Are the Steelers still smashmouth?
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Four and five wide receivers. Spreading the field. A small, quick running back.
Sound like the finesse-driven Indianapolis Colts? No, it’s your Pittsburgh Steelers.
For a team that has spent decades pounding the ball up the middle and, for the most part, only throwing when throwing was necessary, these terms sound like a conflict of interest — nay! — they sound like oxymorons. The two philosophies just can’t co-exist.
Or can they?
Offensive coordinator Bruce Arians, who has to follow offensive geniuses like Mike Mularkey and Ken Whisenhunt, has decided to take a 15-year-old playbook that consists mostly of power running plays and clear out the fluff.
Gone are the tattered corners of a now-bloated offense. Loose pages stuffed in after the fact? Adios. The new playbook is clean, concise, and contains wrinkles that have only been seen in Pittsburgh when some of those West Coast teams showed up to play. In other words, very rarely.
“Did you just say, ‘West Coast’?”
The idea makes most of us who remember the days of Jerome Bettis, and further back to guys named Franco and Rocky, shudder with fear. “We don’t play cutsie football in Pittsburgh!” “You can’t throw deep in December!”
To be fair to Arians, he’s not throwing the old guard out. He’s simply giving them new toys to play with. Some of you remember, not so fondly, the days of the 1980s, or the late 1990s, when the Steelers’ offensive gameplan was “run-run-pass-punt”. Arians is, in actuality, getting back to the very basic levels of football: power, skill and brains. If you outsmart your opponent, you’re already two thirds of the way to victory and a step up on the competition. He is removing the overly predictable nature that has clung to the Steelers like a frightened child to its mother. He’s taking a team that almost never passes on first down and — eek! — teaching them to pass on first down. He’s taking formations that were rarely used and making them prominent features, not for the sake of giving the team a complete makeover,but rather to give opposing defenses yet another wrinkle to worry about while giving the offense new opportunities to make plays.
See, Arians learned something from his days in Cleveland, playing against the Steelers: smashmouth is not about who hits the hardest. It’s an attitude. It’s walking on to the field with the swagger of champions, with a look that simply says, “we already won, and the game hasn’t even started yet.”
Two years ago, after falling to 7-5, the Steelers re-learned the meaning of smashmouth. And they went on to win four regular season games, three playoffs and the Super Bowl by using a creative mix of running and passing, by out-thinking opponents, and by convincing themselves that they were not going to be beaten by anyone but themselves.
Last year, the team lost sight of that, and it showed. Now, by opening up to the ever-changing nature of the NFL, Arians and coach Mike Tomlin are bringing discipline and a new constant to a team that learned the hard way that they had lost their edge and their ability to intimidate.
They’re bringing Smashmouth back.
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July 21st, 2007 at 9:26 am
I think we have the potential to be, but not as a base philosophy.
July 21st, 2007 at 10:44 am
I’ll believe it when I see it. Smash-mouth starts up front with the O-line, and so far the word that best describes the new regime’s handling of the O-line is “neglect”. What was their plan on replacing Hartings? Mahan? What the hell’s a Mahan? I’ve yet to see a single word printed about him to suggest he’s actually any good. Hell, nobody’s even sure he’s actually going to beat out Okobi, and the only reason anybody can seem to give for expecting him to crack the starting lineup *somewhere* is the size of his contract. The draft? If that’s not neglect, I don’t know what is. The O-line seriously underperformed last year, and yet no significant pick in that area. But instead, ooooo, let’s take a pass-catching tight end. I don’t smell the tiniest whiff of smashmouth here anywhere. I hope I’m wrong.
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Wow. I remember conversations with you about how West Coast is evil. This reads like you are attempting to make yourself believe. Remember someone called Tommy Gun and a 6-10 season? Oh the good old days.
A formation that removes Krieder from the field of play is a bad formation. Nuff Said
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:07 pm
I never said it was okay to use it exclusively; I just said it’s a good idea to switch things up give more looks for the defense to try and read. Anyone who has played the game will tell you that the most important aspect of football is the mental aspect.
July 24th, 2007 at 7:42 am
From playing the game i have learned that the most important thing is to have a D that tackles and an O that scores.
Perhaps we should look at the last 30 years of football and find out which teams have won the big game. Ones with a run focus or ones with a pass focus (all types of O focus on “balance” but they all lean toward either pass/run).