After what appeared to be a "Superbowl" hangover the Steelers got off to a slow start at 1-2.  However, since then they have figured some things out (played easy defenses) and won 3 straight to sit at 4-2 tied a top the AFC North with the Cincinnati Bengals.  It seems all cylinders are banging with the #3 ranked D and #5 ranked offense.  With those high rankings, you would believe the Steelers are mowing down their inferior competition and blowing teams out.  However, this has not been the case at all.  So what is causing this seemingly good team to play such close games against teams that are not very good?  Some reasons I have heard are "we play down to our competition" or "Troy has been out" or "turnovers" and the list goes on.

I am going to take a different side of this story and argue poor special teams coverage has been a big part in our inability to close out the competition.  More after the jump.

I jumped back and forth between giving an indepth analysis of the statistics or just showing a specific play.  I decided most people get lost by a lot of numbers, but everyone enjoys pictures.  Everyone enjoyed picture books when they were kids!  So I decided to do a step by step analysis of the Joshua Cribbs kick off return that kept the Cleveland Browns in the game on Sunday.  Without this spark for the Browns, they are looking at a 14-0 hole with 4 minutes left on the clock and an offense that has not moved the ball well that half.

So lets move on to the screen caps (red = Steelers, blue = Browns):

*UPDATE* After further review it has been determined that Mr. X is Patrick Bailey

This is a look at the field directly after Cribbs catches the ball.  Cribbs catches the ball at around the 2-3 yard line and there is a ton of space on either side.  Off the bat, you can tell Cribbs is going to have a good return.  Jeff Reed does not seem to be getting a ton distance or air under his kicks, which does not allow the coverage to get down the field fast enough.  Stefan Logan is the first down, but has two blockers between him and Cribbs.  This does not look promising.  Also, note Ratliff's location and the guy who fell down between Logan and Ratliff (I watched the video 50 times and cannot figure out who it is, maybe Fox, I'll call him Mr. X as to not pass blame to the wrong guy)

Wow, that space closed quickly, didn't it? Nice speed and coverage by our boys.  Stefan Logan is hit head on by Alex Mack,  who at 311, is almost twice the size of a tiny 185 Logan.  It would appear Logan is done on this play with Mack a guy twice his size.  However, Logan has done his job as a gunner, get down the field, force the returner to one side of the field, and eat up a blocker.  Now, notice we have the "advantage" with two coverage guys with open field view at Cribbs and only one blocker in the way.  Mr. X who had fallen down, got up quickly and put himself in position to make a play.

The lead blocked chooses to engage Ratliff on the outside probably thinking Cribbs will go out side and run up the side line.  This screen cap makes it seem like this return is over.  Cribbs should get bottled up and taken down by either Mr. X, Ratliff, or  Arnold Harrison, who is just behind Mr. X.  What happens next got me angry, because it is just a lack of execution and effort.

This screen cap is little a split second later, notice the clock has not changed.  However, you can see that  a bunch has gone fundamentally wrong.  Mr. X takes a horrible angle at Cribbs, this is made worse by the fact that Harrison ran into and pushed Mr. X a little bit further down field.  Additionally, Harrison, who clumbsily stumbles into Mr. X, takes himself out of the play.  Anyway, I have to give Cribbs a ton of credit here.  It appeared that he was headed outside, because there was no hole up the middle.  In that splt second that Mr. X takes a bad angle Cribbs notices it and pounces.  He reads and reacts in less than half a second, simply an amazing athlete.

Cribbs hits the hole, and hits it hard.  He is off to the races.  The biggest thing to notice here is the hold on Ratliff.  its blatantly obvious from our point of view.  However, I don't see a single ref in position to make any sort of call.  This is pretty strange because, someone is supposed to be watching the returner and blockers directly around him, or so you would think.  Anyway, spilt milk, no use crying over it now.  Partial blame to Ratliff here, he could have at least stuck out an arm, before he was held, to slow down Cribbs at least somewhat.  You cannot see it well here, but Mr. X, who made the bad angle, takes a terrible leaping tackle at Cribbs.  Even with the bad angle it appeared he could at least have put a hand around some shoelaces.

Throughout the entire return, Cribbs goes literally untouched.  That means the coverage was terrible, generally good returns mean a broken tackle, this was not the case here.  Mr. X is the big goat on this play.  He takes a bad angle and compounds it by attemping a tackle that made him look like a kicker trying to tackle someone.  Kudos, to Logan on this play.  He weaved his way down the field around blockers, eats up Mack as a blocker, and forces Cribbs to choose a side.  Logan even bounces off Mack and almost has a chance to tackle Cribbs, almost.

In my opinion, our coverage has been  pretty bad this entire year.  Something needs to be fixed.  I think a big problem was that Andre Frazier was inactive this week, and he is one of our leading tacklers on ST (thanks steelguy99 for the stats).  If we slack off on ST we are going to find ourselves in a lot of trouble this week against a very good Vikings team.  I believe the winner on Sunday will be the team that commits the least mistakes.  Hopefully, bad coverage like this is an anomaly.