No Offense, That Was Ugly

So who called the '76 Steelers and told them to wear teal?

Yeah, the final score may have been 9-0, but make no mistake, the Steelers were physically whipped on Monday night unlike any game since 2003. The Steelers nine-game winning streak is now history. Credit the Jaguars, who decided to blitz Ben Roethlisberger and gamble that he wouldn't be able to make them pay--they were right.

Well, now we know, Ben Roethlisberger was rusty in his return to action after an appendectomy. He didn't have his usual accuracy, he wasn't helped by a completely ineffective rushing attack, and his offensive line struggled to handle the Jacksonville pass rush. But in reality, it was hard to tell at times if Ben was ready to be back. As you may have heard on the broadcast, Big Ben has lost five games as a pro--three of them have come in starts after he's missed a game with an injury.

One of Roethlisberger's best attributes is his ability to shrug off the big hit, then escape to make a big play, or, if needed, stand in the pocket and take a big hit, unloading the ball just before the blitzer arrives. That ability wasn't there on Monday. If you go back and watch Monday night's game or when you catch the highlights on SportsCenter, watch Roethlisberger's feet. Ben's mechanics broke down when he was faced with an unblocked blitzer. In the first quarter, he threw a pass with an exaggerated ducking motion to escape a hit, which caused the pass to sail high. In the fourth quarter, against another unblocked defensive back, Roethlisberger turned his entire body to the side while throwing, resulting in a pass well wide of the mark. And on his final interception, it was the same story, an unblocked defensive back was coming free at Ben, who saw him and unloaded the pass while turning his feet and his entire body to avoid the hit. In the long run, it may keep Ben healthy, but it also means that he was well wide of the mark way too often. When Ben gets in trouble, it's usually his mechanics, and on Monday night, his footwork was in rough shape.

There definitely will be some things the Steelers have to learn from this loss. They struggled to handle the Jaguars blitz, and the offensive line lost the battle of the line of scrimmage. Thankfully, the Steelers won't face a better set of defensive tackles then the ones that erased their running game on Monday. The other concern for the Steelers is that the Jaguars were able to simply take Pittsburgh's wideouts out of the game. With the blitzing, there were plenty of times that the Steelers wide receivers had single coverage, but were unable to get open.

Roethlisberger will be fine. He's still one of the best young quarterbacks in the game, he just had a rough week, and one where the rest of the offense couldn't help pick up the slack. Hopefully the bright side of this week is that it means he'll be back into regular season form in time for the Bengals game next week, which is an even bigger game than this week's because of its divisional implications.