View topic - Post First Preseason Game Thoughts and Grades

[No l Gravity l Profile]

Offense

Quaterbacks
Ben Roethlisberger- A. No wrongs for Big Ben. Nice little pass to Holmes to let the receiver make a play.
Charlie Batch- C-. Only went 1 for 3 and handed the ball of most of the game. Hes been a good backup for years but I'm 100% sure his age has caught up on him. I won't be surprised if he gets released to add more room for our roster. I don't think losing him to injury will hurt us that much.
Dennis Dixon- D+. Not a good first impression. He checked off on many of his passes for short yardage. Sweed made a great catch diving backwards in one of his low thrown balls. Dixon's only saving grace and underthrown 40 yard pass to Walker that was wiped away due to a hold. Needs to step it up next week since Batch is injured.
Mike Potts- N/A. Didn't do much but hand off the ball to Russell. Went 0/2 passing.

Runningbacks
Willie Parker- A. Looked like the same Fast Willie to me. Don't think the injury slowed him down a bit.
Rashard Mendenhall- B. Was pretty impressed with the guy. Had some good hard runs and a 15 yard run on one of his plays to the outside.
Gary Russell- B-. Earned some hard fought yards despite the low YPC. Looks very powerful. Should see more carries at the goal line.

Wide Receivers
Santonio Holmes- A. Looks like he'll be a top 10 receiver in the league this year. Great TD catch and run.
Hines Ward- B+. Only caught 1 pass but it was for 20 yards
Limas Sweed- B+. He made some fantastic catches tonight despite Dixon's inaccuracy.
NateNAte- F. Where were you man??? KC? Any answers?

Offensive line- B-. first team OL looked solid. Not much to say other than Starks got beat pretty bad twice. Dixon was under pressure for a handful of snaps but we only allowed 1 sack. Not too bad.

Defense- B. Still not liking the big cushions our corners are giving. As usual, we were susceptible to those short 5 yard slants. After seeing Kolb drive down towards our side of the field on multiple occasions, however, the D seemed to tighten up and forced them to punt. Well I could probably account that to all those damn penalties the Eagles were committing as well though. Nice to see Farrior get a sack. Fox on the 2nd team played well.

Special teams- B. Wow what an improvement. Almost everyone aside from "Fair Catch" Bloom had decent returns. I liked Drummond's run down the sideline. Ernster looked pretty good aside from his last punt in the game which still had a forward bounce. Looks like he has enough leg on kickoffs to shoot it into the endzone. I was impressed with the 50 yard field goal. Defensively we didn't allow much.

[thesteelhammer Profile]

Nice write up. Spot on.

Any thoughts on Moore?

[thesteelhammer Profile]

NFL.com's take

http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter?game_id=29789&displayPage=tab_gamecenter&season=2008&week=PRE1

What we learned ...
Willie Parker is still fast. Parker suffered a broken right fibula in 2007 and looked sharp in limited attempts Friday, rushing for 20 yards on three carries. Parker will still likely share carries with first-round pick Rashard Mendenhall, who rushed for 34 yards on seven attempts.

Steelers offense still rolling. Ben Roethlisberger opened the preseason -- after throwing a career-high 32 touchdowns in 2007 -- by leading the Steelers on an eight-play, 80-yard touchdown drive. Roethlisberger hit Santonio Holmes on an 18-yard touchdown pass to open the scoring for the Steelers.

The Steelers will need a backup quarterback. Charlie Batch broke his right collarbone and left the game. The Steelers have two rookies remaining behind Roethlisberger, Dennis Dixon and Mike Potts.

[Nate85 Profile]

Offensively, Moore looked disinterested &, even worse, his botched play lead directly to the Batch injury! Decent put return, but we need him to be a good 3rd down back, too! Russell & Vincent looked a lot better in finishing off runs...especially in garbage time, when yards are extremely tough to come by!

Maybe Tomlin can rent The Goodship Lolipop from The Gateway Clipper Fleet & Mewelde can once again "party" his way to motivation - Viking Style!!!

[benstunner Profile]

Charlie batch is not getting released any time soon...

[thesteelhammer Profile]

Sportsillistrated's take on the game

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/nfl/recaps/2008/08/08/3157_recap.html

[steelerette Profile]

Our starting offense looked great. I'm always impressed by Ben's calmness. He's just always so cool. I agree there has been a huge improvement on special teams, and it was very noticeable. Let's hope they keep it up!

I'm very excited about our wide receiver corp. Probably going to be THE best in the NFL. I was also happy with Mendenhall's performance. He's gonna kick some ass.