Peter King on Mendenhall - "..not a big time back."

that are supposed to make me believe he knows anything about football?

is a joke to writing and in Pittsburgh. He is a big New England and Brady booster and a Steeler hater. He is a total Mr. NFL, all his articles are slanted in favour of the league and most against the Steelers. Next year at training camp when he shows up boo his ass and throw something at him…make him run out of Lathrobe and lose some more weight! Go Steelers!!

Just ready the article and PK doesnt say one good thing about the steelers only to compliment the rookie recievers……if he had been watching them this season and not the Patricheats, maybe he would have said something positive about ben and antonio rather than negative about the ravens secondary. Not a good article but who cares !!!

He usually doesn’t, but he was today.

Using jerseys to find out “to see just how much Ben Roethlisberger has been welcomed back into the Steelers family by the fans.” I saw a ton of #7s. Including my own. And my son’s.

No player of the week mention for Deebo or Ryan Clark.

He liked Ed Reed’s tackle and Ray Rice “trucking” Troy. Not one mention of anything he liked that the Steelers did. But he didn’t like the Hines Ward “wrestling Ed Reed to the ground” (everyone who watched knows the refs got that wrong), Kemo, Tomlin and Rashard. Heck, reading King’s article, you’d think we’d been blown out by 30 points or something.

Of course, the entire press has treated this as “Baltimore gave Pittsburgh the game”. We handed Bal 17 points (2 TDs on turnovers and a missed field goal) and spotted them a 14 point lead. Then our guys forced a fumble and started the ball rolling. Our guys converted 3rd downs. Our guys held Bal to 126 yards total offense. In this game, we handed them a huge lead, clawed it back and then they blinked.

Oh well…the road to the Super Bowl again goes through Pittsburgh!

Has only played in one playoff game, and in it he managed to score 2TDs against one of the toughest rushings defenses in the league.

Even if that’s “not big time”, I’ll settle for it.

Mendy is arguably the best running back left, so what does that say about whether or not him being a big time back even matters?

AP-home after a poor season (meaning wins and losses) by the vikings
CJ-home after a mediocre season by the Titans.
MJD-Home after also not making the playoffs
Arian Foster- Home after not making the playoffs

I think you can kind of see my point, who cares if he is elite an elite running back really doesn’t matter too much

PK is objective. Some people don’t like that. He doesn’t sugar-coat things. I know what he’s saying, but I don’t agree. I think his biggest knock on Mendenhall is the indecision at the line of scrimmage. For instance, watch Mendenhall on his last TD run. If you watch, it looks like there’s a huge hole to the right, Mendy hits the hole, looks left, stops, then goes right. If he would have just ran and hit the hole hard to the right, it would have went for an easy a TD. Instead, he stopped, and had to use a third effort to put it in the endzone.

Now mind you it “looks” like an easy TD if he just runs hard to the right from the camera angle, but I’m speculating that the play was designed to be run the way he tried in the first place and he had to improvise.

Many pundits have knocked on Mendy because his spins, dances, jukes, etc…but it got him a 1,000 yard season and his team in the AFC Championship game, so…spin away.

Peter King started as a beat guy for… get this….the Bengals. His wife and her family are all fans of the Steelers. Although, it seems like he shows New England a lot of love, it’s no worse than the love Madden had for Favre. Madden could still be objective. Incoherent, at times, but objective. Really, there are 2 world-class organizations: Pittsburgh and New England. As much as it sucks to admit it, Robert Kraft is a great owner, and he’s got a great staff from top to bottom. Boston is a bigger market, so if it sound like he raves about the Pats more than any other team, it makes sense.

He did manage to pick the Steelers vs Packers in the preseason, so at least he knows we weren’t a 9-7 team, like the “experts” said.

Oh, and yea, he doesn’t need to be Adrian Peterson. He just needs to be good enough on Sunday.

People speak about great running backs as if they are solo performers. RBs are limited or boosted by their O lines. They work as a unit. Would Ray Rice have accomplished as much as he had if he had played behind the Steeler O line? How would Mendenhall do if he played behind a superior O line, like the Patriots and the Jets. Mendy is fine. He scored the second TD pretty much on his own. We can win with him, as long as he doesn’t fumble.

I am amazed the young man gets the yards he gets given the play calls he has to endure. I really think Mendy is Arian’s “sacrificial lamb” for setting up all of his ‘glamour plays’. Most of the time for most of the year his assignment was to hit the non-existent “hole” and make something out of it.

If PK’s point is that Mendy is no Barry Sanders, I agree. But on a properly executed running play (ref. Atlanta game in OT), he took it to the house. And Mendy was one tough hombre on Saturday, punching it in twice (again through the non-existent “hole”). I’m just fine with Mendenhall. Now Arians is a different matter….

King isn’t looking at the progress that Mendy has made this year as compared to last year. The Steelers still need to involve him more in the passing game, but he is getting better. Those runs against the Ravens at the goal line were big-time runs. Redman has surprised me as much as anyone. His blitz pick up is outstanding and he seems to pick up nice yardage whenever his number is called. The coaches trust him now so I expect him to be used more in the future.

Dwyer is just 21-years-old and played FB at Georgia Tech. He needs to work on blitz pick up and his hands out of the backfield, but you can tell the talent is there. RBs coach Kirby Wilson, who will be the offensive coordinator next year if Arians isn’t given a new contract, will have the kid up to speed by training camp next year. Mewelde Moore could be the odd man out next year. They might find younger legs to do what he’s done for them. And we all know Tank Summers is pretty much down to his last shot. I don’t think RB for next year is an area of concern. And as I’ve said earlier, I predict that the Steelers will have a top 5 running game next year.