FWP isn’t a westbrook. Not taht Westbrook had much of a chance to show up but Steeler’s RBs are not better.

Complete annhialation by the defense against us. I honestly wanted a referee to call the game like a fight. I wanted to leave town long before the game ended and not get hurt. The only difference was our defense kept us in the game. I said at halftime that the only way we can win is some fluke, like Ike picking that ball and going in, or a punt return, or fumble recovery TD. It was that bad. We needed a fluke, and sadly, I started saying that at halftime.

was truly OFFENSIVE. hartwig is obviously not the answer at center. kemo sucks, plain and simple. not only is he awful in pass protection, he looked completely lost on the majority of plays…i won’t even get into his 4 penalties. marvel smith got beat on the outside rush routinely, willie colon looked like a practice squad player, and kendall simmons, our lone first round pick on the line….well, he certainly didn’t play like a guy who was once a first round pick. he didn’t play like a guy who was once a first day pick.

also, bruce arians’ play calling once again is questionable in my eyes. i know that ben had no time to throw and that willie had no room to run, but it didn’t appear that ANY adjustments were made at any point in the game. good teams are lead by good coaches, and good coaches make the necessary adjustments to keep their teams competetive. arians didn’t do that today (at least i didn’t notice any). on one play (in which ben was sacked of course) we had ALL four receivers in the same place…all four patterns were run to the same location on the field. what is that? who calls something like that?

on a very positive note…the eagles hung 37 on the cowboys last week, and their offense could only manage 13 points on our d. props to the secondary today. yes, mcnabb threw for almost 200 yards, but he also threw the ball almost 40 times. troy is back (thank God) and i thought that mcfadden and ike played pretty well today also. foote, woodley and timmons all looked real good today (i can’t see timmons staying out of the starting 11 for much longer). but, where was big snack and aaron smith? i saw hoke make more plays than snack. did he get hurt?

anyways, way too long of a post. all i know is that next week we face the top defense in the league…so it could be another long day for ben. furthermore, if i were kevin colbert and the rest of the FO, i would do everything possible to protect my $100 million franchise qb. pathetic.

There were problems with our defense, but in the end the eagles were held to 15 and the score was in balance by 9. If we want to be fair to the eagles the score should be changed to 50-10. We were dominated, embarrassed, pushed around, and pretty much looked like little children. Kudos to the eagles.

Live and learn. We have a lot of learning to do if we want to come anywhere near the Lombardi, and thanks to the eagles for letting us know.

Steelers Defense kept them in the game. That is a Playoff caliber D. Some mistakes but secondary was good, got some turnovers and kept Philly out of the end zone most of the day. LeBeau is a real coach. After McNabb gouged the D for some yards and points the D clamped down.

Offense should be ashamed. I know Philly is good but they looked like the 85 Bears today. Where is Max Starks? Can he seriously be as inept as Colon was today? Or Simmons? Why does Z & A not play him? Where is an adjustment to the blitz Philly ran 6 plays in a row? Ben was knocked around and then became careless with pick, fumbles and safety. Cost us 5 at the end of a close game. I am still incredulous that Tomlin didn’t kick a FG and go onside! It scares me when I am 2 steps ahead of our coach.

Worried about 7. Looked banged up and the BrownRavens will kill him next week if we don’t sit him or protect him. I don’t know if the O line I saw today is capable of that. But a W makes everything alright. Beat Baltimore.

I cant understand why Bruce Arians didnt run the ball 30-35 times. The Eagles have a an undersized D-line, even with a 2.0 yard average we could have worn them down in the fourth qtr and saved Ben from getting hurt .

The play calling was the problem today. Why keep passing when you know you have no time and no protection.

I felt like the Eagles found a trick in Madden that guaranteed a sack on every play. This is the exact same defense the Giants run: oversized LB’s that blitz on every play. Both teams are totally inept in coverage, but if Ben can’t get the ball out, it won’t matter. The Ravens are also fully capable of doing this to our OL. Arians looked totally inept, but I can’t say Whisenhunt didn’t do the exact thing in ‘06. We need some sort of plan that can beat this scheme. Ben will not make it very long if we don’t. I don’t know if it’s 3 step drops or changing the snap count and Hartwig’s signature head bob snap signal or what, but we have to do something.

On the bright side, Troy and McFadden looked pretty good. McFadden might be our best corner. He makes good plays on the ball and actually catches it. Brilliant. Better get him back on the bench.

According to the PG Ben’s hand X-ray was negative

I spent halftime hoping that Pittsburgh would make some changes and come back out with a new game plan. But I was wrong. It was pathetic. Our defense did pretty well, holding the Eagles to only 15 points, but two of those points were our fault. The safety should never had happened. Face it—the O line was manhandled today.

Time to soak the bruises in the hot tub and hit the practice field. We have more tough games ahead.

not that it means much but he did a nice job punting where field position was crucial

i look around the league and see a number of rookie rbs getting extensive playing time (felix jones, chris johnson, matt forte, darren mcfadden) but delicious hasn’t carried the ball in the last two. games i understand that running with a rookie may not be the best idea when trailing in the second half on the road. but, neither is calling pa passes when we havent established the run, AND when we can’t block anyone. plus, willie’s speed was completely nullified by the fact that bunkley and patterson were in the backfield about the same time he was getting the ball. also, its good to know that our $7 million man is seeing the field so much. paging Max Starks…

look at the last few super bowl champs…they all controlled the line of scrimmage, both on defense and on offense (see Cowboys of the early 90s). the giants had the best pass rush in the league. the colts year in year out have one of the best olines in the league. the pats are stacked both lines. and when we won it in 2005, we had an incredible run blockin line that opened holes all over the field, and still gave a second year qb enough time to go through his progressions.

here’s to the steelers spending all 8 of their draft picks next year on o and d lineman.

Get rid of Simmons, move Colon inside, he’s better there anyway and put Starks on the outside. On defense, put Timmons in full time, Foote missed several tackles and just doesn’t scare many defensive linemen.

And on the bright side, B-MAC, ;ooked like a beast out there. I watched him on a lot of plays and he was treat to watch. He is fast athletic and has a nose for the ball. With all of my love for Deshea, I think that he we just upgraded in the secondary.

1. It seems to me that our OL has been in a steady decline since 2004 when we went 15-1. That was a great OL. In 2005 we had a pretty good run blocking OL, but we couldn’t really pound it against good teams and our pass protection was OK although there were some terrible games (Baltimore for example). In 2006, our OL bottomed out – we were just terrible that year, plain and simple. Last year was an upgrade, but we still never really dominated a good defense.

2. Through the last two years Roethlisberger is the most sacked QB in the league. We just gave him an enormous contract, but we CLEARLY have had pass protection issues since 2006. Roethlisberger is our best QB since Bradshaw and we are doing nothing to protect him.

3. I have been happy with our 1-2 round selections the last couple of years (Timmons/Woodley then Mendenhall/Sweed) but our 3-4 round picks have not addressed glaring needs on the offensive line. We have drafted a punter, a backup QB, a backup TE – despite clear deficiencies on the offensive line.

4. Why on Earth are we paying $7 million (or whatever it is) to our backup right tackle?

As a sidenote, Orpheus knocked someone momentarily unconscious. That’s badass.

“So Ben, how’s your whole f’ing entire body?”

“Well, the O-line did a great job and I’m going to go and congratulate them.”

While I am not against shaking stuff up. I do think that it begins again with the coordinator. I want to hear Arians take a public flogging for this one. That may have been the worst called game I have ever seen. You cannot tell me that in a game where you QB got sacked 5 times before half time and that’s not counting 2 runs of 1 yard, two that were called back on penalties, and a whole passel of close calls, you make absolutely, not a single meaningful adjustment. Not one.
It was insulting and horrible to watch. We got out coached plain and simple.
Yes our O-Line played bad. Yes Ben was probably injured before the game started and looked more and more dazed as the game went on. Yes, our receivers didn’t step up and make excellent plays that could have helped. But bottom line, you cannot condone running the same play over and over and over and over again when the results are so clearly disasterous. they barely even bothered to change their protection schemes until the seconds half.

I realize I am just pissed after having to watch our franchise QB get treated like a tackling dummy, and I will probably calm down by the end of the week, but I think you should be able to bench coordinators. Somebody needs to go up to Arians, take the clipboard out of his hand, tell him to go sit his ass on the bench for a week or two and let someone else have a try.

“It has to be correctable,” Colon said. “Any team that watches this tape right now is going to understand we’re suffering with the blitz coming at us and if we don’t get it done, they’re going to blitz the hell out of us.”

Yup…

Can’t say much about he negative parts that hasn’t already been said. But just for the hell of it, I think the blame goes on the O-line, Ben, and Arians. O-line for obvious reasons, Ben because when he did get SOME blocking he held the ball too long, and Arians for obvious reasons.

Also, Holmes dropped some passes which was disappointing. Harrison looked fairly slow. Parker missed some cuts and opportunities (yes the O-line didn’t block for him but there were at least a couple of holes he missed). Our D-line misses Kiesel to some degree, almost all their rushing yards came from running to the left.

My suggestions – put Starks in at RT and take Simmons out and put something in his place, anything. I have defended him for the longest time but this was a horrible, horrible performance. This may sound crazy but I wish we still had Mahan and threw him in at guard, couldn’t hurt.

Put Essex in at Marvel’s place if only to send a message to him, at least. Marvel has better physical ability but he played poorly.

POSITIVES – yes, there are some and they aren’t all about the defense, amazing I know.

First though, the D. While struggling a little in the first half they absolutely shutdown the Eagles in the 2nd half. McFadden looked awesome as did Troy (what an amazing INT). Foote impressed me as well, with all the that Timmons is placing on him he certainly took a giant step forward in retaining his starting role. WHile we didn’t record an amazing amount of sacks (unlike the Eagles) our pressure on McNabb and Kolb forced both INTs and many poor throws. I was very impressed but our D.

Now for the offense, Heath finally got involved as did Washington. It was nice seeing Washington getting the chance to make some plays. With all the talk about him in camp I was disappointed after the first two games. But he played well against a very good Eagles secondary. Leftwich looked competent as a back-up. He was getting rid of the ball quicker then Ben was.

This is my first post. eventhough I’ve been reading for years now. I’m compelled to write because I agree with the fact that some changes need to be made from the top down. I place most of the blame on coaching. We got outcoached first and toremost.. Bruce Arians and Coach Z. stunk up the joint. Football is a game of matchups and adjustments and we didnt do much of that at all today. Its easy to just blame the line but I think the coaches have to shoulder most of the blame. We got outcoached today and I can honestly say in 32 years of watching the Steelers, I cant remember getting just beat down. Doing the same thing over and over again with the same negative results is Insanity. Yeah our Oline is average at best, and definitely stunk it up today, but they are professionals. The Eagles made us look like a poor college team. I dont recall too many NFL Offenses ever getting dominated like we did today. I’m embarassed.

The fact that were sitting Max Starks at this point tells me its coaching as well

Having said all that, I live and die with the Steelers and we will get this figured out Im certain,but it must start at the top.