Loose Slag from The
Still Mill
Some loose
slag to chew on from the Sup Bowl……
- Ken Cheezenhunt is probably still lying awake at night,
wondering and moaning, “If only I’d not been so damn overly conservative and
insisting on plunging the ball for the better part of 3 quarters.” Hell, I gave the guy the exact recipe on how to
beat the Stiller defense, and he eschewed it until
the 4th quarter. He finally did
precisely what I clearly stated would work -- with the spread offense and
passing the ball in a form of ball control and easy pitch n’ catch -- and voila,
he got 13 points in about 4 minutes of labor.
What’s worse, Cheezen
actually stumbled upon success midway thru the 2Q. He caught the Stillers in their base defense
on 2d & 7, and better, the Stillers rushed only 3 men. The result? A 45-yard gain by Boldin
down to the Stiller 1-yard line. This should have been the wake-up call
for Cheezen, but he ignored it until the 4th
quarter. If he stretches and gets
limber, he’ll be able to kick himself quite ably for the next 6 months...
- After
Timmons almost blocked the punt, a 27-yard duck by Ben "You probably
should have put me on IR and brought Tom Tupa back
for this game" Graham….First down, Stiller ball, their own 43, 13:49
remaining, 13-point lead. I ask you …
how did we almost lose this game?
Answer: Bruce Arians. Here’s the
sequence:
|
1-10-PIT
43
|
(13:41)
7-B.Roethlisberger pass incomplete short middle to
86-H.Ward (26-R.Hood) [24-A.Wilson]. PENALTY on ARI-26-R.Hood, Defensive
Holding, 5 yards, enforced at PIT 43 - No Play.
|
|
1-10-PIT
48
|
(13:34)
39-W.Parker left end to ARI 46 for 6 yards (58-K.Dansby).
|
|
2-4-ARI
46
|
(12:53)
39-W.Parker left guard to 50 for -4 yards (90-D.Dockett).
|
|
3-8-
|
(12:07)
(Shotgun) 7-B.Roethlisberger sacked at PIT 38 for -12 yards (90-D.Dockett).
|
After the
1st down run gained 6, we’re sitting pretty with 2nd & 4. Pop pass to Miller? Nowhere to be found. Screen pass against jailhouse rush? Nope.
Quick out to Ward? Naw. Flare pass to Moore? No, because Willie Parker is healthy, and Moore isn’t permitted to
participate whenever Parker dresses.
- That counter play from their own END ZONE, which had the LG
pulling and allowed a gap the size of Texas
for a defender to shoot through and nearly safety Parker…..that, uh, was a
genius scheme by Arians as well. You
have to wonder exactly what goes through this man’s mind when he call for such asininity….
- How did
they win the game? Answer: individual
playmaking and sheer athletic greatness by Ben and Tonio. Just like every other comeback this season,
Bruce Arians was minimally influencing what was going on with the offense. With Arians, the less
involvement, the better.
- Not to
belittle the winning TD catch, but in terms of difficulty, the catch Blunt Holmes
made on 3rd & 10 from our own 1 was at least as good a catch and quite possibly
better. Cromar
had his hand right there, and the ball was on top of Holmes as soon as he broke
out of his cut, giving him about 1/1000th of a second to actually see the ball
as it arrived. I re-watched this play 15
times and I still can’t fathom how Holmes was able to haul in this low
laser.
- Lost
amidst the excitement of Harrison’s 100-yard INT return was the fact that Larry
Fitz, who made the tackle, actually ran out of bounds the final 37-some
yards before finally coming back in bounds to tackle Harrison. There is a rule on punt coverage and KO
coverage about a defender freely running OOB and then coming back in bounds (he
can’t be the first guy to hit the ballcarrier). Not sure what rule applies in this INT
situation, but amidst the 28 replays NBC showed, this was never mentioned or discussed. Was this a penalty? Had Harrison
been ruled down at the 1-inch line, would the penalty have given us a referee-appointed
TD (since Fitz was the tackler who made the “stop”), or would it have been a
crack at Tomlin’s ever-popular 18-yard FG, since the half cannot end on a
penalty? Just food for thought.
- More food
for thought. If Fitz
could do it all over again, would he consider running OOB (or downing himself) at
the 1-inch line rather than scoring the TD with 2:37 remaining? If it’d been a 3-point game, then for sure
this would be a heady play, because worst-case, you have the tying FG in your
hip pocket. In this situation, a 4-point
game, this move would be dicier, in that you have to
score a TD on 1 of the 4 attempts from the 1-inch line. On the plus side, you’re gonna
chew some clock and force the Stillers to burn perhaps 1 or 2 of their TOs. This is all
merely interesting post-game speculation, of course,
because no player is gonna eschew scoring the go-ahead
TD in that situation.
- I still
maintain the holding call on Hartwig in the EZ was a bullshit call. Further, at 4:30 1Q, the false start against
Hartwig was a phantom call. No Stillers linemen false-started on this
play. Simply put, not one player even
flinched. Antonio Smith cajoled the refs into making a call.
Pathetic that professionals would fall for that.
- One final
tidbit on Harrison’s historic INT return. Didya notice that
Townsend, not once but twice, actually craned his body in an effort to get Harrison to hand the ball off to him ? Harrison would have none of that, and to
his credit, Town finally read the fact that Harrison
wasn’t going to give the ball up even if held at gunpoint, and Town astutely
dashed ahead and sealed off Warner.
- For those
Cards fans bellyaching about the refs, there was a HUGE facemask grab by a
Cardinal against Hines while he was blocking on the Holmes pass to the left
that gained good yardage. The guy GRABS Hines’ mask and twists it --
goes on for a long time. No call.
Then there was the blatant shove by Dockett,
well after the whistle, after Ben’s ill-fated QB draw on 3rd & goal in the
3Q. Dockett shoved
Hartwig near the stack in front of 2 refs, and could have easily been assessed
a flag.
- After the
31st time, I lost track how many times NBC showed Warner’s wife. I fondly recall the days of my youth,
watching Super Bowl games and never seeing shots during the game of
anyone’s wife, kid, uncle, mother, plumber, or pastor.
- Anybody
heard from Lord Billy Cowher lately
? Remember him? He was, uh, the coach who could never, ever
be replaced, because, after all, “Who could we possibly hire to replace a
legend like Cowher and win like he did?”
- One of
the oddest stat lines in Sup Bowl history, I reckon -- Gary Russell, 2 carries, minus-3 yards, one
TD.
- I’m still
perplexed by the Harrison “unnecessary roughness”
penalty in the 4Q. You're SUPPOSED to
maul the opposing player, who is SUPPOSED to get downfield and maul YOUR punt returner. There never was a PUNCH thrown. There was a
THRUST of the hand and a forearm shiver, which is how EVERY BLOCKER in the
league blocks in today’s brand of football.
It’s a PUNT RETURN, and Harrison is supposed
to be BLOCKING, is he not? And at the
end of that skirmish, it was a 2-handed SHOVE -- ie,
a BLOCK -- while the play was still LIVE. I hadn't realized that blocking in
the CHEST of a defender on a punt return was now illegal in the NFL. This was the classic case of a squeamish ref
crew getting concerned about “the game getting out of hand” and throwing a
penalty on what they THOUGHT might have occurred, rather than what
actually did occur. Fuk
Fat Madden, Ron Cook, and any other dumbass who thought this was a penalty and that Jamie shoulda been thrown outa the
game...
- Perhaps
the best aspect in the aftermath of this Super Bowl is that we are no longer
being fed any articles, whatsoever, about what a brilliant genius Dick “Gilligan”
LeBeau supposedly is. After spending the
season “shutting down” the various NFL equivalents of Mario Mendoza, Dick faced
a competent, experienced, talented offense and got shredded like provolone cheese
at a pizza parlor. After leaving his safeties out on an island a full 22 yards
off the LOS for the late touchdown, the avalanche of stories about Gilligan Lebeau have trickled down to, well, nothing. Amazing what a 13-point choke-away in the
4th quarter can do for a guy’s reputation.
- The Coca
Cola ad with Troy Pola was one of the biggest piles of manure I’ve ever seen….right
up there with an Arians game plan. It
was total rubbish. Along with Arians,
the advertising exec who came up with that one ought
to be fired by the end of the week.
- Upcoming
to-do’s on my part….the Sup Bowl Hard Hat; the overall 2008-09 Hard Hat; and
the player/coaches grades. Tomlin is
correct……the players get some time off, but for the rest of us, much work
remains to be done….!
Still Mill and
Stillers.com -- “When it comes to the analysis of the Pittsburgh Stillers, no one else comes
close….”