Paralysis by Analysis – Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Pittsburgh Steelers

That Guy, Hines Ward, Is Still Pretty Good

The writing is on the wall, Nation. Hines Ward has a lot fewer years in front of him than behind him. On Sunday, however, he managed to turn back the clock and score two touchdowns, the second of which included a great jump over a defensive back to score.

Ward finished the game with 54 yards on 7 catches to go along with those two scores. Those aren’t amazing numbers, but they are consistent for the man whom this humble reporter considers the finest possession receiver the game has ever seen.

Hines wasn’t the only one making catches on Sunday. Eight different players made catches against the Titans which is exactly what we expected to happen when we looked at the Steelers in the preseason. When you have Ward, Mike Wallace, Antonio Brown, Emanuel Sanders, Heath Miller and several other guys with good hands, the real question isn’t who will catch passes. The question is how you keep everyone happy by distributing the ball all around. Of course, winning games has a way of making all that stuff irrelevant. Guys are less likely to complain if the team is putting wins up every week.

On the down side, Wallace saw his streak of consecutive games with 100 or more receiving yards broken. He still managed to get 82 yards including a 40-yard touchdown that effectively iced the game. On the touchdown catch, Wallace did what he always seems to do. He blazed past the defense like a Corvette blowing past a Smart Car and Ben dropped the ball into his hands like a butterfly with sore feet.

What this goes to show is that if you give Ben even a little bit of time in the pocket, he can and will find someone to get the ball to.

I will pose the question that I asked in the preseason: Who are you going to cover in this offense? If you leave any one of these guys in single coverage, they can take your defense apart.

The answer is, of course, you don’t have to worry about covering them if Ben is running for his life all day.

Protecting Ben against Jacksonville’s pass rush will have to be a priority.

Special Teams Are Special

Given the long history of remarkably bad play in the special teams, one has to admit that special teams have been better this year.

Admittedly, the Steelers gave up a blocked punt on Sunday, but they had 83 kick-return yards on the two kicks that were not onside kicks by the Titans.

They also had a perfect fake punt early in the second quarter that led to their third, game-winning, touchdown.

Suisham has been reliable, if not spectacular, kicking field goals and extra points. Plus, he has shown a surprising amount of leg-strength with 52.2% of his kickoffs going for touchbacks. As was talked about ad nauseum in the preseason, however, the move to kickoff from the 35 was always going to benefit Suisham.

Say what you want, but the special teams hasn’t been as much of a weakness as in years past.

W2W4

The Jacksonville Jaguars, for whatever reason, have had the Steelers’ number over the last few years. The Steelers won their last meeting in October 2008. Before that, the Jags had won their last four meetings, including a divisional round match-up in January 2008.

This is a critical stretch in the Steelers’ schedule. Wins this week and next week in Arizona would give the Steelers a 5-2 record heading into games against the Patriots, Ravens and Bengals.

If they can win two out of those three games, they could go into their bye with a 7-3 record. That’s probably not as good as what they were hoping, but given the drubbing they took in week one, and their less-than-stellar performances against the Texans and Colts, 7-3 sounds pretty good.

Look for a similar game plan against the Jaguars as what we saw against the Titans. Stop Mo-Jo Drew and establish the running game on offense. Limit the mistakes (i.e. turnovers), show a little creativity on offense and keep Ben from having to pull turf out of his facemask.

Run the ball on offense and stop the run on defense, and the Steelers should get a win.

Just like the old saying goes.