PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – How many of us amateur offensive coordinators have figured out the Steelers issues? If there is a common thread among all of us beyond getting the running game going, it’s throwing it more downfield.
Steelers offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner, the one paid to fix it, believes a lack of time together on the South Side has impacted what they can do.
“Because there hasn’t been as much allocated to it in practice,” Fichtner said of issues throwing the ball deep. “I think whatever you missed in that little three week time of walk-throughs, playing, not playing, games being moved. I think back to just repetition to just throwing and catching for our guys, that’s not an excuse, but if there had been one area you would have backed off of that, it would have potentially throwing deep balls.”
Fichtner has a point that they had little practice time for the last two games, they had to spent most of that to game-planning, not working on fundamentals. Now there is an extra day of work due to Monday night in Cincinnati and Fichtner said they are on it.
“Having this week where we get back to a semblance of a real week,” Ficthner said. “We worked on that yesterday, we will continue today. We get a couple more good days of practice, so it will be an area of emphasis.”
Fichtner doesn’t believe the issue is that Ben Roethlisberger can’t get the ball downfield and he understands the importance of spreading out the defense.
“It’s something that we’ve got to keep working to get better at because they create chunks and chunks are what you need to sustain drives,” Fichtner said Thursday. “That’s what I think we may be missing right now.”
Fichtner said short-passes caught in stride can also create chunks, if you don’t drop those passes.
“What’s missing right now is just a little more consistently catching the football, and if you do that by all, we probably aren’t having these discussions,” Fichtner said. “We know where we have to improve and where we have to eliminate the negativity, and that is what we are attempting to do this week.”