Diego's Monday Morning Hangover...(Part 2)

Steelers 13

Patriots 34

So instead of stopping the Patriots run at history, we just became another notch on their belt on the way to perfection. I have to admit that when I first heard about Anthony Smith’s comments this week I thought it wasn’t such a bad thing, I mean at least we knew he wasn’t scared to go up against the big bad Patriots. I was dead wrong, not because we got beat on and Smith got burned repeatedly during the game…. But because all I heard all week, during the whole game, and after the game was nothing but Anthony Smith, Anthony Smith, Anthony Smith. Even Belichick managed to call him out after the game, geez the Patriots are kinda sensitive. Anyway you won’t have to worry about hearing about Anthony Smith again in this article at least, I am done with him, and he’s dead to me, time to move on to bitching about the game Sunday.

Wow that pretty much sucked huh? And by that I mean the Steelers all round effort on Sunday, as they were outplayed in every facet of the game except in running the ball, and that didn’t even matter since the Patriots didn’t even try to do that. I am not even sure where to start… I guess we’ll start with the defense because that’s where everyone thought we would have the advantage. The Steelers did not look like the #1 defense on Sunday, they tried to pressure Brady and it even worked a little in the beginning of the game, but regrettably our aggressiveness worked against us. We let up two HUGE plays for TD’s in the 1st half. The inability of the Lers to stop the big play ultimately led to their demise in this one, as our offense was forced to play catch up throughout the day.

The defense looked good on the 1st drive stopping Brady and company for the first time all season. However, the Pats came back and scored on 6 out of their next 7 drives (one resulting in a missed field goal). For the most part it looked as if the Steelers brought a five man rush, but they had trouble rattling Brady all day long. The failure to pressure Brady combined with the over aggressiveness allowed the Pats to gain the advantage. At one point of the game Brady actually threw the ball 35 straight times (brings back bad memories doesn’t it?) The spread offense and short, quick, dump off passes allowed the Pats to move down the field efficiently, and the Steelers had no answer (maybe we should trade for DeAngelo Hall in the offseason I know he’s got a bad attitude but at least the man can cover). Brady found Welker and Moss whenever he wanted to and he passed for 399 yards, dissecting the #1 pass defense in the league.

On offense the Steelers struggled to score points in the red zone and that cost them dearly. The inability to score TD’s added to the defect that the Steelers faced. Even though they were close at halftime, 17-13, the Steelers offense was outplayed as they failed to convert third downs and continued giving the ball back to the potent Pat’s offense. The low point came as the Steelers trailed 34-13 and had a first and goal inside the Pat’s 10 yard line. First play run to Dookie Davenport, no dice. Second play, some sort of weird running play to Hines, stopped again. Third down alley oop pass to Dookie Davenport, what did they expect to happen? Fourth down, and their last chance, and they call another gadget play, an end around to Hines Ward and that’s it folks game over for our boys.

Did I miss something? Did the Steelers have some sort of contest running where a fan gets to call plays for a series? How about a play action bootleg pass to the tight end (its not like that’s been working all year for us)? And not one but two gadget plays to Hines? I mean I like him too, but come on mix it up a little will ya? It really goes to show ya that we miss the big guy, Jerome Bettis, if he were still on the team is there any doubt that we score on this series? At this point I was so fed up I had to leave the room and start drinking heavily to ease the pain of this horrible game. Here’s hoping they get it together for next week, see you’s guys then…