SteelerWatch

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Troy Polamalu is being honored by the Downtown YMCA today as their Person of the Year.  He is also forming a foundation to support war vets.  But the bigger story isn’t what he has done, so much as it is what he said regarding his actions, that urged me to write this.  His general attitude is something that players all over the league should pay close attention to, particularly those guys with tiger stripes on their helmets (and a guy in Atlanta who has a fondness for pit bulls).

Sayeth Troy: “I don’t really feel comfortable taking credit for anything.  To me it’s something we’re supposed to do.”

strong>Also sayeth Troy: “The easiest thing to do is to give money, especially when you have a high-paying job.  I think when you sacrifice time is when you really sacrifice something.”

Pay attention, players.  The standard to which you need to live has been set.

Last year was a comedy of errors — albeit, not a very funny one — for the Steelers. On offense, our quarterback was taken out before the season started in part by a Chrysler, but mostly because of the immature mistake of feeling invincible. He quickly came crashing back to earth — with a quick but sudden stop on a windshield along the way — and, to the dismay of we the loyal, he stayed there until the beginning of November.

But that was just the beginning of the problems. We suffered from an underachieving offensive line, an inexplicably — and inexcusably — passive defense, and worst of all, we had a disinterested head coach. Those three problems have been quickly and definitively addressed this off-season, and now that we’ve reached the midpoint of our annual Wait From Hell, it’s time to analyze what’s been done and what remains.

Block, Dangit!
Beyond Ben Roethlisberger’s quick trip over a car hood and the subsequent slide in his confidence and play, the offense had a major failing in 2006. Ironically, it was the part of the team that has been the most consistent throughout the last decade.

The offensive line suffered from a severe lack of, well, blocking ability. Sure, run blocking was alright — Willie Parker did, after all, post better numbers than during the 2005 Super Bowl run. But the life, the drive, the passion…it just wasn’t there. What turned out to be a four-yard run should have been six yards. Had the hole been ever so slightly larger on numerous occassions, Parker likely would have broke loose a lot more often. But running wasn’t the problem.

No, the real failing for the Steelers in 2006 was the pass blocking, or at least the lack thereof. Roethlisberger, already working with shattered confidence (and a shattered face), was in need of help from his front five, and only two delivered on a regular basis. Fortunately, that was his left tackle and left guard. The only bad part was that it meant Roethlisberger got to see the behemouth who would wind up nailing him making a mad bum rush for his head. It doesn’t help wounded confidence when you can’t even depend on the guys who have your back. Or front. Or sides.

In my own defense, I have no defense.
Defensively, there just wasn’t any pursuit. Maybe it was bad coaching (I’ll get to that in a minute). Maybe it was poor conditioning. Maybe it was a simple lack of focus. Whatever the case, the defense just played at a markedly lower level of intensity after they left Detroit in February last year.

What should we do, coach? … Coach?
Of course, it doesn’t help when your coach doesn’t care about the poor performance. Don’t worry about what Bill Cowher said in public. He just didn’t give a damn anymore. His goal was achieved, his decision for the future was made, and he had no reason to fight, especially after starting the season off so horrendously.

And to the future…
The Steelers have quietly had a big off-season. But then, that’s how this team operates. They do their thing and leave the speculation to the rest of the country. So far, they’ve replaced a Super Bowl-winning coach and most of his staff, released one of the most visible linebackers in the league when they gave Joey Porter his walking papers, revamped their defensive scheme, replaced their offensive playbook and drafter a…punter?

Mike Tomlin talks RooneySpeak better than anyone to come along since Chuck Noll, from Bill Cowher to Dick LeBeau to Kevin Colbert. He has a quiet confidence and a “player’s coach” demeanor that has really brought out the best in his players, sans one 300-pound, red-headed man-child who shall remain nameless, but not blameless. Throughout the first few months of his tenure, he has managed to distract his players from the negative and light a fresh new fire under the team. Players are voluntarily working out, often as groups, during their personal time. Attendance at voluntary team functions has been tremendous, as the players are eager to prove their worth to their new leadership — not to mention to get the taste of a bitter, failed season out of their mouths. Players who previously left the leading to other members of the team have begun to step up and take over those leadership positions, both from the departed (Peezy) and those who no longer deserve to lead (Faneca).

Offensively, new coordinator Bruce Arians has created a fresh, new playbook that maintains the Steeler status quo while incorporating new wrinkles like four wideouts on first downs and prominent use of three tight ends. Roethlisberger has spent an inordinate amount of time (for him at least) either speaking with the coaching staff or with his head in a playbook. He’s bonded with Ken Anderson, his new QB coach. Quiet Willie Parker has been relatively outspoken in praising the new offense that will put the ball in his hands in situations that might actually present running room instead of a wall of defenders.

Across the line of scrimmage, the defense has been loaded up too. Defensive end Aaron Smith has been re-signed, and on the other side of the line, Brett Kiesel is learning the nuances of a new philosophy that will have him moving around before the snap to create a whole new level of confusion for opposing offenses. The team added two first-round-quality linebackers in the draft when they picked up Lawrence Timmons and converted end LaMarr Woodley. The secondary should benefit from the return of Ricardo Colclough and the likely emegence of guided missile Anthony Smith. Add in the fact that most of the cornerbacks have been working out in Orlando with conditioning specialists, and this could be a huge year for the defensive backs. The team is going to stay primarily with the familiar 3-4 defensive alignment, meaning there won’t be much of a learning curve for the veterans.

From a strategic standpoint, the biggest move in the league this year may have come when the Steelers moved up in the fourth round of the draft to pick up Dan Sepulveda, a linebacker-turned-punter who has on at least one occassion put up a punt of more than 50 yards and then cleaned the returner’s clock before most of his teammates made it downfield. He punts like Ray Guy and hits like Greg Lloyd, which should result in much better defensive field position for the Steelers this year. Rumor has it he regularly boomed punts of more than 60 yards during workouts this month, putting him in on a level he only shares with the Cowboys’ Matt McBriar. Add in the possibility (purely speculation at this point) that he may be capable of taking over kickoff duties as well, and we could see a lot more touchbacks in 2007 than we have in the ‘Burgh in a quarter century.

It remains to be seen how all the new pieces of the puzzle will fit together. But on the surface, at least, this season has the makings of a contender at the least, and a champion if everyone really gives it the effort they were lacking in 2006.

I write a post about how news is already slow right now, and shortly thereafter the team goes on a…a…a doing-something spree. Let’s skip the gristle and get down to the bone:

1) Steeler assistant sends rude, crude and sexual joke to colleagues. Steelers o-line coach Larry Z. “accidentally” forwards it on further — including to His Highness, league commish Roger Goodell. This comes, of course, on the heels of Goodell’s new league conduct policy, which specifically singles out things of a sexual nature, and makes most things short of playing on Sunday and shaving twice a week a violation of league rules, regardless of whether they violate any actual laws. I’d imagine that would include a certain pair of Redskins publicly stating their support for Michael Vick and his band of traveling KillerMutts. No one expects the two assistants to be punished, but I still think Rog should rub their faces against the screen and say, “No!” Of course, that may have the complete opposite of the desired effect.

One thing worth mentioning: this story was broken by ProFootballTalk.com. They are now officially 2-for-17,331 for accurate reporting. Congrats guys, you just doubled your success level! Bear in mind, this is the same site that runs the Turd Watch and has the Steelers in the top 5 turd-producers a la Richard Siegler, even though the team cut ties with the player prior to his arrest (and, no doubt, because of the warrant). Needless to say, they rank one spot below the third cousin to the Prince of Wales’ chef’s girlfriend on my list of valued NFL news sources.

2) Alan Faneca skips more voluntary workouts. I don’t know how this qualifies as news at this point, considering he said he wouldn’t be there — and the fact that we, the media, have already beat this story to death several times over. If this story was a cat, it would be clinging desperately to life number nine at this point.

3) The Steelers have released Chris Gardocki. File this one under “whoa! Never saw that coming!” You’ll find it in the Sarcasm & Irony Department.

4) Did you hear the Steelers are moving to a new home city? The team will be dropping anchor in Dallas come January 2011 in that ginormous new stadium being built to house the Dallas Cowboys. Of course, after they win the Super Bowl they’re coming back to the ‘Burgh.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

While general news has been slow lately, I’ve been even slower, and I’d imagine at least one other person is wondering why. I hope.

SteelerWatch is in the process of picking up to drop anchor somewhere else. For the last 17 years, this displaced Steeler fan has lived in Newark, Delaware. Now, I’m headed south for personal reasons, to the home state of Willie Parker (and new home town of our now-former head coach, Bill Cowher) in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina.

That means new items will be a little less common until on or after June 5th. The entire move will be completed even before the Steelers complete their OTAs, so more of the Faneca soap opera is bound to find its way to the site.

Please hang with me. I’ll still post all the earth-shattering news (for instance, if James Harrison is traded to the Patriots in exchange for Tom Brady, Rodney Harrison, Bill Belichick’s cutoff sweatshirts and a reasonable likeness of the entire cast of Seinfeld carved out of butter, you’ll find out about it here) but the smaller stories I love to cover but don’t have time for between packing boxes will have to be overlooked for the next two weeks or so. Thanks for your loyalty, and I look forward to picking the pace up again soon!

Thanks to Mondesishouse.com for the heads-up: It seems the person Alan Faneca was mad at Saturday was none other than head coach Mike Tomlin himself.

Tomlin apparently called the guard out during a morning team meeting, saying he wasn’t going to put up with that type of distraction for the team. Faneca proceeded to throw a temper tantrum by skipping the morning practice session. Later that day Tomlin stated he doesn’t have a personal issue with Big Al.

Way to go Mike. SteelerWatch commends your blunt approach to crybaby millionaires.

Four-three. Three-four. Two-five?

The folks at the PG are reporting that defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau, master of making quarterbacks spend their day wondering, “where dey?” plans to use defensive end Brett Kiesel as more of a roving linebacker than a player with his hand on the ground.

LeBeau’s mastery of the zone blitz is unparalleled. That’s understandable, considering he invented it. But now he’s taking it to a while new level by potentially having a defensive end drop into coverage on running backs and tight ends, or blitz from the outside, or blitz from the inside, or make sno-cones for the refs.

This is exactly what the team needed to do: switch up a defense that, while dominant over the last ten years, had become stagnant and predictable. By creating movement before the snap — something that had been mysteriously missing last season, due in part to the injuries sustained by Troy Polamalu and also in part to former head coach Bill Cowher’s disinterested attitude — they will create more opportunities to confuse opposing offenses and put more pressure on the quarterback.

Read the whole article here.

All in all, it was a good minicamp from most indications. Even though Alan Faneca, the latest Pittsburgh goat, pitched a fit to the media prior to the start of camp — ever since the hiring of Mike Tomlin, really — the whole thing went off without a hitch.

I know this, because no one in Pittsburgh media made more than a peep about it all weekend.

Every now and again, I make my way northwest to a little town about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh — my hometown, crammed unceremoniously at the approximate midpoint on route 30 between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. From Friday night through Sunday afternoon, I didn’t hear a single mention of minicamp. Not on television. Not in any newspaper. Not even in town (even though I only spent about 15 minutes there). And that means Alan behaved, for the most part.

Oh, he got upset Saturday morning. Someone made some sort of crack to him, or maybe about him but within earshot. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know for certain. But in typical NFL star, holier-than-thou fashion, Faneca disappeared from morning practice. After his pouting and self-imposed timeout, and following a talk with Tomlin, he returned and completed the rest of camp.

He still wants out. Unfortunately, a bunch of overpaid guards this off-season forced the Steelers’ hand. Guys who will only make it to a Pro Bowl if they can get tickets are now being paid millions more than our once-beloved leader, and now he wants to be in that club. So be it. Like every other player on every other sports team, he’s replaceable. It won’t be easy — it will probably hurt a lot, actually — but he will be replaced. And the Steelers will keep on keeping on amongst the league’s elite. I once called him vital to the team’s success, and he has been. But you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. For Alan, that means getting paid by a team desperate enough to shell out $5 million-plus per season to a guy with nine seasons on his frame. For Tomlin, Dan Rooney, Kevin Colbert and the entire Steelers organization, it means replacing yet another highly gifted cog with someone younger and somehow (hopefully) not missing a beat.

So, Faneca wants out after all. It’s not just unhappiness now; he’s officially disgruntled. That’s a cancer that can only grow, and there are too many people on this team up for contract talks in the next two seasons.

What to do? How about a trade? he’s been asking for it since February, apparently, and he’s good enough to get something big in return. Maybe a less-qualified guard and a draft pick? Whatever we get, we need to do it soon.

Al, you’ve been good to us. But now you must go.

Now-former Steeler linebacker Richard Seigler, a first-team blocking dummy (read: practice squader) for the last two seasons, was arrested Thursday based on a Las Vegas warrant for allegedly running a prostitution ring. He was arrested in Pittsburgh the same day he was released by the team.

Given the Steelers’ history of dealing with people who have had run-ins with the law (see Bam “Puff ‘n Pass” Morris) and the timing of his release, it stands to reason that the warrant was the direct cause of his release.

Clearly his practice squad pay wasn’t covering the bills, so he began pimping. While the NFL has had its share of odd violations of the law — and, in the case of Ricky Williams and his continuing drug saga, odd violators of the law — this one will probably go down in history as one of the weirdest ways for an NFL player to get arrested. Most of them just stick to peddling pot and toting nines.

Will the Steelers re-sign Alan Faneca?

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Well, it looks like we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Left guard Alan Faneca and strong safety Troy Polamalu — two of the four players SteelerWatch has named indispensable — will participate in the minicamp that begins today. Also joining them will be Clark Haggans, who missed the voluntary workouts to be with his wife and new child.

While Polamalu had been excused from voluntary workouts last month due to personal reasons, some speculated it was because of frustration over non-existent contract negotiations. For Faneca, though, there was no speculation. Plain and simple, he wants his new contract.

While he has been frustrated over the Steelers passing on former offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt former offensive line coach Russ Grimm in favor of new head coach Mike Tomlin, Faneca has been involved in stagnant contract negotiations. Not playing in his favor is the fact that the team prefers youthful players while the bruiser is a nine-year veteran. As offensive linemen go, he probably only has three more Pro Bowl-caliber years left in him, but is likely seeking a contract that will keep him in black and gold for the remainder of his career — five years or more is a safe wager. While the Steelers don’t have much proven talent in reserve on the line, they truly are loaded with big, young bodies. They have guys like Chukki Okobi, Marvin Philip, Chris Kemoeatu, Trai Essex and some new draft picks and rookie free agents waiting in the wings. And don’t forget the signing of Sean Mahan this off-season.

I feel that Faneca is blowing the situation out of proportion, given the massive turnover in the coaching staff. Under the old regime, the starters in good standing generally received a contract extension a season before their contract expired. however, with a mostly new coaching staff, the new group most likely wants to see who steps up before making any new, long-term commitments. That’s especially understandable when talking about a guy who has nine pro seasons under his belt.