The Steelers are 2-2. Pretty sure Icky Woods could come out of retirement and get 100 yards on the defense. Ben Roethlisberger is looking more like David Carr with the amount of turf he’s been eating. Things aren’t looking up to standards in Steeler Nation.
On the other hand, the Steelers have 12 games left in the regular season and their schedule isn’t that difficult. The only two losses came against very good teams. But then again, those two very good teams completely dominated the Steelers in almost every facet of the game. Good teams don’t get blown out.
Maybe the team just played a couple bad games and they’ll regroup and finish strong. We’d all like that to be the case. We all hope the defense is old enough to accept a loss and not let it affect them, but young enough that a bunch of 27-year-old offensive linemen can’t freely bulldoze them out of the way on every play.
Is it overreacting to think that the defense is too old to compete in this league? To start planning for a defensive rebuild?
Is it naive to assume they can rebound and be just as good as they were in 2008 when they were the backbone of a championship team?
And what about the offensive line? They certainly don’t pass the eye test (or any other test for that matter) and everyone is clamoring for change. Have we forgotten the 2008 line that featured Justin Hartwig and Darnell Stapleton? Who is Darnell Stapleton? Is he available right now?
Again, would we be overreacting to suggest that the OL needs a complete overhaul? After all, we said that in 2008, and Ben Roethlisberger iconically ended the season yelling, “Offensive line, who’s laughing now?” as he stood on the podium holding the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
But with the state of the line today, will Ben Roethlisberger even be there at season’s end? Will Rashard Mendenhall even get near 1000 yards rushing? Mike Wallace wanted 2000 receiving yards and he was playing like he could get there. As fast as he is, the QB is on the ground before he even gets on his route. Does he really have a chance?
But that has to be overreacting, right? The line is young now, and they’ll get a chance to grow together and improve over the season, like they did three years ago. Or maybe they really are that bad and I’m being an optimistic homer. I really can’t tell yet. I don’t think any of us can.
I would say this will be an interesting season, but every season is interesting and that’s a dumb cliche. So I will say that this will be a long season. I don’t mean that in a negative way. I mean that there are still three months of football to be played and that’s a long time for a team to fix some things.
The luxury for fans is that we aren’t the ones who have to act on it. We can place our trust in Kevin Colbert and Mike Tomlin to get this team back into winning form. We get to sit back and see if they can build a winning football team with the pieces we have here. It sounds a little nicer when you phrase it like that, doesn’t it?
Go Steelers.
