Steelers Week 17 Reaction

 OK, I am going to be keeping this one short for a lot of reasons but mostly because the game was on almost a week ago now and it was not the type of game a Steelers fan would go back and watch the highlights for so my memory is fuzzy. That wasn't very fun and Christmasy of the Steelers! The one saving grace was that the dismantling happened on Christmas day while I was surrounded by loved ones and socially allowed to drink starting at 9am. Otherwise, as Quin can attest, I would have been committed to misery during the Holidays. Lets get into it I guess: 

Red Zone Turnovers

To be perfectly fair to Russell Wilson, the Steelers were kind of shafted by the schedule late in the season. Christmas Day concluded the end of a 3 games in 10 day stretch featuring the Steelers facing 3 of the best teams in the NFL in the Eagles, Ravens then Chiefs. In all 3 of them Russell Wilson came away with a turnover in the red zone. I spoke a lot in the past weeks about the 14 point swing that a red zone turnover can represent, and although that didn't make the difference in this game it is still a major concern for this team going into the playoffs. Your QB is going to have turnovers eventually in the NFL, it happens to the best of them and I can accept that, but what separates the good teams from the great teams is the timing of these turnovers. Wilson has now turned the ball over in key moments just as the Steelers offense is starting to get their momentum going. Against lesser opponents, the Steelers defense is usually enough to keep them in the game after a big blunder, but against the Chiefs, mistakes will kill you. Justin Fields has been nursing an injury lately and hopefully he comes back strong for the last week but I would be interested in giving him a look in some of these red zone situations just to throw a new wrinkle at defenses. 

Jaylen Warren 

Najee Harris has actually come on pretty strong in the second half of the season and particularly in the second half of games, he tends to have big runs. To start games however, I feel like he almost always gets the first touch and is stuffed immediately for 1 yard. The Steelers in the last 3 weeks have been starting their first 2 drives with Najee Harris and watching them go nowhere. The 3rd drive then hits and they go to Jaylen Warren who now 3 times in a row has given life to the Steelers offense. It was no different against KC, Warren is the best back on this team. My favorite part about Jaylen Warren is he seems to get 1-2 more yards than you expect on every single carry. He's one of those backs who's legs don't stop moving whether he's being hit behind the line or up field for a 20 yard gain. Once Warren gets going, the bruising style of Najee slides right in against a more tired defense and the Steelers start rolling again. Warren's effectiveness running the ball really opened up things in the play action for Russel Wilson as well as in the first half the Steelers started gaining some momentum doing what they do best. As we saw though, a strong running game only works if your defense can get some stops and against talents like Patrick Mahomes, that's going to be tough. 

Netflix Coverage

The biggest positive I can takeaway from this game is that the Netflix NFL coverage was nothing short of spectacular. For starters, they got great commentary crews for each of the games with the Steelers getting the legendary Ian Eagle paired with TJ's brother JJ Watt in the booth. When there was a stoppage in play, instead of hitting us with endless commercials, the broadcast cut to Drew Brees and Chris Hansen to break down what we just saw. Maybe it's just because I wasn't watching commercials, but I felt like the stoppages were shorter and the game moved along a lot faster. Now I know that this was the NFL's "global rollout" of games on Christmas Day and so they wanted to make the product as watchable and accessible as possible, this might not be an always thing, but I really enjoyed what they did. I've always said that we need the streaming services to make a big run at live sports, the way it's set up now is just begging to be pirated by rational consumers. Netflix, good job. 

Contenders? Pretenders?

Ok I've had some time to calm down after the losses. This is pretty much what any reasonable fan could've expected from the Steelers this year. Beat up on teams on their level and get humbled by the true contenders in the NFL. The Steelers had a ton of momentum coming into this deadly 3 game stretch and they were gunning for the number 1 seed in the NFL. After 3 straight brutal losses, it can be confirmed that the Steelers are not real contenders. Still though, in a year with 1 NFL level WR on the entire roster, finishing with a record of 10-7 in the worst case scenario and making the playoffs is a positive outcome.

And that's it! I was pissed that I promised myself I'd react to every Steelers game this year because I did not want to remember this. As a result, I barely did remember it and you guys got some frustrated big picture ramblings instead. This one will probably go down as my worst react post of the season, but I really do think my other 15 have been pretty good and getting better! Hopefully the Steelers can get some momentum back on Sunday against the Bengals as they now prepare for playoff football. As always, even when you let me down, go Steelers!