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Not only did they survive that game, they hit the Jags in the mouth! Did you watch the game? They beat the living hell out of Leftwich!This talk of the Stillers hitting the Colts and the Colts being finesse is a joke! The Colts will come to play and let the better team that night win!
And when are you going to factor in the fact that Maddox has played 2 games, Batch has played 1, and the Steelers spent most of the 2nd half of at least 3 games (Tennessee, Houston, and Cincy) doing virtually nothing but running the ball, gaining yards, and killing the clock?In my opinion, this game will come down to three things, and the questions are all on the Steelers' side.
As a Steeler fan, I'm not at all optimistic about this game. Fortunately, I don't think a loss this week will be too devastating as long as they take care of business later on. It's actually real simple why Indy should win this game handily--Look at 3rd down %. The Steelers are one of the worst teams in the nfl defending against 3rd down (regardless of how long the distance is). The colts are one of the best 3rd down offenses in the nfl. You can blame the Steelers 3 losses on Maddox, Batch or whatever but I blame it on the fact that the Steelers can't defend when they need to. I would be shocked if the Steelers can keep Indy under 28 pts and even more shocked if the Steelers keep the game close. We just don't match up well with them--period.
I hope your kidding, this is the NFL, not NCAA. Any team is good enough to beat anyone. Pitt happens to be better than most. They most certianly are good enough to win this game and injuries have made them look far more average than they really are thus far. Looks like all the players are ready to go for this one though and it should be a great game.
I'll play along. Name 15 NFL teams who are better than the Steelers with a healthy Ben in there.
I'm not saying that at all. I do think Indy should be favored on Monday, but that doesn't mean they will win. I'm also saying that as long as Indy is unbeaten, there will be a "Team X will beat the Colts" thread - and just saying that this is the week the Colts goes down doesn't mean anyone who predicts that is a genius unless you said many, many weeks ago that the Colts were going to go unbeaten until they faced "Team X."
No doubt that people are taking a few games the Steelers played without Big Ben and somehow making the Steelers out to be an average team. Not everyone is doing that, but some are. Marvin88's comment is ignorance at it's finest on this board.Can Manning light up the Steelers' secondary? Sure he can. But I'd caution anyone who think it's a given to look at what the Steelers did to an almost equally potent passing offense of the Bengals a few weeks back.
How can you say that? Pittsburgh barely beat Baltimore AT HOME with Roethlisberger, so you cannot assume a win in Baltimore is a given even with him.They likely would have had a better chance of winning at home against Jacksonville with Roethlisberger, but again, you don't know that. They lost at home to the 6-4 Patriots, so why are you assuming a home win against a 7-3 team is a given?
Yes, I can. Easily. They lost by 6 to the Jaguars in OT in a game that Maddox turned the ball over 4 or 5 times. It was an abolutely brutal performance by Maddox. I think it's very safe to say that the Steelers win the game, probably comfortably, if Ben plays. You don't have to agree if you don't want to, but if you had watched the game, you'd know what I mean.
Those are fair points, but I just don't like playing that "If Player X had played, then Said Team would have automatically won instead of lost" game. What matters is what happened. The Steelers are 7-3 and in good shape to win their division again, so I would say they are doing okay this year.
I agree those comments are foolish. The Steelers are definitely one of the top 5 teams in the NFL.
Indy 31Pitt 20
Way to keep the faith.. Hard enough to beat them let alone in their home.. good luck.. I think Manning takes apart that swiss cheese pass D.. IMO
You're sure, huh? He might, but I wouldn't be THAT sure about it.Carson Palmer's line against the Steelers was:
Swiss cheese pass defense? Where do you get this? The Steelers pass defense is as good as just about anyone's in the NFL, save for maybe Chicago (which has faced a LOT of teams that can't throw the ball much.)
They are currently 18th in passing avg per game. To me doesn't sound like Chicago or Jacksonville.. Put it this way the 19th ranked pass D is Arizona.. Stop living in the past..
I'm not living in the past, I just possess an ability you apparently lack - the ability to look beyond the obvious stats and see what the real story is. You're going to point to the Steelers' pass defense being ranked 18th based strictly on yards allowed per game. What you don't take into consideration is the fact that the Steelers almost always get up early on opponents, forcing them to throw almost exclusively in the second half of games. In addition, the run defense is solid enough that many teams abandon the ground game early on. Steelers' opponents pass the ball 57% of the time - the Steelers currently face an average of 34.9 pass attempts per game, more than all but 5 teams in the NFL. So, it's not shocking that they're 18th in yards allowed - in fact, it's pretty good considering they're 27th in "fewest attempts faced." In addition, despite facing the 6th most attempts, they're currently ranked 10th in plays allowed of 40+ yards, with 4, and 8th in plays allowed of 20+ yards, with 26. Now, let's look at some other meaningful numbers...Yards allowed per attempt - 5.91. 3rd in the NFL.
There are far more important stats than total yards allowed per game.The Steelers' pass defense is very good and they have a lot of speed back there. If anything, the pass defense has been the achilles heel of the defense in recent years, but the emergence of Ike Taylor and improved play of Chris Hope and Troy Polamalu has added a lot of speed that they've lacked. Townsend is a good, steady cover corner, and they have good depth when teams spread them out.
Agreed. It's easy when you don't watch the games to glance at the "Total Passing Defense" column and say - "oh, Pittsburgh is only #18 vs. the pass - the Colts will shred them." If you dig into the numbers a little, however, you see that 206 (or whatever it is) passing yards per game allowed is not so bad when teams are throwing it 35 times a game.I don't think the Steelers will shut down the Colts passing attack by any means. What I do believe is that they'll do as good a job of controlling it as just about any other team could be expected to. In games against teams with good pass defenses (Steelers historically, Patriots recently, Jaguars the last year or two) - the Colts tend to struggle a little bit. That's my only point, don't look for Manning to go for 400 yards and 3-4 TDs tonight. I think we're going to see a closer game than many are anticipating.
They fared VERY well against Cincy's passing game, and I'll be interested to see how they fare tonight.
This is probably the biggest key to the game tonight.
How exactly are the Steelers a "finesse" defense? It seems to me a defense that was considered "finesse" wouldn't go a season and a half without allowing a single back to cross the 100-yard mark. I'm just not sure what you mean here.
Hmmmm... could it be because the Steelers are anything but a finesse defense? Nah, couldn't be.
I hope your incendiary comment to open this post wasn't directed at me. In fact, I don't think any of the Steelers fans posting in this thread have said a damn thing to warrant being called morons. I have seen nothing but legitimate points made by both Steelers and Colts backers. You should also refrain from calling people morons and then closing the post by saying the Steelers will "lose a game in the division this week, but gain it back at home against the Bengals next week" when the Steelers and Colts are not in the same division.And yes, you can lose games because of one player, when that player is the quarterback. If you turn the ball over 5 times in one game or fold like a house of cards every time the pocket collapses, you can single-handedly kill your team's chances of victory. The Steelers lost 2 of their 3 games with their 3rd string QB playing. It's no accident that they're 7-1 with Roethlisberger/Batch at the helm and 0-2 (with both losses in OT) with Maddox under center. Yes, they're a mediocre team playing with their 3rd string QB, but I'd like to see how Indy would fare with their 3rd string QB in there, or the Patriots or Bengals for that matter. Insinuating that a "good" team can go to their bench-warmer at the most important position in the game and not suffer any significant drop-off is nuts.
What does Hines Ward have to do with how Manning will do against the Steelers secondary? I wonder how good the Colts would be if Manning went down. If you'd have watched the games, it was evident that the Steelers lost those games because Maddox played terrible. The QB is one position that can ruin an entire team with turnovers and poor decisions, and Maddox did just that.
