Steelers post mortem III - Eli and Big Ben

Eli is so far superior to Big Ben that anyone who says that they prefer Ben, I immediately dismiss as someone who has no knowledge of football.

Ben had the luxury of coming up with the best team in football and had two great seasons, winning 13 games in a row in his rookie year and winning a superbowl in his second year. But, Steelers were great then and were very well coached. He also was playing behind the best OL in football. He had the worst game in the Superbowl of any qb this side of Kerry Collins in 2000, but because he has that ring on his finger, he is deemed to be great. I am not saying he is a bad player, I am just saying that as a pure passer he is not nearly as talented as Eli. And when it comes to game management and the smarts of leading a team, there is absolutely no comparison. While Rothelisberger broke in with a team that was already on its way to greatness, Eli came up with a terrible Giants team (4-12 season before the 2004 draft), he had Luke freaking Pettigout defending his blind side and, frankly took a while to grow into the job. The Giants system asks the qb to do a lot in terms of game management, changing blocking assignments, making difficult throws and reading defenses. The Steelers system puts very limited load on the qb and asks him to do only what he can do. This is not something I divined myself from studying film of the Steelers and interviewing their assistant coaches. It is something I heard Cowher say directly in a segment on Inside the NFL. The way they won a Superbowl with 2nd year qb was, in Cowher's words, "we didn't ask him to do too much. We ran the ball 60% of the time (by far most in the league) and he threw a lot of play action off of that. We put him in good situations."

Those in the Rothelisberger camp will say that the reason he had a bad game against the Giants this past Sunday was because the Giants pass rush got after him and no qb can play well under that kind of pressure. Unfortunately, that's analyzing a game by looking at the stat sheet. The fact is that the Steelers OL was not that bad. A lot of the Giants sacks were coverage sacks and came because Ben didn't pull the trigger on passes quickly enough. Obviously a team with a bad OL will give up lots of sacks, and a team with a great OL will give up few, but some qb's have the ability to make their OL look a little better or a little worse than they actually are by how they themselves play and behave in the pocket. Dan Marino comes to mind - he was sacked less frequently than other qb's, not because his OL was always great and certainly not because he was a mobile guy that evaded the rush. Rather, it was because he had great pocket awareness and had a lightning quick release to unload the ball before he got hit. I have said many times on this blog that Eli has developed a wonderful pocket awareness and moves around just enough, and gets rid of the ball quickly, sometimes off his back foot, to make his OL look better than it really is in their pass blocking assignments. The OL is a great run blocking group and very good, but not great in pass blocking. Eli with his subtle moves makes the OL pass blocking look better than it actually is. Rothelisberger is exactly the opposite as he often holds onto the ball way too long. Maybe it's because when he came up his OL was so good and he could afford to hold onto it, so he's used to that style of play. Maybe it's because he's so big and athletic, and he likes scrambling out of the pocket, running himself or even taking the hit and making the play down field. I'm not sure. But I am sure that he does not help his OL out because he tends to hold the ball too long. Giants pass rush was very disciplined yesterday and kept Ben pinned in the pocket so he couldn't escape and run. But some of the sacks were Ben's fault, not the OL.

By contrast, let's take a look at Eli and how he handled himself on the key play in the game. 4th qtr, 4th and 1 on Steelers 36. Giants down 14-9 call a time out and decide to go for it. Eli gets to the line of scrimmage, looks befuddled and takes a delay of game penalty to make it a 4th and 6. Crowd is going nuts. Aikman says - that was inexcusable. How could Eli let that happen. Deer in the headlights, bad Eli, blah, blah, blah. Well it turns out that not only was Eli not befuddled, rather, quite the contrary, he was completely in control and as cool as a cucumber. Eli explained in his post game press conference that when he got to the line of scrimmage after the time out, he saw that the Steelers were in a defense that would have completely disrupted the play that the Giants had called. Eli thought about going to an audible and changing the play, but he was afraid that with all the noise in the stadium, someone on the offense might have missed the audible and the play would not have worked. Eli coolly and correctly judged that it would have been better to take a 5 yard penalty and go for it on 4th and 6 with a play that might work at that critical juncture of the game. That's the qb that I want running my team and managing my game in the 4th qtr.

Of course it gets better. Eli and Gilbride have the guts to call the long pass play and Eli throws a perfect pass to Toomer who was behind the defense by a step. Let me emphasize - this was not a good pass; it was dead on perfect. It couldn't have been more perfect if Eli had walked down there and placed it in Toomer's hands. Toomer was about a step behind the CB and the safety was closing hard from the middle of the field. Anything less than a perfect throw and the pass falls incomplete and the Giants lose the game. That's the qb I want throwing for me in the 4th qtr of a game.

Rothelisberger has a strong arm, maybe even a tad stronger than Eli's. But he throws only two kinds of passes - a long arcing pass with plenty of air under it thrown deep down the field and a hard straight pass thrown with great velocity. He throws these well and accurately. The pass he cannot throw is the touch pass - a 20-30 yard pass that has to go over the head of a trailing defender, or over a row of linebackers that have dropped into zone coverage, and drop into the hands of the receiver, in front of the safety who may be closing from behind and giving deep help. Ben simply cannot throw this pass and Eli throws this ball perfectly.

Time will tell if I am right, but I would not trade Eli for any qb in football.

49ers post mortem

Some good news and some other signs that are not so good from this 49ers game. Of course what the team apologists will say is that a win is a win. And they will say that style points don't matter in the NFL and that it's hard enough to win in the NFL, and if you don't play your best football but still tough out a win, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada.

On this blog we prefer to analyze with a critical eye. (Critical does not always mean negative - critics can give rave reviews also.)

So here goes my glass half full/half empty analysis:

Defense was giving up yards in the passing game and some big plays in the first half of the 49ers game. Ross got toasted for a long TD in that half but was good on most of his other stuff. Chase Blackburn played well in the running game but also got lost in coverage once or twice - not a big surprise because he's still feeling his way. That's the bad news. The good news is that the defense was outstanding against the run all day and the pass defense and the pass rush was very strong in the 2nd half. Giants had a lot of pressure and a bunch of sacks. 49ers got no offensive points in 2nd half.

I have been complaining for a while about Tuck being moved inside to DT on every single passing play and being replaced with Tollefson (or McDougle) at DE. I don't mind this for an occasional change and I loved it last year when Osi and Strahan were pass rushing from the outside and it allowed Giants D to get its best pass rushers in the game. But in general, it's easier to double team an inside DT than an outside DE because the interior of the line is more congested. I understand that the OGs are usually not as good at pass blocking than the OTs and it can create some mismatches for Tuck. But in general, I think your best pass rusher should more often be coming from the outside. If you get pressure up the middle, in the qb's face, it is very effective, but harder to generate. I like Cofield and Robbins coming up the middle. The other reason I don't like sticking Tuck in the middle on EVERY passing down is that it keeps Jay Alford on the bench and I think he's a very good inside pass rusher. (You may remember his sack in the Superbowl.) More important - anything you do predictably can be stopped. I guess Spags was thinking along with me, because Tuck was at DE most of 2nd half and generated lots of pressure. There are just more lanes to rush in from that spot and he can use all his physical tools.

Ross is going through some young-player growing pains. I think he'll be fine. But I would not be surprised to see Sam Madison get some playing time in the next few weeks so that Ross doesn't cost Giants some games and doesn't have his confidence shattered. We saw that confidence is so important to young CB in the uneven growth of Corey Webster. He was very up and down early in his career and was on the bench most of last year until shortly before the playoffs. Now he is playing at a very high level. I can't say that he is pro-bowl caliber, but he's got to be pretty close. His confidence took a lot of rebuilding from early failures. The Spagnuolo coaching regime really helped him. I may have mentioned that I think the two best position coaches on defense are Giunta, who is the DB coach and Waufle, the DL coach.

Now on the offensive side: I think Gilbride is a decent OC, but I think he's a little bit of a plodder and not the most creative and dynamic OC in the league. On the one hand - Giants have a very balanced offense. They have a good OL, strong power running game, have balanced passing attack where they are able to go deep and are able to exploit the middle of the field as well as the sidelines. The pass-run mixture is usually good also. No big complaints there.

But - it just seems that Giants are too predictable on offense. When you watch other teams with good offenses, there are at least several plays each week in the passing game, where they have a WR running wide open for a medium depth or long play that is an easy throw and catch for the QB. Giants don't seem to have many of those. I think Giants pass routes and route combinations are too easy to read and predictable and so other teams know where to go to defend them. Maybe I'm over reacting because 49ers have very good CBs, but I don't think so. We'll see when Giants play Pitt this week.

I can say the same thing in the running game. Everyone knows that Giants favorite play is that off tackle run, where one or both of the G's pull, the T and TE get a seal on the DE and the FB and the pulling G's lead downfield. It works well because Giants have very athletic G's and they can get out in space and block. Sunday against 49ers, Giants were less effective with these running plays because the 49ers CBs (not the S) were run blitzing a lot and they guessed right on every run. Not once did the Giants catch them in a run blitz and throw the ball to the uncovered WR that had been the blitzing CB's responsibility. To me, that says this was not a defensive call in the 49ers huddle or even a pre-snap read by the defense. Rather, I think the Giants are tipping their plays by their formation, personnel grouping or the down and distance and the CB's were coming hard and taking away those plays. That's being predictable.

It took Gilbride an entire year to put in a counter running play, which is a perfect play for Giants. Because Giants have such a good power running game, defenses have to load up and really swarm to the ball in order to get a stop. A change of direction on the counter gives Giants great balance against those defenses. Every time they've run that counter it seems to go for a big gain, but it is not used often enough. If it was used more frequently, teams would have to prepare for it and it would make the base power runs more effective.

One more big complaint about predictability of the offense is in the passing game. Hixon looks like a star in the making. Can someone explain to me why he gets on the field only in 4 WR sets? Is there a law that Toomer has to be on the field on every play? A WR set with Plaxico, Hixon and Smith would be very difficult for teams to defend. If you really want to scare them, get Sinorice Moss on the field also. I know Toomer has great experience, and he can make some plays. But - he is not fast anymore and he drops too many passes. I am not saying Giants should bench Toomer, just get Hixon in the game more. Giants are a little too predictable.

Steve Smith has very good quickness and is very good finding the spaces in the short and medium zones. Maybe if he ran a deep pattern once every few games, it would catch the defense off guard. Too Predictable.