We all love Troy, but I think we all should try to come to a consensus on who we would advocate for DPOY from the steelers outstanding group of players. The leading "splash" players would be Troy and Harrison, and the imaginary interception catching Ike Taylor.

Troy has done plenty of work this year, leads the league in interceptions, and has generally been a terror on the field. His stats for the year?

54 tackles (40 solo),  6 interceptions.

I think Harrison wins out though because now he has to be planned for by the opposing team, but also because well...He's just an amazing football player. Stat line for harrison?

80 tackles (54 solo), 14 sacks, 6 FF, 1 INT, 1 safety.

Can anyone make the case for troy in light of the statistics? We all know troy is invaluable in coverage and can't be accounted for statistically, and he also gets his tackles while being a freaking safety, but I think the sheer domination of Deebo this year wins out.

If we can end the DPOY dispute, maybe we can move on to talking about league MVP...

I've been running my mouth off lately about how it doesn't matter what defense what we are playing, because our offense either "brings it" or doesn't. Before I kept spouting such nonsense, I wanted to do some quick fact checking. This is a season breakdown against each of our opponents and details our yardage, points, and the opponents defensive ranking by yardage (someone else can substitute FO stats if they want). This doesn't take things into account like weather, injuries, defensive points, etc. but someone else is free to look into that...

Game 1 vs Texans: 305 yards - 38 points - 18th ranked D

Game 2 vs Browns: 281 yards - 10 points - 27th ranked D

Game 3 vs Eagles: 179 yards - 6 points - 6th ranked D

Game 4 vs Ravens (not exact due to OT): 200 yards, 20 points, 2nd ranked D

Gave 5 vs Jaguars: 415 yards - 26 points - 14th ranked D

Game 6 vs Bengals: 375 yards - 38 points - 21st ranked D

Game 7 vs Giants: 249 yards - 14 points - 5th ranked D

Game 8 vs Skins: 224 yards - 23 points - 3rd ranked D

Game 9 vs Indy: 326 yards - 20 points - 18th ranked D

Game 10 vs SD: 410 yards - 11 points - 26h ranked D

Game 11 vs Bengals: 364 yards - 27 points - 21st ranked D

Now, this is sort of a silly exercise because of course an opponents defense matters, but let me cull the statistics a bit and show some of the more interesting tidbits...

1) We've played 4 teams with a top 10 defense, and have averaged 213 yards a game against them for an average of 15.75 points.

2) We've played 4 games against a bottom 12 defense, and have averaged 358 yards against them for an average of 21.5 points. Thanks cincy!

3) We've played 3 games against the teenagers and have averaged 348 yards against them for an average of 28 points.

Clearly our performance against top 10 Ds is different than the production from other categories. Once our offense plays away from the elite defenses of our league though it does pretty well. There isn't a whole lot of delineation once you get past the top 10 though, a #14th ranked defense might as well be #30th by the stats...

If you don't look at the averages you get some pretty scary results that show just how much of our offense is feast or famine. Our offense scores twice as much against baltimore as SD? Our offense scores just as much against the skins as against indy?

One thing that is clear is that our team has consistently played well against teams with middle of the road defenses, though the sample size is only 3 (or 5 if you include the bengals, ha!).

http://post-gazette.com/pg/08329/930414-66.stm

It will be nice to have santonio for the rest of the season. I don't think that the NFL will take any actions before Holmes appears in court, especially after Tomlin was proactive in deactivating Santonio.

If santonio can have some more games like he did against the bengals that'd be awfully nice to see. Hopefully he's okay after that huge hit because he'd be a great weapon to have against the NE secondary. Maybe the extra few days will help him get over his hit with some hits.

I'm going to give our man Gary Russell a little love in this post for his kick returning. For the past three games he has been returning kicks for us, here are the stats:

vs. Indy - 4 returns, avg 25

vs. SD - 3 returns, avg 20

vs. Cincy - 2 returns, avg 28

So his average is somewhere around 24 yards per return. The steelers are currently ranked just about last in kick returns, attempting to recover from their almost league-low of 20.3. Note that average of 20.3 includes russell's carries, so it used to be lower. If Gary can average around 24, that would put the steelers in the top 10 for kick returns. Not bad for one guy, right? I know it's only an average of 4 yards, but usually these averages come from OK returns mixed with good returns. In #33's case, he has had a long of 26, 43, and 39 in each of those games.

We all lamented when Najeh was our kick returner. Why would we use a short yardage back as a kick returner? It made no sense. What percentage of teams in the league use their stout back as a kick returner? I don't know, but it must be low. At some point the steelers game up on finesse for returning kicks. I suspect a large part of that is because there just aren't very good holes to run into. With Najeh they flew the white flag and settled on consistent field position from the 20.

Now we have a different short yardage back getting much better results. Najeh would barrel ahead and fail to hit the hole, and then implode marshmallow style as he was swamped by the opposing team. It seems that Gary, especially on his long against cincy, just keeps motoring forward. There aren't really holes, but Russell seems to see any area on the field with only one or two people as a potential hole once he runs them the hell over. His long of 43 was pure guts against the bengals, and with our poor blocking on the return game I'm convinced he's the guy we want back there.

In terms of getting him more involved in the running game, I'd really like to see Russell line up as a FB from time to time. Especially on 1st down when opposing teams tend to stack the box. We need someone who can get yards when there's nothing there, or a big man that isn't afraid of contact. Russell may be smaller than Davis, but he looks a lot bigger when he's hitting the opponents team. And if we're going to run in between the tackles anyhow on first down, I'd like to see us pick up a consistent few yards and set up for more 2nd and 6s.

That's it for this lovefest. Russell needs to keep it up if he wants to stick around though. No rest for the weary down this ugly stretch of games, and three games is a small sample size. He needs to make up for the game where he carried the ball 9 times for virtually nothing.

http://post-gazette.com/pg/08310/925580-66.stm

Paul Ernster, model of consistency, takes over for Berger.

I'm very happy that Berger is out. I wish him the best, he's a tough guy, but we can't keep punting like that.

I absolutely hated Ernster during the pre-season though. We need more than anything consistency as the punter, and ernster does not bring that at all. He is going to blatantly cost us a game somewhere along the lines, anthony smith guarantees it.

The one brightside to ernster is some booming kickoffs.

Pre-season stats:

Buf - 1 for 25!

Phi - 7 - avg 37

Min - 4 avg 48

Car - 2 avg 24.5!

This is not good news. Not at all.

I just want to give a shout out to Foote. He needs to stick around, but it is time for Timmons to be in the starting lineup. We all know watching the game that Timmons looks more explosive, but what do the statistics tell us?

Timmons: 30 tackles (21 solo, 9 assists), 4 sacks

Foote: 29 tackles (16 solo, 13 assists), 2 sacks

Sacks: One could make a case that Timmons gets more sacks because he tends to play on passing downs. I won't spend too much time on that, but objectively I will say that the times I've noticed Timmons makes the sacks, and Foote just gets them. Timmons forces the issue and goes after it, Foote is not beating anyone by brute force or athletecism.

Tackles: This is the more impotant stat. Timmons has a much higher percentage of solo tackles. What does this mean? He is getting to his man before anyone else and bringing him down. I don't know the amount of downs that Timmons has played vs. Foote, but if I had to guess I would put it somewhere at 65% Foote and 35% timmons. So timmons is generating the same amount of tackles given less playing time.

------------------------------

So, what about last game?

Timmons: 4 tackles (3 solo, 1 assist), 1 sack

Foote: 1 tackle (0 solo, 1 assist)

Whatever questions there were going into the season, they have now been answered. The statistics are heavily in Timmons favor, and the intangibles like being able to run with TEs and WRs are there as well. Foote should no longer be starting. 

It's time for Timmons, and Indy is the perfect time to unleash him.

I see lots of separate posts involving injuries. Here's the scoop:

Ryan Clark - out - Tyron carter will start.

Keyaron Fox - out

McFadden - out

Marvel Smith - out

Chris Kemoeatu - DNP - probable - Chris will play, he's just taking a breather. He's not good enough to not need the practice though, and our lack of depth is scary.

Troy - DNP - probable - with any luck troy is spending time with his newborn. Sorry troy but your son has to be born before monday. :)

Big snack - Full participation

Willie parker - full participation

Ben - full participation

The Wood - full participation

No surprises this week. Lets do this.

Keyaron Fox - DNP - will not play

McFadden - obviously not playing

Marvel Smith - DNP - Starks will start

Willie Parker - limited participation - gameday decision. We'll see how he does today, but I don't think he'll be near 100% on Sunday. He has had plenty of time to recover and two days won't make much a difference.

Nothing too surprising here. Looks like Starks will be earning his money and hopefully can make a name for himself. The bright light if only Moore is playing is that our team will be far more likely to spread things out and go with the short passes - which we need this game. I don't respect BA enough to give him credit that he won't try and power-run long-bomb if FWP is back.