Back from the Dead Monday, October 5, 2009

Sorry about not posting last week. There's nothing more devastating than losing to a team from Ohio. I didn't even think about football last week because it was too painful. (Luckily that only happens about once every three years.)

The Steelers were up 28-0 in the third quarter. I was getting ready to write about Mike Tomlin, and the enormous gap between he and guys like Norv Turner and Wade Philips. When the Steelers are about to fall apart and they lose to the Bengals, Tomlin gets angry, his players take on his attitude, and they come out and take care of business. When Mendenhall is blowing his assignments in practice, Tomlin benches him, he responds, starts the next week and runs for 166 yards and two touchdowns.

When times get tough, what do Norv Turner and Wade Philips do? Do they really have credibility with the players to fire them up? Or do they just sit in meetings looking a little bit groggier?

Tomlin's best asset as a coach is not his youth or skin color. It's that he does two things few coaches can do in tandem: he connects with the players personally but it couldn't be more clear who's in charge. Once someone asked Tomlin in a press conference how he thinks his players would evaluate his work so far. He said, "It's their job to perform. It's MY job to evaluate." Can you imagine Wade Philips saying such a thing? The press would laugh at him. (And yes, that's partly Jerry Jones' fault.)

The Chargers made it interesting, nonetheless. Phillip Rivers is a great quarterback. With a couple minutes to go it was suddenly 35-28. Why have the Steelers consistently outplayed the competition this year but had to endure comebacks and two losses? Here's my explanations, in order of their impact on the team this season:

--Opponents. The Steelers have played four good teams in the Titans, Bears, Bengals and Chargers. I picked all but the Titans to make the playoffs and that looks like a solid prediction right now. The Titans will be something like 7-9. Worst of all, though, we've faced three good quarterbacks in a row: Cutler was impossible to sack and made no bad decisions in Week 2, and both Palmer and Rivers exploded for points at the end of the game. Both will put up a lot of good numbers this year. Looking forward to Stafford and Anderson the next couple weeks.

--Polamalu's injury. We need him back. This really accounts for both the late defensive struggles and the lack of big plays (sacks and interceptions). Our defense has played disciplined but we need Polamalu to cause havoc.

--Back luck. Santonio's mistake led to a pick-six last week. Stefan Logan not getting a whistle for stopped forward progress on the punt return when five Chargers were literally holding the 5'6" returner up so that they could strip the ball. A couple bad spots on the turf in Chicago. The Steelers have just had bad luck. This is no big deal; they'll have a mix of bad luck and good luck in the future.

--Playcalling. Arians called a great game on offense tonight but he was a big reason we lost the previous two weeks.

As Collinsworth kept mentioning, Chris Kemoeatu was a beast last night. I'm now optimistic about Mendenhall, as he did break a lot of tackles (haven't seen Wille do that in about a year), but the credit really goes to the O-Line. Unfortunately, not all run defenses are as pathetic as San Diego's.

By the way, San Diego missing the playoffs would be very satisfying. However, I still don't think Denver can survive their schedule. We'll find out soon as the teams play in two weeks.

Big Ben played great. I agree with Collinsworth: He's now a solid #4 behind Manning, Brees and Brady. I'll put Rivers at #5. Maybe later this week I'll post full quaterback ratings.