Two things came to me while watching that game last night: one, welcome back football – my how we’ve missed you!
And two: what a perfect trap game Vegas had for its opening night in the NFL. The Steelers at home without their quarterback against one of the media’s chic teams this season? Perfect, I can still hear Vegas counting their money.
Lets briefly go inside the game last night since John Paulsen hit on a lot of key points in his fantasy football blog:
-First off, for the first game of the season, I’m surprised that it wasn’t that sloppy, but I guess when two coaches like Bill Cowher and Nick Saban are running the show, they’re going to have their teams prepared mentally.
-If I’m Miami I’m taking a good hard look at that secondary, because this is a team that faces Tom Brady twice a year and if he was watching the same game I was, he’s got to be chomping at the bit to play these guys.
Regardless of the stats from Charlie Batch, the Dolphins’ defensive backs played passive all night and got run over a few times by Willie Parker. How do you allow Hines Ward to get open in the back of the end zone? He’s always back there when Pittsburgh gets in the red zone. Always!
And I know Zach Thomas is a linebacker and maybe I shouldn’t lump him in with the defensive back woes, but he flat out got lost in coverage on Health Miller’s TD reception.
– Speaking of Miller’s touchdown, I don’t want to hear Saban arguing that he threw the red flag to challenge that play – he was indecisive and hardly made an attempt to get the referee’s attention. Any time we see coaches calling for time outs in a game, we see them damn near tackle the ref – he was waiting to hear from his guys up stairs and they were slow on the trigger, case closed. Blame doesn’t fall on the ref.
– Parker and Ronnie Brown both hit holes with a purpose last night, but lets give credit where credit is due – the Steelers run defense looked great last night.
– I like the fact that Saban knew he had to get the ball into Chris Chambers’ hands one way or another in the second half. It was hardly a genius move to get the ball into your best receiver’s hands I know, but still, good coaches make adjustments at halftime.
– No matter how many times I watch Troy Palomalu play, I can never get enough of his awareness. He’s always around the ball, always one step away from causing havoc and might be the smartest safety in the entire NFL.
– Here is the only thing I’ll say about Daunte Culpepper from last night, because I think the guy will get enough abuse throughout the weekend: when you have Chambers one on one in the end zone on several occasions, you have to put it somewhere in the Pittsburgh zip code Daunte – not three rows into the stands.
