Turnpike? More Like Turnstile....

Well, the Steelers suffered their first defeat of the season yesterday in magnificent fashion. A lot of people were saying the offensive line problems were fixed. Right, and Mike Tyson is now a babysitter. Much like Tyson would eat the small children, the Steelers offensive line looked a little like Niagra Falls yesterday. Defenders were rushing in and putting him on the carpet before he finished his backdrop. Phil Freakin' Simms was saying after the 4th or 5th sack that he should start thinking about getting rid of the ball instead of taking the sacks. Are you kidding me? Was he watching the same game we were? Ben had ZERO chance to get rid of those balls. Maybe on a few of them, but not when Phil suggested it. So, what was it? What was the cause? Let's assume they change nothing before halftime and try to make the adjustments there. Did they try to give him help? Yes. Did it help? No. Why didn't it help? Because they rushed from every angle possible and always seemed to bring someone free. I don't know how you're supposed to drop back to pass when a guy that is starting out 8 feet from you is running forward full speed without a guy even touching him at you. You can't do it. Had we been able to run the ball, it would have helped, but we couldn't do that either. Draws to slow it down? No way. No time. They would have taken the handoff themselves. Our defense played well also, but it's been a long time since I've seen our offense so handcuffed. Ben got hit often, but I still think we hit McNabb harder. So, we had the entire halftime to adjust and we really didn't. Their defensive line is about twice as talented as our offensive line plus they had better schemes. I saw a guy run right past Hartwig (who full on blocked another guy) but what I saw was a lack of communication before the snap where he didn't point to him or scream out "who has this F'er right here?" before snapping the ball. These are things our centers of the past did. Anyway.....other things I noticed...... Anthony Smith should just be cut. He's a low class idiot and we don't need players like him. At some point he's going to cost us the ball and/or 15 yards at a critical juncture. The Eagles punter took the wind out of our sails at least 3 times, maybe 4. When kicking from the endzone, I got excited as I thought the prospect of getting the ball on the 50 might spark the offense. Not. I think he kicked it to the 28 or something. Nate Washington could have caught a pass that he had 2 hands on to sustain a drive after halftime. Jeff Reed showed me distance I didn't know he had. The announcers were crucifying the Steelers for not kicking the FG late needing two scores, but what they failed to point out in their enjoyment of pointing it out - was that the clock was running and we were out of timeouts. It would have taken a lot of time to run the offense off.....bring the FG unit out.....set....kick...... I think in effect he was licking his wounds and already thinking about The Ravens. I'm not faulting him for not kicking the FG in that situation. I think at minimum 20-30 seconds would have been needed....IF they even got it off before being called for delay of game. Oh, I also think Ben did not ground that ball. He had a guy in the area and it was batted without a chance to get to the line. However, his knee was hitting at the same exact time so you have to think Fatboy Reid would have seen that and challenged it as well. I was glad to see the teams talk after the game. It seemed to me they had a lot of respect for each other. I don't mind losing a close game to a good team on the road. We just need to get our heads out of our asses and fix the O-Line problem for the Ravens and Giants and other teams with a rush.