I believe this is what Steelers’ Head Coach Mike Tomlin was talking about when he discussed “stacking wins.” Three in a row for the black ‘n gold!
-The Steelers are off today.
-Mike Tomlin’s weekly press conference will be held at Noon Eastern today and can be seen on steelers.com and on Root Sports.
-Not surprisingly, the Pro-Haley and Anti-Haley sides are both beating their chests and claiming success for their cause after Ben Roethlisberger’s back-to-back historical passing weeks. The Todd Haley supporters claim he has made Roethlisberger a better quarterback while his foes claim this is just “Ben being Ben.” I’ll give you my thoughts later this week.
-I can’t say enough about the performance of James Harrison and to a slightly lesser degree Brett Keisel on Sunday night. The guy who has to be the most excited about this is Jason Worilds who should see a lot more one-on-one blocking as offenses focus on Deebo.
-I finally said it last night and I’ll stand by it too. Right now, Antonio Brown is the best all-around receiver in football. There are other guys who do some things better than he does but in terms of the overall package, there is no one better then he is through the first nine weeks of the season.
-Here’s where Mike Tomlin deserves some credit; the penalties have become fewer in recent weeks and therefore the team has faced fewer difficult situations because of that. Tomlin brought in local officials to monitor practices and I believe it has paid off.
-Speaking of credit, kudos to Dick LeBeau. I firmly believe he has decided that his defense is going to live and die with the blitz rather than try and just play based on reaction. “Coach Dad” cannot become complacent though. He needs to keep dialing up blitzes which will force the offense’s hand. Some will argue that with this secondary, he shouldn’t put so much pressure on them but I believe otherwise. The less time they have to cover the better.
-We’ll know a lot more tomorrow after Tomlin’s presser but my best guess is that we won’t see either Troy Polamalu or Ryan Shazier on Sunday in New York.
-Today I’ll be looking at the game film and one thing I’ll be focusing on is Ramon Foster. Look for some tweets on that.
Marc Uhlmann writes for and co-owns www.steelcityblitz.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteelDad and the website @SCBlitz. Check us out on Facebook at facebook.com/steelcityblitz and on Fancred.com. You can hear him weekly during the season on game day on the Trib-Live Radio Steelers Pre-Game
photo courtesy latimes.com
