Former Steelers QB Charlie Batch joins The Fan Morning Show every Friday morning at 9:00 am to review the previous week’s game and preview this week’s.
Batch was unimpressed by a lot of what the Steelers put out there and said it might be leading to some in-house frustration already. He also expressed frustration he had himself while watching the game on Sunday. Here were some of his answers posed to him from The Fan Morning Show.
On Matt Canada’s offense compared to Randy Fichtner’s last year:
“The only difference is there’s some shifts and motions and the running game is still not going. When you were 32nd in the league like they were last year and here you are two weeks into the season 32nd, you know it’s not right. So you can see a little frustration brewing between Ben and Matt Canada right now as it relates to how they get things going.
It looks like Ben wants to go kinda no-huddle and press the tempo when things aren’t working but yet, he’s being restrained from that so I see a little butting of the heads right now.”
On how can things can get fixed in this offense and get smoothed over between Ben and Canada:
“It starts with just conversing at the beginning of the week with Matt Canada. You sit down with the offensive coordinator on Monday when they start to review game film. Then conversations on Tuesday and Wednesday are to be, ‘What’s you’re thought process? What are you thinking?’ If we ever get into a point where we’re pressing the tempo, I’m now in the mind of the offensive coordinator on how we move forward and attack that defense. So that’s how it starts.”
“It just kinda reminds me of the early stages when Todd Haley was here. He had a lot of resistance as far as allowing Ben to do what he was doing and then ultimately he opened up to allow Ben to do that. That’s what needs to happen right now with this relationship with Matt Canada.”
On whether they need to use Pat Freiermuth more:
“They do. When you look back, I know everybody is talking about the running game and maybe adding Derek Watt. But this team right now is a three receiver team along with Pat Freiermuth. We call that ‘kings.’ They are a kings team. They have to use their weapons. Yeah, we don’t want to see those short passes that we saw last year, we want to see them be able to push the football down the field but that starts with the protection and obviously starts with separation from those receivers. That’s something they’ve not been able to do consistently.”
On no offensive lineman coming over to help Ben Roethlisberger up off the ground after taking a big shot:
“I’m just looking around like, ‘Are you freaking kidding me?’ And all of the sudden, he’s standing there and he’s talking to a referee and no linemen even came over to check on him then. I’ m over here, I’m pissed off watching that. I just got to that point like, ‘Really? How do you allow that to happen?’”
“On the flip side, I was mad at the fact that when Ben hit Diontae down the sideline that he didn’t give more effort to get into the endzone. That should have been a touchdown pass in that manner. So there are things they have to clean up offensively and I guarantee you these things are being talked about behind closed doors.”
Charlie believes the Steelers will win in a “squeaker” and it might come down to a game-winning Chris Boswell field goal.