Finally got to watch the Pittsburgh game...

[Brian Fein]

I was travelling last weekend, so I Tivo'd the Pittsburgh game.  Up to now, I've only heard the radio and seen SportsCenter highlights.  Now that I've watched the game, I like what I saw in that game.  These are my observations.

- Henne is progressing big time.  He looked around and progressed through his reads on nearly every play.  His bad habit of staring down his receiver seems to be a thing of the past.

- The defense, most notably the front 7, seems to be among the league's best.  They are collapsing pockets and running the blitzes better than I've seen in a long time.

- The offensive line doesn't get enough credit for their pass protection.  I noticed a play where Polamalu ran a middle blitz and got pancaked by Pat McQuistan before he even could get a hand on Henne.  And he was in there FAST.  Henne often finishes games with a sparkling uniform, and the blitz pickups on 2 straight plays by the backs are flawless.  This is a big improvement.

- The TE seems to be getting open more often and making an impact in the middle of the field.

- Ricky seems to be running better than Ronnie right now, and offers a big improvement in pass protection.  I still think Ronnie is a better pass-catching back though.

- Our corners are underrated.  More Vontae than the others.  I give a pass on Wallace because that kid's GOOD.  But notice that many guys don't seem to get YAC yards because of the tackling from the corners.

- Chris Clemons has been very solid in the FS position.  I think we may have finally found our guy.

- We still need a whole mess of work on kickoff coverage.

- The call at the end sucked but it was the right call.  And it isn't what cost us the game.  Getting the ball twice in the first quarter inside the 20 and only scoring 6 points is what cost us the game.

I think this team is just as good as Pittsburgh and can probably hang with any team in the league at this point.  Their three losses came to the three best teams in the league, all of whom are 5-1.
- Hung with Pittsburgh till the end
- Hung with the Jets, almost won at the end
- Blown out by the Patriots cause we gave them 21 free points, but winning at halftime.

I think this team, as a whole, is VERY underrated, and if they play every game like they played last week, I think 10-6 is a given, and a better finish is a real possibility.

[CF DolFan]

The NFL just reversed the last call of the game and donated another INT to Henne.  Watch the play. It bounced. Not sure whay they felt the need to do this in the wake of what happened but it is crap if you ask me.

[Brian Fein]

They called it an interception on the field.  I didn't think they could reverse a call after the fact.  It was clearly not an interception and should have been reviewed by the booth, even though it had no impact on the game.

But in my thing above I was referring to the Roethlisberger fumble/recovery review call.

[CF DolFan]

The scoring official recorded it an incompletion becuase that is what it was. In reality it should have been an official review but the refs wanted out of there. As such it was changed back to an interception during this week. 

[Doc-phin]

I agree with you completely Brian.  And as you have demonstrated, I am seeing more positive than negative after that game.  However, there is one thing I think I would add that although negative has to be included...

It is ridiculous to be in the red zone after a turnover and run the ball three times in a row to the same side on essentially the same play call when that is the strength of the team you are going against and you got stuffed on first down.  Did we not do our homework?  Our run game has really been underwhelming all year and the Steelers defense has been stellar against the run all year.  It was as if we were saying thanks for the field goal the minute they awarded us the fumble. 

Henne played just fine out there this week, but the play calling was silly at times.  In fact Henne really did a great job of not leaving yards on the field.  You could see on many plays that the deep routes were there just to clear out the intermediate stuff.  Kinda hard to tell where the responsibility should lie for the bad final possession though. 

Lastly, we really need to get some break out runs going or it is going to get harder and harder for our pass game.

[MikeO]

college game today. Syracuse vs Cincy. Same exact play happened. Syracuse FB crosses the goaline and fumbles. Ref calls TD. But during the play the FB fumbled and the syracuse o-linemen jumps on the ball in the endzone.

Well by NFL standards what we heard this week once the play is called TD the play is dead and the fumble and who recovers it is meaningless. Well, in today's game the refs went to replay, said the guy fumbled, and even though the ref signaled TD....since Syracuse recovered in the endzone it was a TD Syracuse.

These refs are so lost on this play in general its crazy. I know college and NFL rules are slightly different but on a basic play like this it shouldn't be