PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) - If you’re a Steelers fan hoping that Monday’s close call against Chicago got the team’s attention going into Sunday’s game against the winless Lions then it seems you’re in luck. Everyone who’s anyone on the Southside - Mike Tomlin, Ben Roethlisberger, Cam Heyward and now Defensive Coordinator Keith Butler all agree – watch out for Detroit.
“There are no chumps in this league so we gotta play and play well,” Butler said in his weekly chat with the media. “They had a chance to win a lot of the games. You look at the Rams, that’s a good football team and they were close, real close, as close as us and Bears – too close.”
Like the Steelers, L.A. had to come from behind in the fourth quarter , scoring the game’s final 11 points to beat Detroit, 28-19. The Lions also lost close games to the Vikings and Ravens, 19-17 in both.
While it would be all too cliché to point out that the 0-8 Lions “are due,” Butler pointed out there is a pattern to the first half of their season. “They’ve kind of played well then had an off day, kind of played well then had an off day,” Butler noted. “They had an off day versus the Eagles the last time they played and they’re coming off a bye week. We’re going to get their best game.”
OK, maybe that is cliché but Butler added something that could pose a problem. “You’re going to see something that you haven’t seen,” Butler said. “You have to make adjustments on the sideline as much as you can. I’m sure they’ll have something we haven’t seen so hopefully it doesn’t hurt us too bad and we hold them to less points than we get.”
Of course, that is something that hurt Butler’s defense against Chicago and came close to costing them the game – when the Bears unleashed a Wildcat offense that caught the Steelers off-guard, as well as off-tackle. “We (scout) as many plays as we do, then maybe one play out of every daggum 500 plays is a Wildcat,” Butler lamented, “then you have to decide what you’re going to spend your (practice) time on trying to defend. Sometimes it is a guessing game. Obviously, we’ve got to be more prepared than that. We’ve got to take care of those unexpected runs. I’ve got to do a better job of coaching that.”
Really, since the opener in Buffalo, every Steelers opponent this season has had some degree of second half success which is a concern. “We obviously don’t want to do that,” Butler said while shaking his head. “We come out and they do a couple little things different here and there, we have to adjust.”
If they don’t it could be an extremely long afternoon this Sunday at Heinz Field, especially considering it’s the winless Lions. “This is a better football team – everybody says they’re 0-8 – yeah, they’re 0-8 but they can beat us,” Butler insisted.
“I understand that and our guys understand that, too. For us, we’ve got to recuperate from the Monday Night game and get our bodies ready to play and we have to play well to win this game.”