Stillers Coaching Grades - 2007 season
As with the player grades, no nationally recognized analyst
has spent the rigor and research to study the game tapes as this one has. Nor have any covered and analyzed this
coaching staff to the extent this one has.
As such, herewith are the final grades for the 2007 Stillers coaching
staff.
Conditioning Coordinator: Garrett Giemont won’t want to pass any resumes around the league
in hopes of finding a similar job. Not after
his team continually petered and tuckered out late in the 1st half and at the
end of the game on numerous occasions over the course of the entire season, as
well as the playoff loss to Jax. There
are an awful lot of flabby players on this squad that get pooped out all too
easily. Giemont has his work cut out
for the ’08 season. C
Special Teams:
Bob Ligashitsky and Asst. Spec Teams Coach Amos Jones had an utterly
miserable season, overseeing a spec teams unit that gave up big play after big play
after big play after big play. Be it
coverage, blocking for returns, punting, or running with the ball with
authority and common sense, the spec teams were a colossal disaster. Worse, throughout the season, the Stillers
rarely ever got a big play from the spec teams in the form of a blocked kick or
a forced fumble. Both of these
incompetent buffoons should be fired and run out of town on the first Greyhound
bus that is available. F
Tight Ends:
James Daniel had a so-so
season. He got good production from
Heath Miller in the passing game, and Miller really displayed all-around acumen
and polish in the passing game this season.
But there were several down notes here.
Miller’s blocking is still nowhere near top-notch. Rookie TE Matth Speath started the season
as a house afire, and then, after about week 6, was written entirely out of the
gameplan. Daniels deserves blame for
this, as well as failing to develop the huge Speath as just an adequate
blocker. C+
WR: Randy Fichtner
had an average season. Hines Ward was
productive, but he’s a player that needs virtually no coaching or
grooming. The younger receivers --
notably Holmes, Nate, and Reid -- showed very, very little improvement, polish,
or maturity. Reid, in his 2nd year as a
pro, was a total disgrace. Nate fights
a lot of balls, and Holmes had some troubles adjusting to deep balls. Vast improvement is needed here in ’08. C
OL: Larry
Zierlein had a miserable season that he’d soon like to forget. The O-line struggled at camp, then in
preseason, and then throughout most of the regular season. It’s not like Zierlein had to fight problems
-- like many OL coaches around the league -- related to rookie inexperience, or
general NFL inexperience (2 or 3-year vet with no PT in the NFL), or poor
pedigree. 3 starters from the 2005 Sup
Bowl team started, with a 4th -- Max Starks -- in the wings as a 2nd-string
OT. All were healthy until Smith’s bad
back late in the season, followed by Stark’s injury. Thus, Zierlein cannot claim he had chopped liver to work
with. Sure, Colon was only in his 2nd
season, but if the staff ever saw him stumble, they could have very easily
inserted Starks into the RT spot at any point of the season. There’s no question that center Sean Gahan
sucked rhino balls, but what, praytell, did Zierlein ever do from July, through
December, to improve this man’s performance?
Answer -- absolutely nothing.
Fact is, this unit grossly underachieved, and so did its coach. D-
RB: Kirby Wilson
replaced long-time RB Coach Dick Hoak, who had been with the Stillers nearly
forever. Kirby did okay, but hardly
spectacular. Willie Parker was Willie
Parker, and required little coaching.
Kirby’s work with Davenport, Davis, and Russell was underwhelming. Clearly, the team needs more from its
reserve RBs, especially if Parker is gimpy in his comeback from the broken
fibula. C+
QB: Ken Anderson
did solid work with BenRoth. Of course,
I don’t fawn and proclaim on and on about, “the staff led Ben to a rebound from
his 2006 season”. What bullshit. In ’06, Ben ran face-first into a car in his
cycle accident; then had an appendectomy just days prior to the season; and
then suffered 2 concussions during the season.
Hell’s fire -- all Ben had to do to improve in 2007, was to avoid
motorbike accidents and organ removals.
Andy added some polish to Ben’s game.
My biggest gripe with Andy is that he never got Ben to snap out of the
ridiculous timidity and tentativeness that began in Clev-2 on Nov. 11th….and
never stopped, not even in one game, the rest of the season. Benji had just come off a career game in
which he threw 5 TD passes….and suddenly, the very next week, he’s as timid as
a rookie 7th rounder playing in his first NFL game. Anderson has less than 6 months to figure out this horrific
problem and get it fixed. B-
Off. Coord:
The work and failures of Bruce Arians have been well chronicled here, so
avid readers of Stillers.com should be well aware of how this man will grade
out. Arians, in his 1st year as the
Stillers OC, started out the season acceptably enough. There were some small warts, but even I
defended Arians up through Nov. 11tth.
Then, the bottom fell out in the fiasco of a loss to the Jets on Nov.
18th, and the offense never regained the slightest bit of composure, edge, or
tactical superiority over out-manned opponents. The offense quickly regressed from that game, on, into an
amorphous mass of bodies just stumbling about without any coherent plan of
attack. There never once was any
evidence of:
- attacking an
opponents’ weakness
- capitalizing on
strengths of the offense
- seizing the
initiative with boldness and audacity
As I pointed out after the Jets loss, there is an art and
science of being an OC. Arians may
have the science down, but on game day, when the chips are on the line, Arians
has no clue to the art of offensive coaching. Instead, he blindly reached into a velvet
grab bag and blandly sent in one play after another, never once trying to capitalize
on a trend, or on a bite, or on an overpursuit.
Arians’ season ended in bitter disgrace on the infamous Arians Abortion
keeper by Ben on the fateful 3rd & 6 near the end of the game. With a slow-footed QB suffering from an
injured ankle, and with Ward and Miller just toasting the Jax secondary the
entire 2nd half, Arians, being the dumfuk that he is, ordered a QB sweep around
end that was easily snuffed and stuffed for a 1-yard gain. The man was a failure in Cleveland, and
it’s easy to see why his tenure there was so short. D-
DL/Asst. Coach:
John Mitchell had a rather shabby season with the D-line. Aside from the O-line, not another group on
the team struggled and underachieved as much as the D-line. And the thing is, this D-line isn’t asked to
dominate the opponent and rain terror on the QB. They are asked to essentially earn a stalemate with the blocker
so that the LBs can swoop in and stuff the ballcarrier or attack the passer. Sadly, this sad-sack D-line didn’t come
close to earning stalemates down the stretch of the season. The line had its asses handed back to them
in nearly every game after Balt-1 on Nov. 5th, and they were manhandled on key
plays when it counted in the playoff loss.
Very, very disappointing.
D
LB: Keith Butler
did an ok job. Of course, the Stiller
LB coach has one of the easiest jobs in the country -- right behind the guy who
serves as the taste tester at the Jack Daniels distillery -- as the LB coach in
the 3-4 defense. The entire defense is built around making his 4 LBs look like
golden boys. Coach Butt did an ok job
of not doing anything to screw things up, but clearly Butler didn't do much to
get the maximum out of this crew.
Foote and Farrior had ridiculously poor seasons. Haggans was a complete ghost after around
week 7. Harrison had a superb season,
but that’s about it, and without hardly any spelling or relief, Harrison simply
got exhausted by season’s end.
Meanwhile, the #1 and #2 rookie draft picks, Timmons and Woodley,
developed with all the speed of a glacier.
Butler is yet another coach that was given a fair amount to work with,
and did very, very little. D+
DB: Ray Horton
had a subpar season. He got solid
coverage from the likes of Taylor, Townsend, and Clark. After that, the results were rather
horrible. Polamalu had his worst
season since his rookie year. McFadden
hit a plateau and did little. Probably
the biggest disappointment was the lack of improvement by 2nd-year safety
Anthony Smith. Smitty has the physical
tools, but clearly needed to improve his mental acuity after his rookie
season. Horton did nothing in that
regard, and Smith’s play suffered.
Overall, the secondary made very, very few plays on passed balls the
entire season, which was very disappointing.
Horton might not have the greatest collection of talent in the DB corps,
but many teams -- such as the Patriots this year -- have gotten far better
effectiveness from their secondary with a whole lot less. C-
Def: Coord:
Dick LeBeau has long been praised as being an Einstein-like defensive
guru. While that may have been true years ago, it most certainly isn’t true
today. Early in ’07, LeBeau’s defense
feasted on weak, inept O’s (San Fran, Buff, Balt.), as well as offenses that
were sputtering and had not yet found their peak (Cleveland, Seattle). After the Nov. 5th thrashing of Baltimore,
this defense went straight down the shitter, playing the kind of soft, gutless,
brain-dead defense that you’d expect to see in Cleveland, or Atlanta, or at a
local jayvee team. The only game in the
final half of the season in which this defense resembled a top 20 NFL defense
was the Mud Bowl game against the 1-15 Dolphins on a field that was a mud
bog. That game aside, this defense was
an outright laughingstock those final 8 games, and then, true to form, they
gagged and choked with meek play in the playoff loss to Jax.
After early Nov, LeBeau never once got his defense in the
mode of attack, disrupt, and kill.
Instead, it was always backpedal, tiptoe, react, and meekly stop the
ballcarrier or receiver. When you
preach passivity, you get passivity, and that's precisely what Dick got. Count to yourself the number of bone jarring
hits the entire season by the defense.
5? Maybe 6? That's outrageously pathetic.
What’s all the more disturbing is that the Stillers salary
structure is slanted enormously in favor of the defense. While the offense gets by with a plethora of
bottom-salaried regulars or top backups that see decent PT, like Nate, Colon,
Essex, Davis, Batch, Speath, et al, the defense is loaded with most of the top
salary-getters on the payroll, including Pola, Farrior, Foote, Hampton, Ike,
Aaron Smith, Keisel, Kirschke, Hagg, and others. The Stillers front office has spent far more money on its overall
starting defense, yet in return LeBeau’s defense was soft and mamby-pampby.
Don’t be fooled by the defensive stats and rankings,
either. Piling up stats against Charlie
Frye, and the 49ers, and the Dolphins, doesn’t impress me. What makes a good defense is making the big
stand when it counts -- on critical 3rd and 4th downs, as well as forcing punts
or FGs instead of allowing FGs or TDs -- and punishing an opposing offense so
that by game’s end, the offensive playmakers are too timid to make plays
because of the physical beating they’ve had to endure.
What’s really alarming -- and never spoken about in the
Pittsburgh media -- is that the rest of the league easily caught up to Dick as
the season wore on. Yet Dick --
supposedly the Great Guru of Defensive football -- was never able to counter
those adjustments with his own tweaks and chessboard adjustments. Instead, he blandly and blindly ran the same
ol’ same ol’, such as having Pola blitz up into the face of unfettered
300-pound lineman or having Fat Casey Hampton, as pooped out as a marathon
runner at mile 22, rushing the passer on 3rd & 11 and doing absolutely
nothing. In this day of politically
correct politeness, no one is willing to talk about the elephant in the room,
and in this case that elephant is the very fact that LeBeau has, at the age of
71, grown senile and too old to mentally and physically handle the rigors of
the DC job. Remember, this is a
profession where coordinators routinely work 18 and even 20-hour
days. You cannot tell me that Dick
LeBeau, at age 71, is able to work those kind of hours and be mentally sharp
and physically able. Obviously, he’s
not working anywhere close to those hours, which is precisely why other teams
have countered his defense while he’s been as helpless and incapable of
counter-attacking as a French general.
It’s clearly time for LeBeau to step down and enjoy a well-deserved
retirement. D-
Head Coach:
Overall, when looked at on paper, Mike Tomlin had a successful rookie
season, going 10-6 and winning the AFC North title. And, in that respect, it was a successful regular season. That said, when you examine the entire body
of work in depth and breadth, there is considerable disappointment in how this
team faded worse than a cheap pair of blue jeans down the stretch of Nov. and
Dec. This team was in the catbird’s
seat -- even after the loss to NE on Dec. 9th -- for a first-round bye, but
then meekly rolled over and lost 2 of their final 3 games, getting thoroughly
manhandled by Jax in a crucial Dec, game.
The puzzling aspect is how this team peaked with the win
over Balt on MNF on Nov. 5th, and then literally shit the bed from that point
on. They were 6-2 and riding high at
the midpoint of the season, but then staggered the 2nd half with a 4-4 record
that included shameful losses to the Jets, Jags, and Ravens, and weak-assed,
uninspired home wins over the Browns and Dolphins. For how hard, and tough, and menacing this team played that Nov.
5th evening, they played like gutless faggotts the entire rest of the season, a
total of 8 games. At no point did
Tomlin step in and restore the fire, and that is disturbing.
For all the work, and rhetoric, and proclamations by Tomlin
that the spec teams would improve, they sucked ass the entire season. And with Tomlin being a defensive coach (a
former defensive coordinator), it was appalling to witness this defense crumble
and slumber each and every game in the 2nd half of the season, and there was
Tomlin, standing by and doing nothing to stop the slide. I’ll give him a pass for not fixing Arians’
problems on offense, since Tomlin is not an offensive coach, but to be helpless
and clueless in fixing the defense is reprehensible.
The playoff loss to Jax was a culmination of many things --
weak-assed, uninspired defensive play when the going got tough; a offensive
gameplan that worked superbly with the pass on the first drive, following by
brainless plunging thereafter; and the
asinine decision to go for 2-points from the Jax 12 yard with 10 minutes left
in the game. Unbelievably, not only did
Tomlin defend his dumbassed 2-point decision after the game, but then, 3 weeks
later, he still is staunchly defending the no-brained decision. This is scary indeed, because there is no
rational excuse to go for a 2-pointer from the 12-yard line with 10 minutes
remaining in a ballgame. NONE. If this is indicative of Tomlin’s ability to
learn, assimilate, and improve, then this is a grave concern as the team goes
into 2008. Tomlin has much to learn
about being an NFL head coach, and this learning will only come to fruition if
he’s not bullheaded and stubborn like his predecessor. C
(Still Mill and Stillers.com -- when
it comes to the analysis of the Pittsburgh Stillers, no one else comes close….)