Reacting to the Steelers Ugly Loss @ Eagles
Well, that was a tough one to watch.
I’m not going to sugar coat this one, guys…that was an ass beating front to back, top to bottom, and start to finish. I said in my ‘pregame thoughts’ that the game plan should be to take Saquon Barkley out of the game, and trust our DBs and pass rush to make Jalen Hurts’ life difficult. We did a great job of containing Barkley, holding him to 3.4 yards per carry. However, Hurts’ life wasn’t difficult at all as he finished with a 78% completion percentage on 32 attempts, 290 yards, 2 passing TDs and a rushing TD. DeVonta Smith, who is as skinny as I am, finished with a team-high (and career high) 11 catches for 109 yards and a TD. A.J. Brown just looked like an alien out there. It didn’t matter who he was lined up against yesterday…he was just flat out better than everyone.
I don’t know, guys. We’ll see what the film says as I dive into it this week, but I don’t think I’m going to find very many redeeming things about this game. T.J. Watt played like a man on a mission, and almost single-handedly kept us in this game at times. The punch out fumble forced by him should be on a t-shirt. It was picture-perfect. He almost had another one in the second half of that game, and also finished the game with two sacks. He’s in the DPOY conversation for sure.
According to Next Gen Stats, Minkah Fitzpatrick was lining up much closer to the line of scrimmage than he usually does, which I think most of us saw coming. With DeShon Elliot out for this game, I knew Minkah would be in the box a hell of a lot more to help keep Saquon in check. I’m sure that played a part in Jalen Hurts’ freedom to spread the ball, but at the end of the day, I think the film will show that our corners couldn’t hold up in man coverage. James Pierre came in and had some good moments, from what I remember, but again we’ll see what the film says. I know that watching the live broadcast, it was fairly evident that Joey Porter Jr. and Donte Jackson were having a tough time out there.
I guess what disappoints me the most is that I called this a Goliath vs. Goliath matchup (referring to the Eagles offense vs. the Steelers defense). It was painful to watch a lot of the things that often make us look like a Goliath defense unravel in Philadelphia; most notably the tackling. We came into this game one of the best teams in the league at wrapping up and tackling well, and that just wasn’t the case yesterday. Guys were out there hand tackling. Then, outside of T.J. Watt, the pass rush just wasn’t getting any pressure on Jalen Hurts. He was shooting dice and texting his homies he had so much damn time to throw the ball. Our pass rush has been a roller coaster ride this year, and I just don’t know what to expect from it week in and week out anymore. I will say there has been a lot of attrition that can be attributed to the lapses in production throughout the year, but not so much in this game. This was just a game that the Eagles offensive line was ready for, even as they dealt with injuries in-game. Can’t do nothin’ but tip your cap to ‘em and move on.
The matchup on the other side of the ball was just as much of a mismatch as I feared it would be. We were outgained 401-163 (total yards) and only possessed the ball for 20:08. I said it would take a special performance from Najee for us to keep this game close, and he was only able to muster 14 yards rushing. The team finished with just 56 rush yards in the entire game. Some of that has to do with offensive line play, which wasn’t great in this game, but the real story is that without George Pickens, the Steelers offense just fuckin’ sucks. Unfortunately, that’s the kind of thing we have to deal with knowing we didn’t add any talent at WR and went the cheap route for Mike Williams, who, for whatever reason, is just not getting on the field that much. If I may take a second to quote myself; something I said in a post back in October after the embarrassing loss to the Cowboys: “But, if you’re in the Steelers front office, this is the kind of shit you signed up for when you came into the year with no decent pass-catchers outside of George Pickens and TE Pat Freiermuth.” That sentence rings just as true today, and while I have faith in this offense when Pickens is in the lineup, it’s hard to feel a ton of confidence in them going into Baltimore this week.
I wanted to shout out Alan Saunders of Steelers Now, who pointed out that the Steelers front office and roster is taking a similar trajectory to the Eagles back when they hired Howie Roseman in 2010. What the Eagles have built is a sustainable team that is competing for Super Bowls seemingly every year these days, and the Steelers are mirroring a lot of the changes the Eagles made in their approach, and it’s working with great success, as we are a 10 win team with three games remaining on the season in a year when most people considered us to be in rebuild mode. The only thing I disagree with in Saunders’ article is the doom-and-gloom tone he takes, basically writing off this season and saying that the Steelers aren’t competing for a Super Bowl in 2024. There’s a lot of overemotional yinzers out there that are echoing these same sentiments, and I’m just wondering where the optimism went. We’re a game up on the alleged Super Bowl Contender Baltimore Ravens, with a chance to bury them and win the division on Saturday. We’ve got a strong shot at having some playoff football in Pittsburgh, and have already guaranteed ourselves a ticket to the playoffs, again, with three games remaining on the year. Let’s not jump ship now because we lost to a juggernaut while we were down three significant contributors to our success, all of which have a shot of playing this week @ Baltimore.
The good news is the game against the Eagles was the least-important game that remained on our schedule going into last week. We got punched in the mouth, no doubt about it but we gotta put our blinders on and get focused on winning the AFC North in what is sure to be a bloodbath against the Ravens. All that doom-and-gloom shit will be short lived if we take care of business this week, and we’re more than capable of doing just that.
Here we go.
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