Good Thursday to you Steelers’ fans!
As we all dwell on the fact our Steelers are 0-3 and no longer have Ben Roethlisberger for the season, it may be time for an optimistic view. The next two weeks our Black and Gold entertain division rivals Cincinnati and Baltimore at home before heading to Los Angeles to play the Chargers. The following week is the BYE week. If we set the bar at 2-4 heading into the bye, we would like to assume those wins were over the Bengals and Ravens for divisional tie-breaker purposes. If however that 2-4 comes with a win in LA, then so be it considering Mike Tomlin’s nightmare record on the West Coast. Is 2-4 realistic? I think it is for the simple reason that at some point this team has to put together some drives and actually take advantage of turnovers. If the current trends hold in this regard then we can all just pack it in for a tremendously long season. Coming out of the bye, the Steelers get the Dolphins, Colts and Rams all at home. Again, winning two of three there is possible. That gets us to 4-5 with two games remaining against the Browns and one each with the Bengals and Ravens. At this point, it’s about getting into the postseason. No one cares how, just get there. Yes, that’s looking WAY ahead right now but hey, what else can I do?
On the Injury Front
According to Coach Tomlin Roosevelt Nix will miss his third straight game. Vance McDonald is thought to have a decent chance of playing but that’s to be determined. Lastly, the Steelers announced that Xavier Grimble was going on the Reserved/Injured List. This will make room on the roster for Nick Vannett.
Tweet of the Day… And you thought only Steelers’ fans were having a bad day.
#BREAKING: Pirates manager Clint Hurdle is reportedly returning next season. https://t.co/LhY7MhhT7s
— KDKA (@KDKA) September 25, 2019
Dissecting Rudy
Ian did an excellent job this week of breaking down Mason Rudolph’s first start. Randy Fichtner stuck to fairly common, ‘on the road’ gameplan in terms of conservative playcalling. I think you’ll see a much more aggressive attack on Monday night. In fairness to Rudolph, he didn’t get a whole lot of help in terms of protection and the running game was pretty much non-existent.
Got Me Thinking…
One of my favorite people and Steelers’ fans on Twitter is JoeSteelerFan. He commented to me yesterday that it was good that the Steelers were able to go out and get players like Minkah Fitzpatrick and Nick Vannett who are already established players. He meant that they wouldn’t need to be “coached up” like rookies that we may have drafted with the picks we traded. I think Joe is absolutely right about that being a positive. And considering our recent drafting failures, there’s a point there. But my reply was “What does it say about our coaches that we feel we need already established guys versus rookies we can’t coach up?” While Joe is 100% right in terms of trade-by-trade situations, it really alarms me that our coaching staff continues to struggle player development in so many cases. This isn’t to say some young guys haven’t developed, but on whole, there have been fewer that have developed than haven’t.
Have a great day Steeler Nation!
QH is presented by
1 comment
You know your in trouble when you start looking down the road for victories. I expect a real battle this week and it will go a long way towards showing exactly who we are. This is not a team that can take any game as a gimme. And they should play that way, last year it was said” we always beat the Chiefs ” and look what happened. If we struggle on defense again Butler really needs to go. If the 9er’s only turn it over 2 times last week they would have put 35-40 points. If the coaching is as bad as i think it is. We really don’t know if we did drafted some good players.