backside safety or linebacker or whatever is firing and they
know it's going to be a run, and all of
a sudden, here's Nag. You know, Nagy and Kenny Pickett

(28:40):
and the defender are all getting there at the same time.
We saw another play in this game in which they
left a defensive back unblocked in that way. But now
they're gonna run a little bootleg while the defensive end
wasn't fooled and the minute Kenny turned around, he got sacked.
If sometimes the defense knows what's coming, So when you

(29:01):
talk about it, and if that is the case, and
it's been pointed out by a couple of national analysts,
if that is the case, maybe that's something when you
talk about there needed to be changes. Maybe it's you know,
self scouting, and I know you used to scout, you know,
talk a little bit about how self scouting happens over
the course of a week and Wolf you can chime

(29:21):
in on this too, and how valuable that can be
for a team in understanding what other teams are seeing
when they're looking at you.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, there's a couple of angles with this. First, I
want to mention real quick about the quote scripted plays.
I have no clue if the Steelers script one play,
thirty plays, whatever, but they still they certainly come into
the game with a plan, right, whatever it is, fifteen
is a random number that might pick.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Well again, if you're just joining us now, we're pointing
out the fact that the Steelers have not been able
to get their offense going early on, So that was
that was the.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
Worst place for this script plays is way back in
the eighties.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Right, Yeah, I think that's a Walsh thing. Yeah, right,
So nowadays all this information goes into a huge database
and and all these red flags come up. On third
and two they run this. I mean it used to
be GA's when I was a pit would grind night
after night after night and never sleep and try to
find little things or tendencies and things like that. Now

(30:12):
you just plug all the information in boom. On third
and eight they do this, or the defense checks to
cover two whenever this tight end goes in motion. So
it's not as hard to find. But there's also more
people in the media that do this way way way
better than I do, that have found a lot of
tendencies with this offense over the last year or two.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
Things like when.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
They're behind center, they run, when they bought, you know,
really obvious things when they're in shotgun they throw, or
when they use motion. There's a very high percentage of
run things of this nature. Now, the misconception of our
listeners right now, and I want wolf to piggyback on
this is Luke, Keikley, ray Lewis, Jackham, on and on

(30:53):
and on. They knew what the opponent was doing too,
you know, like there's not as many secrets as you think.
So the shape in the hands of the world are
really good at making you think, oh, we're going to
our tendency. But then they do something a little bit
different and they're the rarities, they're the special guys. But
ray Lewis can know Jerome Bettis is coming up in
the A gap on whatever you know, inside zone or whatever.

(31:16):
But if they block it up, he's still getting six yards,
you know what I mean. Like tenancies are great, you
still got even My example always used when I was
a pit Larry Fitzgerald's there and we could have put
up on the scoreboard we're throwing to fade the Larry
wouldn't have made one bit of difference, you know, We're
still scoring.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, And that's he's a good guy to have. Yeah,
but I will say this, and I understand what you're saying.
I am concerned about the unblocked guys now causing these
negative plays like there's there are times in which you
just simply you're overwhelmed by personnel at the point of attack.
I think I'm blocking seven. I don't care how good

(31:54):
you are. That's not gonna work.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
Let's let's take a look at the one player you're
talking about, and that was Jerry Hughes coming up the
field and blasted Matt. I'm sorry, Kenny when he rolled
out right. Now, you had Connor Hayward coming along on
a hide route behind the line of scrimmage. You also
had uh uh pat fire friar Moth release on down
a seam on a seam route. Now, who was supposed
to drive down on on on the Hughes and give

(32:17):
him some problems? Was it Connor Hayward was going to
trap him? Or was Friar Moth supposed to drive down
on him and then peel out. We don't know, all right,
that could be a.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
Little We knew they didn't draw it up the way
that however it was.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
However it was, It wasn't like somebody unless you're trying
to fool Unless you're trying to fool them, and then
you know what, Then then okay, you paid the price
for it. And by the way, scripted plays don't always work.
One one scripted play we had was played Green Bay
and I got a first play. I was a trap
against a kid named Reggie White. It didn't really go well.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
So when you talk about and I'll just give a
personal example for myself, very small example of how you know,
you don't know how things are gonna work, and you
don't know who to who, who is to playing right,
although if you ever watched me play Division three football
many years ago, you pretty much knew who was to play.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
You know, you deserve my share the play.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
So I remember, I just remember being over center and
we had we had an All American tight end. He
was really well, he was an All American tight end.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
I'd say he's really good. I just said it, he's
an American tight end.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
And I looked up the middle of the field and
there was nobody there, and we had a little hot
route for the tight end, and I was like, oh
my god, this is going to go for like eighty yards.
So instead of my normal you know, five step drop.
I took one step back and waited for him to
release and realized, oh, that's right, he was covered, and
therefore he had to block and he's not going to

(33:41):
be releasing, and there goes.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
To play completely blown up, like I was salivating, completely
blown up.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Totally my fault. But but you know, for those little things,
you know, you know, if you're watching that from the sidelines,
unless you've watched a lot of our games and you
knew it was my fault, how would you know who
is to blame? How do you know who's to blame?

Speaker 3 (34:05):
There?

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Is it Connor Hayward? Is it Pat Fryer?

Speaker 3 (34:07):
Exactly? You know, you don't know.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
Right And and you know Bro busted coverage? Well, okay,
what did did the corner? Was he supposed to roll
back in to cover three or or quarters? Or I
mean or this did the safety? Was the safety is
supposed to come home?

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Very difficult.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
It's really difficult with coverages and pass protect for sure.
You know, like the defense coordinator doesn't send you a
note saying the safety screwed out.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Right, right, But but again they they need to get
out of the shoot better wolf, And maybe that is
maybe that is something that in self scouting, they can
look at some of these tendencies, try to do some
different things. Look through four games, getting out of the
shoot fast hasn't happened, and so that's you know, again

(34:47):
we talk about, you know, recency bias. Well, that's that's
four games of evidence that that seems to me to
be enough to maybe change something in your approach offense.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
Realize it's still a small sample as compared to the
rest of the year, and it's still a work in
progress as compared to the rest of the year. And
that's the kind of view I take, just because you've
been through this and you realize it's a long journey,
but they've got to do some better things and being
able to button down and make sure the negative plays
don't happen as frequently as what they're happening. Look, they

(35:18):
still rush for one hundred and fourteen yards what have you?
They averaged over four what four yards of carry? I
think it was if I look at the stats there,
which I don't have my glasses on.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
So it makes so much. I feel like the second
half they came out in the second half, they.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
Right, and they pounded way, but here's here's the point.
They were still within one good pounding, one bloody knuckles
drive of putting points on the board that brings you
within a score, you know, And and the fact was
they were doing a good job of it, and then
things fell apart at the end. But in that third quarter,
we saw a lot of that ability to start doing
and realizing some of the things that they needed to do,

(35:55):
you know. And I thought Nate Herban came in and
did a decent job of getting after it with the
offensive line, and you know, for a period of time
they got their stuff together, and then again you have
some negative plays crop up. That's the problem.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
The elephant in the room, though, is, for whatever reason,
the coordinator, the play calling, the offensive line, you know,
the tendencies the opponents. Cleveland's defense is great. Steeers quarterback
play is way below the line this year. I mean,
it just is. I have great faith in Pickett. He
has not been a good quarterback this year or nearly

(36:31):
the player he was in the second half of last year,
let alone the preseason. I know the preseason is different.
I think it's capable, but this a quarterback driven league.
You can't get away with the thirtieth best quarterback play
and expect any of these things.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
Ago with Well, he seems less decisive than he seemed
a year ago.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
And again he doesn't trust any of it.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Well, you know, I point out this example when the
Steelers really opened up the offense to Ben Roethlisberger, and
again because this could be natural development issues. When the
Pittsburgh Steelers Ben's third year in the league, when they said,
and this is a guy who's going to be a
first ballot Hall of Famer, and we know what, Ben
Roethlisberger doesn't need my endorsement. Third year in the league,

(37:09):
they opened up the offense. What happened, Ben led the
league in interceptions. There were growing pains while that happened.
The Steelers didn't have a great year. Ben didn't have
a great year. It was a necessary step in his
development to move on and to grow. Perhaps we're seeing
maybe the offenses opened up, and maybe it's a lot

(37:30):
for Kennedy to process right now, he doesn't seem as decisive.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
I will say so that sometimes you can know too much.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, right, you're looking at not knowing enough.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
I will say this though, and I just the eye
test still tells me that so C. J. Stroud had
a number of open receivers, a number of opportunities, a
number of plays drawn up in which he had to
throw it across a living room, and he had a
receiver running open and it was good for ten, twelve,

(38:07):
fifteen yards. I could think of a couple of examples.
Guy coming and coming in motion, just head straight up
the field. It's a little it's five yards in the air,
and he's capturing the guy in stride and he's gonna
go pick up twelve fifteen yards. It looked like an RPO.
They had a run play called to the left and Stroud,
actually knowing what he was supposed to do to quarterback stop,
pivoted through to the backside slant with a huge cushion

(38:30):
and picked up yardage. I just don't I see, and
this is an indictment to me of both sides. And
I don't know again what the root of the matter is,
but I see the Steelers' opponent's receivers running wide open.
I don't see the Steelers receivers running wide open. That
seems like a very large problem to me. I would
say those sides, yeah, again, it's execution, man. This game

(38:55):
is as difficult to make as you want it to be,
and is simple you could want it to be.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
And it's all about you do or you do not.
There is no trying. And I know people here, oh
it's simplified, and you're just you know, covering up for
this or that or whatever. I've got no agenda here.
You know. The fact of the matter is, I've been
out there. I've been the guy that has made the play.
I've been the guy that they point the finger at.
You know what I mean. That's just the nature of
the beast. You understand, when you're out there, you are

(39:26):
one to eleventh of an offense of a defense of
a special teams. That's what you are. And if you
don't perform, it starts taking the thread through the whole unit,
all right, And if you don't perform, things don't get done.
And that's as simple as you want to make it.
Now you can sit there and say, well, the coach
has got to do it. Yes, nobody's blameless in this

(39:48):
whole scenario. Everybody, you know, everybody's got a hand in
the pile, the proverbial hand in the pile. Believe you me,
everybody's got a hand in there. But to sit there
and just say it's his fault, that fault or whatever
I'm thinking as a player, it does no good. Now,
now is the time you've got to turn around and
be able to double up and buckle down and take

(40:08):
that mouthguard in and get two chin straps, because guess what,
the Ravens are coming.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
Down And would it be a shocker if a week
from now we're like, whoa, you know, hey, this guy,
someone someone tape this guy back together. It's not falling.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
Three and two.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
They We're going to no bye, this is gonna be great.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Let's certain, you know, it certainly could happen. It's a
long season, it's a week the week thing, and the
Ravens games are always that way. But I don't have
that taste in my mouth at the moment.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
No, it's hard to again following a thirty six loss.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
This is when you got a stand tall and hang
in there and beat tof And that's for all the
Steelers fans too.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
For the most complete selection of Steelers merchandise, from official
sideline gear and ethnic Memorabile to our extensive selection of
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Pro Shop stores at Akroscher Stadium, Grove City Premium Outlets,
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Steelers dot com for all your dealers merchandise needs directly

(41:02):
from the team four Craig Wolfley, Matt Williams, and I'm
Rob King. Thanks for joining us for the point after
on one O two point five w DVE and Steelers
Nation Radio