Steelers Hall of Fame Game: The great, the good, and the bad

The Bad: The offensive line and run defense

While the ragtag group of guys playing last night formed a decent pocket at times, that was hardly our starting offensive line. Normally we wouldn’t be as worried, except that the actual starters are hardly practicing together and we haven’t seen them play together yet. They need in on the preseason games to start building chemistry or the first 3rd of the regular season will result in a lot of losses.

I’m less concerned about our depth although they failed to get much push in the run game. I at least know we have some guys that can fill in should injuries occur. However, I can’t give an honest assessment of the offensive line until I see all the starters in action together. That is the worst thing about our offensive line from the first week of the preseason.

Now let’s break down the run defense. The Cowboys didn’t play Zeke and it didn’t matter. The one area of success for Dallas last night was running the ball. We were missing a lot of starters, but Spillane didn’t look particularly great last night in the early portions of the game. Vince Williams, Bud Dupree, and Mike Hilton were 3 of our best run stoppers in 2020, and with all 3 of them gone, I would like to see some guys step up to fill in these roles. Especially in the box, and I didn’t see that last night from any of the linebackers to this point.

Stopping the run is becoming my biggest concern for this team based on their first preseason game defensively. My biggest concern offensively is the number of drops I saw last night, even in the early portions of the game. I still don’t know what to think about our offensive line as I didn’t see the starting line either. There were some question marks on both sides of the ball.

However the great and the good are outweighing the bad for me at this point. I feel as though a lot of these problems will be fixed simply by playing the starters more. Yet, we still have a lot of question marks for the rest of the preseason.