An interesting read!

Are the Steelers' problems connected to larger trends in the NFL?






















By [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] on Dec 13, 8:10p



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David Richard-USA TODAY Sports











The Steelers are inconsistent and struggling.
But if you try to apply the standard template to the league in general
you'll be surprised and confused.











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There are more questions here than answers, but I think
these are questions worth asking as we continue traveling through a
December where it becomes increasingly unclear what we may be witnessing
from week to week. Of course, there is enough drama and pathology
involving our own team that it's difficult to pay much attention to
anyone else. However, if and when you do our situation doesn't appear so
atypical.

Rookie quarterbacks. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
are in the process of leading their teams to relative respectability in
a short period of time. But this is nothing compared to what [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
are accomplishing in Seattle, Indianapolis and Washington respectively.
Luck and Griffin in particular are not only in the conversation for
Rookie Offensive Player of the Year, they are in serious discussion for
league MVP. So here's the question: when did it become so easy for a
rookie quarterback to walk into this league and dominate? Elway didn't
do this, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] neither. The reason that teams like the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] get quarterbacks high in the draft like Luck and RG III is precisely because their teams suck. Their teams along with Wilson's [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] are all comfortably in the playoff discussion.

It is precisely this trend that renders outdated the notion that
Pittsburgh should be seeking to find a backup quarterback to groom as a
replacement for [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
Groom? How bad would you have to be at this stage of the game to have
to be groomed? If you can't step in with a bad or mediocre team and make
them immediately competitive then what the hell's wrong with you?

I invite you to consider [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Remember him? He represented the old thinking. He was being groomed behind [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
at Green Bay and there would be this bidding war for his services which
Seattle won. Then he got beat out in training camp by this undersized
rookie from Wisconsin who wasn't even an afterthought in the 2012
quarterback sweepstakes. No problem, Pete Carroll is crazy. Wilson will
fall on his face after a few games playing for real and it'll be Flynn,
right? Honestly, when was the last time you even thought about Flynn
before reading this paragraph?

So, one of the things that we have become fond of saying lately is that the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
seem to be capable of losing to anyone, which is certainly true. But
the standards seem to be radically changing. Let's consider Baltimore
for a moment.

The [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
I've been trying to wrap my mind around why the Ravens would make the
fairly drastic move of firing a coach, not a relatively minor position
coach, but their offensive coordinator, mind you in December when they
are on the cusp of a division championship and a playoff run. Then I
took into consideration their last four games. We're concerned about
what the Steelers are doing?

They come into the big game against Pittsburgh right after Ben
suffers an injury that people are using terms such as 'potentially life
threatening' to describe. Ha, ha! It sucks to be Pittsburgh. They'll
waltz into Heinz Field and whip a little booty. The game starts with
backup quarterback [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
doing his RG III imitation and running through the vaunted Ravens
defense for a touchdown. Byron Leftwich! Then in Three Stooges/Keystone
Kops fashion he falls over his own feet and injures himself. And then,
in spite of playing with broken ribs manages to still compete. It takes a
special teams play and a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] turnover to bailout the Ravens. They go to San Diego and need a miracle 4th and 29 conversion from [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
in overtime to save themselves there. We're not paying attention
because we're still mad about Byron and then there was Cleveland.

They expect to wrap up the division hosting Ben-less Pittsburgh, now led by octogenarian third string quarterback [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. And they lose. They also lose arguably their best player [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
We're not the only team with injury issues. Next up is the easiest of
their final four opponents, Washington. This a team that in a lucid
moment the Steelers handled rather easily. No reason not to believe that
the Ravens could at least match that level of mastery. Well, as they
are saying these days in the DC area, the Ravens didn't lose to a rookie
quarterback, they lost to two. With the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
coming up would anyone be surprised if they didn't win another game?
But the way things are going this year they could win out as well and it
wouldn't be anymore surprising.

Cincinnati. You're the Bengals. You're playing the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
at home. Dallas has been pretty feckless of late, and besides, they
have other issues, such as one teammate dead, another in jail for
killing him. You have them down late in the fourth quarter. You notice
that Pittsburgh, the team that you are chasing for a playoff spot is,
unexpectedly, getting their butts kicked at home. All you have to do is
hang on to your lead and you're in clover. And then you lose in the last
second.

Houston. You're making your claim to be the new bad boys of
the AFC. You're gonna go up to New England and show those pretenders who
have been getting fat off the likes of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] what's what. It was unwatchable. They made the Steelers, Ravens and Bengals look competent.

New England. Please don't get started on this. Let's look at
it this way; you have supposedly a surefire Hall of Fame coach, and a
surefire Hall of Fame quarterback. Collectively you haven't won a
championship since Ben Roethlisberger was a rookie. Your greatest
accomplishment in that time is that you have been singlehandedly
responsible for putting [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
into the Hall of Fame and instigated endless arguments in the Manning
Clan as to who is, in fact, the best quarterback in the family. And you
got [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
a ring as well, which probably helped while he was in jail. Imagine
what the lunatic, zero tolerance, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately wing
of Steeler Nation would do with these guys. Ask Mike Tomlin. Ask Bill
Cowher. Ask Chuck Noll. Ask Terry Bradshaw. Ask Ben.

San Francisco. Grantland's Bill Barnwell makes the case that Jim Harbaugh is the most valuable asset in the NFL.

By acquiring Harbaugh, the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
created value for themselves in a way that is virtually impossible to
match. They might, in fact, have the single most valuable asset in all
of football.

Really? This year's 49ers' record against division rival St Louis. One tie, one loss.

Chicago. Chicago? They got beat worse than Houston by the 49ers. Atlanta? Smacked by Cam Newton and the same group of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
that lost the previous week to grieving Kansas City, who got blown out
by grieving Cleveland last week (things were pretty morbid in Ohio).
Indianapolis? Denver? The Giants? At this stage in the game who do you
have confidence in, really?

Granted, Pittsburgh may not be going anywhere but home for the
holidays. Would I trade their supposedly deeply flawed head coach for
Bill Belichick or Jim Harbaugh? Ah, no. Would I trade their fragile
offensive line, their butterfingered, petulant running backs, their
ancient defense led by their even older coordinator, their grasping,
grabby special teams, Vaudevillian quarterback play, their talented, but
inconsistent receivers for anybody else's hand in the National Football
League? Nah, I think I'll ride this Steeler thing out and see where it
takes me.