My thoughts on the Steelers vs. Seahawks.

Obviously it was great to get a win after last week, everyone should feel a little better with how convincing a win it was.  

That said there were some issues and we're going to talk about them.  

1.  Ben was throwing high for most of the game, he seemed to improve after he got whacked in the knee, but went back to throwing high again later.  The worst was the bubble screen to Hines, if he threw it where Hines could come towards him it would have been a good gain.  That looked like how I throw those passes, Ben will bounce back but one horrible week and a sub-par week so far this season.  I will say the timing pattern to Wallace for a TD was a beautiful pass.

2.  Marcus Gilbert struggled like a rookie, but also looked pretty decent at times.  They were covering for him with multiple TE's most running plays, so his assignment was probably very simple.  In the passing game he held his own a bit but also nearly got Ben killed.  The kid will improve, esp. after his first taste of live fire.  He got nice push on the one TD run and there is a lot to build on.  Whole lot of room to build too.  His lowlight was trying to protect Ben with a pathetic trip attempt after getting beat on the spin move.  Walking away while the Seahawk who hit Ben checked to see if he was OK didn't endear him to me either.  That will get fixed.

3.  Mike Wallace is big time.  He's not relying on deep balls to do his damage, yeah his YPR is down but that isn't a negative reflection on him, it's a positive one.  I liked Brown and Sanders plays, if Ben can get his accuracy going we'll be deadly with those three.  Oh, Hines Ward is still Hines Ward if anyone forgot, that sideline catch wasn't DWTS, that was classic Hines.

4.  Mendy vs. Redman.  I understand Tomlin wanting to reward his main back with TD's, and I understand that Mendy has shown that he runs better with more carries and struggles in part time work, but I haven't seen Redman get drageed down by a safety hanging on his back, and I am pretty confident Redman scores on 4th down there.  Redman looks like an all around really good back, and I hope to see more of him, the man just scores TD's people.

5.  William Gay and Doug Legursky get to split the "valuable player you hope to never see starting" award.  Gay played well Sunday with B-Mac out, and K. Lewis did too.  Legs did good too, I'm going to guess having Gilbert on his outside made his job difficult, as they were attacking him all day and Legs had to deal with that too.  Both players are tough guys that work their tails off, but both are a little too small to be the main guy.

6.  Front seven:  I know the Seahawks don't have a good O-Line, but our D-Line played well regardless.  Ziggy looked good, Smith looked much better than last week and McClendon got some plays and was putting pressure on the QB.  He's going to get more snaps, and Hood and Smith seem to be in a  nice rotation.  Larry Foote played a great game.  Anyone else notice that?  He was all over the place around the ball and involved in a lot of our better plays.

7.  Curtis Brown:  I liked seeing him make a play after his temper cost the team a penalty.  I have high hopes for him this season.

8.  Troy.  Troy's lost step is being reclassified as a half-step.  He made plays and was dangerous Sunday, even with the Hawks avoiding him like the plague.  That said he isn't looking like the old Troy.  The slower Troy last year was DPOY, so it's no problem for the team, but seeing him now just makes you appreciate how ridiculously fast he used to cover ground.

9.  Coaching staff:  LeBeau's defense works, there are ways to beat it, but every defense has that.  Last week was not Tom Brady, it was our team getting out played on the field.  We fixed that and shut Seattle down.  Let's see what happens next week.  Tomlin gets over-scrutinized on replay calls after he bungled some so badly early on.  Yeah we dropped to one time out to early in the first half and we failed going for it on 4th down, but neither hurt us and while I agree with the conventional rule of taking three points when the game is tied I like the ballsy call of running it at them and challenging your guys to make the play.  This is a long season, and every failed play this past week doesn't matter now.  Hopefully those plays are making us better and will reap rewards later when we need them.  Arians will catch flak, but he didn't call any plays involving "throw the ball too high" in the title, or "start a Rookie at RT," those were our two biggest problems on offense and they weren't exactly something he could control.  I thought he did a great job of covering for Gilbert as much as possible (he is still on the field, he has to do his job) and adjusted well to what the defense showed.  There were some new wrinkles in the run game with the TE alignment and it worked all right.  Bruce would look a lot better if Redman was running on the goal line instead of Mendy, but he doesn't make that decision.

10.  The division is all tied up at 1-1, it's a flat out race from now on, our schedule is set up for us to win this baby if we take game 2 vs. the Ravens and take care of business with the weaker teams on the schedule.  Bring on Indy, and seriously Colts better find another QB, cause Collins might not be up to the beatdown he's facing.