Good Wednesday to you Steelers fans.
As many of you are now aware the Pittsburgh Steelers look more like a M*A*S*H unit than a football team right now. Just two weeks into the 2021 NFL season and already we have injuries to Joe Haden, Devin Bush, T.J. Watt, Tyson Alualu and Alex Highsmith. And that’s just the defensive side of the ball. On offense, Ben Roethlisberger has a left pectoral injury and Diontae Johnson is nursing a sore knee. If there’s one thing I appreciate about Mike Tomlin its that he won’t make any excuses. He embraces the “next man up” mentality and quite frankly he doesn’t have much of a choice. Henry Mondeaux is now on board to replace Alualu. The question is, can he? What we’ve seen so far in his young career is that it’s a coin flip. Sometimes he can and many times he cannot. We already know what we are dealing with if Mason Rudolph has to go on Sunday and the team also signed Taco Charlton to the practice squad. Whether or not he gets elevated this week is still uncertain. With a trip to Green Bay in week four, the Steelers really need to get this ‘W’ on Sunday because the schedule only gets tougher.
Steelers History
This week in Steelers History, Gordon takes us back to 1970 and the team’s first-ever appearance on Monday Night Football. The Steelers hosted the division Bengals that night and it produced a number of interesting subplots.
Tweet of the Day… I would be surprised if he DIDN’T have pain.
Ben Roethlisberger can play versus Bengals but it will be w pain when he throws
— Gerry Dulac (@gerrydulac) September 22, 2021
Abandon the Run?
It’s been suggested that maybe the Steelers have just given up running the ball. If this is true let’s think about this for a minute. Wouldn’t that necessitate even more of the classic Matt Canada offense where more motion and re-alignments are utilized? And wouldn’t that also require less deep shots in order to move the chains? No team just flat-out stops running the ball in the NFL but certainly teams get away from it. Under Mike Tomlin this is absolutely true that the team has run less and less. If the offense truly wants to just give up on it then they better make some serious changes to the way they do things.
Say Watt?
Who is Mike Tomlin fooling? Yesterday in his press conference he was asked about Derek Watt as it pertains to the running game. “That’s an option,” Tomlin said Tuesday. “Derek is a valued member of our team. He’s a very credible fullback.” He’s a “credible fullback?” He’s been used on offense four times in two games. Last season in 12 games he didn’t carry the ball once or make one reception. All the sudden we are going to start using him where he was so effective in San Diego? I’ll believe it when I see it.
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Have a great day Steeler Nation!
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