Suck In the Gut and Run it Up There Too

For those of you who don't know, I hail from a town called Canonsburg, which is "famous" for two things and two things only. One is singer Perry Como. The other is a slew of fast food restaurants in a ridiculously concentrated area. At some point, Canonsburg figured out that, like George Costanza with sex and food, it was only natural to combine the two. So a few years back the local McDonald's got torn down and rebuilt with an actual bronze bust of the crooner inside positioned somewhere between the napkin dispensers and the ketchup-glazed trash cans. Laziness and convenience combined to form a perfect storm, and needless to say the townsfolk love it (myself excluded, of course).

For a long time, the Steelers operated the same way. This town loved two things more than anything, and they were a blue-collar work ethic and football. The Steelers combined the two and ended up adopting a "blue-collar" identity, which is to say a grinding running game with a physical style of play on defense. Almost immediately, the team began to win championships, and today the Steelers are the only team to ever win six Lombardi trophies and are synonymous with a power-run team that plays tough defense.

Well, at least they once were synonymous.

Tic...

Today's Steelers, be it by coaching, playcalling, personnel or some combination of all three, are a football team that likes to sling the ball around, at some times almost aimlessly, and a defensive squad that doesn't blitz or attack nearly as much as they used to. To this point, the results have been mixed. The Steelers have been able to score early in games but have had trouble closing teams out in the fourth quarter, except when they faced Denver and they, for some unknown reason, actually ran the hell out of the football. They've lost to two teams, Chicago and Kansas City, that don't have their luggage together at all. They also struggled with Tennessee, which didn't win a game with Kerry Collins at quarterback all season, and with Detroit, which is now 2-8 and was at the time without it's best player, Calvin Johnson. They then refused to get into a slug-fest that the Bengals were begging for in week 10 and eventually lost the game because among other things they ran their starting running back only 13 times.

The Steelers' problems on offense stems from one major branch: lack of offensive identity. That's right. The Steelers, a team that made itself so successful and famous dedicating itself to a power running game, lacks offensive identity. They don't know what they want to be. Why is this a problem?

Obviously some teams are so bad that no identity will lead to positive results, but let's look at the great teams in football. The Colts know who they are, which is a high-octane passing team led by a brilliant quarterback that uses the run to compliment the pass. The Saints are the same way. Their coaches and players stick to this identity and game plan regardless of the situation. Today, both teams are undefeated. The Patriots are a precision passing team that almost totally neglects the run, but they rely on timing, accuracy, and getting the ball out quickly to receivers in space. They know what they are and they don't change what they do regardless of the circumstance. Today, they are running away with their division. The Jaguars, while not a threat to win anything anytime soon, are nevertheless totally committed to running the football on offense, they do it and do it well, and as of today they have a winning record despite a bad defense, an average quarterback and coach, and an anemic receiving corps.

Now lets look at some teams that should be better. The New York Giants are 6-4 and doing well, but they fell off the map last month when they decided, despite a physical offensive line and a fat new contract for power back Brandon Jacobs, that they were gonna change their identity and start throwing the ball all over the place because they had a little success doing it early on. They promptly lost four straight. They're still trying to figure out if they want to be the power-run team they were last year or not, and they're treading water in the process. In other words, they lack identity, like the Atlanta Falcons, Dallas Cowboys, Baltimore Ravens, and oh yeah, the Steelers.

Tac...

Mike Tomlin and Bruce Arians say they need to do a better job at running the football, but then they never give the run game a chance. I even heard a talk show caller earlier today say that it seems to him that the Steelers have completely abandoned running the ball on second down, and after thinking about it I have to agree. OK then, become a passing team, right?

Well, the Steelers seem to be that right now, but they don't really have a blueprint for what they want to do. They are trying to be a Colts-like downfield passing team, but without the precision, the offensive line, or even the dedication to one receiver over the others in the clutch like the Colts do with Reggie Wayne. Instead, they have an average offensive line that short on depth and long on pass protection gaffes. They have a quarterback who shrugs off things like timing and precision (when was the last time you saw Ben Roethlisberger do a two-step drop and fire like Brady or Manning does?), and instead wants to play what Ben has himself termed "back yard" football, which is a nicer way of saying run around and get open somehow. And they have a bevy of talented receivers, including tight end Heath Miller, but they don't plan to get the ball to one guy over any of the others in a given situation where you need a guy to make a catch and this is your guy to do it. The result is numerous sacks leading to a concussed quarterback, a scrambling offensive line, turnovers and a few big plays in between. Oh yea, and a week 11 loss to what was then the 2-7 Kansas City Chiefs.

The solution to this is for the Steelers to resolve their identity crisis by going back to, well, their long-term identity. The easiest way out is to go back to the team they were in 2005 when they won the Super Bowl, which is to say commit to the run first and limit Ben's throws to somewhere between 15-20, maybe even as many as 25 passes a game. I say it's easy because all of the pieces are there already, and a lot of them are guys who were on that team. They have a trio of running backs who can get the job done, two receivers who are great blockers in Hines Ward and Santonio Holmes, an average line bad at pass protection, and a defense that turns to jelly when missing the oft-injured but supremely talented Troy Polamalu. They can still give Ben chances to do what he does best, but it seems like when he knows he is going to have 40 chances to throw that he loses focus and takes a more careless approach to executing the offense.

D'OH!

The Steelers are 6-4 and looking up at the Bengals, Patriots, Colts and Chargers and are in a mess of a wild card race as a result. They've got by so far by simply being more talented at more positions than most of their opponents, but with an offense that seems to live in the moment instead of living by the game plan their success is only going to last so long. Yea, I know it kind of worked last year, but the Steelers also had one of the best defensive units of all-time, and this year they don't.

So the Steelers need to commit to the run. Stop smashing the panic button. Play for ball control and field position. Ben will still have his chance in the fourth quarter in almost every game anyways, except this way he won't have already been knocked down 13 times. Simply put the egos and the attraction to the glitz and glamour of the high-powered passing attacks that television analysts love so much and restore the identity they're known for. In other words, instead of trying to re-invent Steelers football, just play Steelers football.

After all, it has been known to work.