Steelers - Defense and Character

In handicapping this Super Bowl, I’m reminded of that scene from the Hannibal Lecter movies, where Hannibal’s being interviewed by the young Ms. Starling. Hannibal asks the green FBI agent something like “what is he at his ESSENCE, Clarice”? And after she makes two or three dismal guesses, Hannibal says sumthin’ like “NO, Clarice, he COVETS”.

What is Arizona at its essence? THE PASS! Kurt Warner behind a nice big offensive line throwing to the likes of the finest receivers in the land, Larry Fitzgerald and the tough, sure-handed Anquan Boldin, the guy with plates in his face and just keeps coming. And, if you cover them, there’s this troublesome rookie named Breaston.

Yeah, late in the season and in the playoffs, they took the wraps off Edgerrin James and ran the ball, but it was strategic-type running, done only so that they could go back to what they do best. PASS!

And yeah, they score via the run sometimes, with that big bruiser Hightower. They’ll use him on a third or fourth and one. And then, when it’s first down time again, they’ll ordinarily go back to the pass. Once again, in the playoffs, they did some different things with James, but they usually ran after they had already killed their opponent with the pass.

Incredible as it seems to me, their opponents in the playoffs seem not to have respected their passing game enough. A simple thing like double coverage, nobody really did. Even when Boldin was hurt and there was just Fitzgerald and Breaston, Carolina and Philadelphia let him run free against, usually, a tiny little cornerback.

As timing is so important in the passing game, you’d think one of these teams would have checked these big guys at the line. But no, nobody did. And yeah, I know they put these guys in motion so it’s harder to give them a shot at the line of scrimmage, but, still, there were plenty of opportunities to jam these guys and nobody did.

Another way to stop the pass is via the rush, of course. With Warner, getting a guy in his face is most effective, so he has to scramble, usually with just one hand on the ball, extended, looking downfield. But nobody really seemed to focus a rush up the middle.

Atlanta was just overmatched to my mind. Nobody expected them to win and they didn’t. Surprisingly though, they made the score respectable. Carolina “Delhommed” itself to death while trying to execute the stupidest game plan ever devised by anyone against any team. Oh, and this just in, Carolina just hired a new defensive coordinator.

And Philadelphia? They came as close as anyone to beating them but let themselves fall hopelessly behind before charging back and then fizzling. They weren’t able to stop the pass or run. They blitzed quite a bit too, but they were wild, chancy blitzes, hoping against hope Warner wouldn’t find the open guy. He did.

Okay, Clarice, what is the Steelers ESSENCE? DEEE-FENSE!! Yeah, they run the ball, and yeah, they have Big Ben running around, usually on third and long, finding a receiver. But they’re all about defense. The single most consistent thing about the black and gold is that defense.

Zone blitz? Ever hear of it? Of course you have, everybody has. You couldn’t NOT hear it if you tried. Dick LeBeau? Same thing. Steelers and LeBeau, it’s like love and marriage, ham and cheese (I do go on); you get the idea. Yeah, Mike Tomlin might be quite a coach and a hell of a motivator, but the guy who makes every defensive call is Dick LeBeau.

In the zone blitz, you never know who’s coming, but the great thing about it is there’s ALWAYS somebody back. And that “somebody” a lot of times is going to be one of the finest defensive players in the game, a guy named Troy Polamalu.

Ever hear of him? Of course you have, usually in the same breath as “Reed, Harrison and Polamalu”. While they’d make a hell of a law firm, they make even better defense. That Harrison and Polamalu are on the same team makes things even scarier for the Cards, and hopeful for the Steelers.

A few things make me nervous about this game though. One is that a defense almost never can win the game all by themselves. It needs to rest. That goes for any defense. If all a defense gets is pressure and more pressure, it will break.

That’s why Big Ben will be so important in this game, along with Hines Ward, Santonio Holmes and Willie Parker. Parker might be the most important piece of all in this chess match of a game. Parker’s got to take some pressure off that passing game.

The second thing is that the game pits Tomlin against Whisenhunt, the guy he beat out for the head coaching job in Pittsburgh. There is a revenge factor there, yes, but, even more important, don’t you suppose Whisenhunt knows all about the zone blitz? Ya think he’s heard of Dick LeBeau? Whisenhunt has the advantage of knowing all about the Steelers, offense, defense, and special teams.

The third thing that bothers me is that the Steelers seem to have a little trouble against really good quarterbacks. They’re 0 and 2 this year against the Mannings, for example. They’re 0 and 1 vs McNabb. They only lost one other game, against Tennessee, in a meaningless game.

But I have even more concerns about the Cardinals, and it has to do with team character.
This Cards defense especially has quite a history of lying down. The Steelers never lie down.

The Steelers will get their junk touchdowns. The Cards will score but the Cards won’t be able to run. There will be some three and outs, which will put even more pressure on Warner. The Steelers will take the lead, and when they do, they won’t fold. They are, after all, the Steelers.

NY Super Bowl My Butt

Thank God the Jets lost to the lowly Broncos yesterday. I was getting a little tired of the all-New York Super Bowl hype I’d been hearing all week ad nauseum. The Jets don’t have the character of a true Super Bowl team as they proved yesterday.

Think of the last few Super Bowl teams. New England, Indianapolis, and our own Giants. QB’s…Brady, Peyton, Eli…..Coaches….Belichick, Dungy, Coughlin. I could go on, traversing every position on the field but the Jets just don’t measure up to those Super Bowl teams.

Not to be unkind but the Jets succumbed to the theories of their own greatness. After beating the Pats and then the Titans, they really thought they were hot. It didn’t occur to them, maybe, that the Broncos were a totally different team, a team with a real live passing game.

It didn’t occur to them that there may have been a big difference from Titans QB Kerry Collins to Broncos QB Jay Cutler. All the way down their respective rosters, the Broncos are superior to the Titans. The Titans are just a running team. Stop the run and you stop the Titans.

The Jets weren’t prepared for any adversity on Sunday. You could tell that from the opening kickoff to the final gun. It was cold and rainy too, and Favre just really wasn’t interested. After all, who would notice a clunker thrown in on the last Sunday in November? It wasn’t a team in the AFC East, they had a cushion in the East on the Pats and the Dolphins, it was time to coast past the Broncos.

Surely, they thought, we could stop their running game. Surely, then they would stop the pass. Well, it didn’t turn out that way, of course, but the Jets didn’t react, even after it became quite apparent that the Broncos weren’t going to be content with just holding the lead in the AFC West. They wouldn’t be making any turnovers this day.

The Jets just weren’t prepared to play. I don’t put the blame on Mangini, although he can’t be held blameless. The same goes for Favre who was pretty dreadful in the rain yesterday. It’s a team responsibility, heart. The Giants have it, clearly. The Steelers have it, the Chargers don’t have it, the Jets don’t have it.

I wouldn’t even mind if the Jets had come back. But they didn’t. They were content to tuck their tails between their knees and go home. They are a seriously-flawed team, not from a talent perspective as from a character point of view.

Chad Pennington, I might add, did not have a character problem and still doesn’t, as evidenced by his bringing the Dolphins back to respectability. His Jets played with a lot of heart but they didn’t have the talent in his time. Now, they clearly have the talent but not the heart. A large part of the heart got shipped to Miami.

You see the lack of character all over the NFL. Plax’s gun incident is a very clear example. How easy it is for a man to go from the heights to the depths when he is conspicuously lacking character. All those physical attributes that make him such a talent on the football field couldn’t save him from the debacle that will be his life from here on.

It’s a good thing that Burress has been such a small part of the Giants’ success this year. The team seems to be carrying on without missing a beat. The beat goes on and it will go on without Burress. But it may not go on against the best teams in the NFL, a team that has a balanced offense and defense, a team such as the Pats were last year before they were beaten by the Giants with Burress.

Is there a team though that meets those qualifications this year? In either the AFC or NFC? I don’t think so.

You could possibly make a case for the Steelers. They have Ben Roethlisberger at QB, and some talent at the receiver position. They have a formidable defense too, and, in the person of Troy Polamalu, they have the most talented player in either league. They can run the ball too, but not as well as a Super Bowl team should. Their offensive line doesn’t seem strong enough to support either part of their overall offense.

Their potential to fulfill that Super Bowl contender position will be seriously challenged next Sunday when the Cowboys come to town. The Cowboys have Romo back, and he does not seem to be the Romo of last year, not from the perspective of character.

Romo seems to have grown into a leader this year, his injury and the subsequent Cowboys demise seems to have challenged his whole being, and his performance in the games since his injury seems to bear that out. He is one of those players who can make everyone around him better, at least this year.

The Colts have always been a team with character. They were hit hard by injuries this year, and seem to be a little slow in coming back from them. Their performance against the Browns yesterday wasn’t that of a playoffs contender though, unless it was the Browns that made them look bad, a Browns team that seems to lift its game against better opponents, as evidenced by their victory over the G-Men this year.

Who else is there? There are Carolina and the Bucs in the AFC, the Panthers with conspicuous talent on both sides of the ball. But I don’t think Carolina has the heart. They are a team much like the Jets. The Bucs may have the character but not as much talent as is required to reach the heights, at least on the offensive side of things.

A team that turned in that performance against the Broncos yesterday could never reach the Super Bowl. Forget about it. They probably already have.