Ray_T

someone needs to take the blame. wouldnt surprise me if the GM gave this directive. in reality if it is a personell problem that falls under the GMS responsibiity (mostly). As the GM isnt gonna put himself on the hotseat, the firing of the OC seemed like a reasonable firing without completely upending the team

he gets his team to the playoffs the vast majority of the time. for me that at least makes him above average. compare that to many of the coaches who have either never made the playoffs or just barely got a sniff (1 appearance) hes looking pretty good. I just dont think hes in there with the elite coaches.

also as an fyi. I watched the replay on that last kick that was missed. maybe it was the camera angle, but it looked to me like the ball was held crooked on that last kick he missed. did anyone else notice this?

ummm yeah. again.

Lets leave his bad sense of style out of this. its about what he does on the field. Hes a good player. Just cannot consistently stay healthy. seems to miss between 1 and 4 games most years. given his age, I expect this situation will start to worsen now.

for sure. hes not a bad coach at all. honestly if you need proof, look at what fields did in terms of wins and losses in Pittsburgh and then look at what he did in New York. that should say it all. Tomlin was able to make him productive enough to get wins. and that is the name of the game.

Im sure they wouldnt have signed him if the coach wasnt onboard with the decision. to the extent that Tomlin benched fields and then the team let him walk in free agency.... I think that says it all. but fields is a mediocre QB at best and Tomlin got wins out of the guy last year in a relief role. The best organizations are not just a GM making decisions. the GM and coach should be in lockstep and they should both agree on what the team is doing in the majority of the personell moves. There will always be times when they do not agree with each other, but that should be rare.

he did a lot of decent things. playoff record in recent years not great, but he did make the playoffs reasonably consistently. he also (in my opinion) made the right call in letting fields walk. I firmly believe that. while Rodgers was just a band aid solution, they still got to the playoffs with him, so the decision wasnt necessarily a bad one. but I do think this is better for all concerned. Most coaches have a shelf life. I do believe his shelf life in Pittsburgh has expired. good coach. but maybe a change of scenery is in order for both parties. he is still under contract, so he cannot go to another team without the steelers agreement. though I'm sure there is some sort of clause in the contract that governs this.

well, we all knew this was an issue for the team. I fully expect an OL to be drafted in round 1 of the next draft or a top notch free agent to be signed in the offseason. (possibly both)

agreed. which is why Kittle has been exceptionally good since CMC came to the team. CMC is by far the bigger threat, so he draws the safety coverage. there are some LB's who have the speed to cover kittle but most of the time you need a DB/safety on him as well. This (primarily) is the reason this offense is as successful as it is. this setup causes mismatches all over the field. if you cover those two with a safety/DB then you likely need a LB covering a WR. so your #3 WR puts up better numbers than you would normally expect. and if you note, when the starting QB got injured the backup came in and the offense was equally effective. That is because the effectiveness of the offense is based on the system and personell. not on the QB. so long as the QB is capable of playing within the system, the offense will still run effectively. this setup likely results in a lot more zone defense play calls because if you play man D you get beaten on the mismatch I spoke to earlier in this note. Its really quite a nice setup. I dont like shanny. I need to be honest about that, but I have to respect what hes been able to accomplish with this team.

that was one of the things that NEEDED to happen if they were gonna win. if it turns into a shootout, I'd like Herberts chances of winning that kind of game.

I think the mistake is that teams are having a LB covering him out of the backfield and a LB isnt fast enough to cover him. its a guaranteed mismatch. the only solution is a safety. most safetys have the speed to cover a guy like him. shouldnt be wasting anyones time having a LB cover CMC.

37 years old and 9 years out of football? I dont think anybody is knocking on the door. what I cant believe is that people are still talking about this? if he was gonna get a shot it would have been once that lawsuit was settled. there was some noise at that time, but in the end, no takers.

damn, that guy is always getting injured. Timing on this one couldnt possibly be worse. if they wanna beat Philly they need that guy.

fact. that was a poor performance by the kicker. in fact, if he makes one of those, then the Pack only need a FG on the final drive. not a TD. Nice performance by Caleb. he really lit it up at the end when he needed to. this seems to be a theme with this guy. hes showing signs of figuring things out at the NFL level. if this progresses, he could be a scary qb within a year or two.