Tyrone Carter has to to go

He’s definitely been awful, but so has everyone else back there. When Tomlin called the onside kick, he was sending a not-too-subtle message that some of these guys won’t be back next year.

Tyrone Carter had two interceptions in the game against the Broncos. One for a TD. If you watched it, you should remember how Pittsburgh was getting beat through the air play after play until Carter came up with that HUGE int.

I know I’m defending him with that one game, but Pittsburgh doesn’t win that game without him.

I think Carter is a leader in that locker room. Watch him every play, he has everyone’s back. Sometimes he gets a little out of control, but I like the aggressiveness he has shown back there.

And yes, I do think he was going for the INT yesterday and simply didn’t hit Jennings because he would have been flagged for it. I think Pittsburgh will keep Carter, and they should.

Ryan Clark is nothing special at safety (and I’ve been saying this for some time), but he knows his role. Can you throw on him? Yeah. Does he get many picks? No. He doesn’t make the “plus” plays that you’d expect someone like Troy make, but he consistently makes the plays you’d expect a safety to make.

Tyrone is completely useless in pass coverage, but that’s typical, he’s a backup. I don’t expect him to make great plays on the ball. In short, I don’t expect him to play like Troy. I do expect him to play like Clark, though, and he falls well short of that mediocre standard.

There were several play yesterday where he didn’t have to anything even remotely spectacular to do a satisfactory job but he didn’t. There was no reason the long TD should have gone for more than 20 yards. The running TD should have been about a 10 yard gain. There was another 40ish yard play where he couldn’t cover or tackle his guy. He was probably responsible for close to half of the Packers’ yardage.

So he’s not young or a “savvy veteran”, and I’d take Lamarr Woodley in a foot race. I don’t think Mundy would be a whole lot better, but when he’s been on the field, he hasn’t been nearly the liability that Carter has. We might as well see what he can do.

On a related note, yes, Gay has been pretty bad, but we do have to consider the lack of help that our CB’s have been getting when we are evaluating their play. Without Troy in the game, the CB’s have had deep zone responsibility a lot this season, so they’ve been playing off a lot more and giving up those short passes (and showing off their poor tackling skills).

The more I think about it, Gay’s play has been largely a function of the scheme we’re asking him to play in. Gay is a cover-2 corner. He’s not a fast guy. His best attribute is his quickness and ability to play the ball – something we saw a lot last year. However, because our safeties are more like LB’s this year, we’ve played a lot of cover-3, which assigns Gay to take a deep third of the field. He has to give a big cushion so he doesn’t get burned deep. When I look at Gay, I see a young CB who is playing timid and is scared to death of giving up the long play.

A perfect example was the play yesterday where he made a great break on the ball and could have had a TD, but he didn’t take his eyes off the WR and basically stood around and went for the tackle. I really think there is a solid CB in there somewhere, but he’s not ready to be the best player in his secondary. Put him in a short zone where he can break on the ball and knows he has help deep and I think you’d see a completely different corner.

We don’t have that option right now, though, so we’re stuck with what we’ve been seeing.

He can “buzz down” as we say from the safety position and rob a short zone. He occassionally blitzes effectively. Other than that, he is lost in open space – both as a cover guy and a tackler.

As stated way up above… his lame ‘attempt’ at intercepting the ball on the long TD play was as laughable as it was patheic. Even worse was the long TD run by Grant. His so-called ‘angle’ to the defender would indicate either a) he thinks he is a helluva lot faster than he is or b) he needs glasses or c) he just isn’t very good, which is most likely of all.

Any CHANCE of Troy playin vs Purple browns?

Carter is designed to play FS not SS. I think his problems lie in the fact he is not a Troy Polamalu player.