PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan)- Old. Hurt. Beat up.
That’s how Chris Mack of The Fan Morning Show described the Steelers offensive line.
“The offensive line once was the backbone of this team and why they could do what they once did on offense a couple of years ago, and now the offensive line is the reason they can’t do much of anything other than the 2.3 second release time plays.”
Jim Colony followed that up by saying that the lack of balance ultimately points to the offensive line.
“To me, the sign of a good offense is the old cliché right? You take what they’re giving you. If the opponents are looking for a pass play, you hit them with a run play. If they’re looking for a run play, you hit them with a pass play. You want to keep the defense off-balance. Defense are not off-balance.
So it does start up front. That’s why I’d love to offer up some solutions here and honestly I don’t have any.”
Colin Dunlap agreed with the observations about the offensive line but added that there are layers beyond just a lack of blocking up front.
“Their quarterback can’t make accurate throws beyond the second level. That changes and squeezes everything you want to do.
The run blocking isn’t there. There’s something wrong with DeCastro (like an injury). There just has to be. Big Al (Villanueva) has not played very well, Pouncey has missed time. You take their aggregate ages, it’s over 90. So those guys are getting old. They’re set to pass block so much, they hardly ever run block.
With Ben, is it what they can do or the only thing they can do? I seem to think that short passing game is both by design and necessity and I don’t know which one came first.”
Colin says that the best strategy for this offense right now is to pump JuJu Smith-Schuster more targets.
“That is all you really can do right now. You get it to JuJu and hope for 4 or 6 yards. I don’t want to waste time continuing to try to do things I can’t do. I know that they can’t run and I know that they can’t throw the football deep.”
Chris Mack offered this caveat…
“I think the issue now is that there are corners standing right across from them, jamming them at the line, not allowing them to go anywhere. Or they’ve got to fight to get into their route. Then, what do you do if you’re Ben and you stand there and you’ve got a man across from every single eligible receiver. You know they’re all going to get jammed up. So now your timing routes are all thrown off.
Your offensive line apparently can’t hold up a block long enough where you can get a guy open on a double move downfield and you don’t even know if you can make the throw.”
It all doesn’t exactly paint a pretty picture for the Steelers offense.
Ben Roethlisberger said after the game that he’s not hitting the panic button. But are you?