The Old Three-Step
By The Wise Guy
Pittsburgh Steelers fans are savvy enough to know when the offensive
line stinks, and last Sunday, it stunk like the streets of New
Orleans. Much of the blame can be laid at the big feet of our
all-pros in the middle, center Jeff Hartings and Alan Faneca, who is
widely acclaimed as the best offensive guard in the league.
Richard Seymour, the Patriots young defensive tackle cruised through
them as if they were a tollbooth and he had an electronic pass.
Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was sacked four times, and it
could have been eight if he weren’t such a good escape artist.
On the other side of the ball, the New England Patriots did a far
better job protecting Tom Brady. And they have zero all-pros up
front. After their best lineman and starting left tackle, Matt
Light went down, their line consisted of a second year sixth-round
choice at center (Dan Koppen), a rookie at right guard (Logan Mankins),
an undrafted free agent at left guard with a bad back (Steven Neal), a
free agent cast-off at right tackle (Tom Ashworth), and a rookie at
left tackle (Nick Kaczur). Hardly the five blocks of granite.
So how come the Patriots no-name offensive line gave Brady enough time
to slice up our secondary like a haddock? I blame it on the old
three-step. So many times, Brady took a three-step drop and got
the ball away quickly, before our rush could get within shouting
distance. Zip, zip, zip, down the field they went.
I can’t remember Big Ben taking a three-step drop. Mostly,
I remember him taking meaningless play-action drops when everyone from
East Liberty to East McKeesport, not to mention the Patriots defense,
knew he was going to pass.
So who is to blame? We could always blame Coach Bill Cowher. We
blame him for everything else, like that stupid Randel-El
lateral. What was Cowher thinking on that
one? We could blame Ken Whisenhut. Now
that’s not a bad idea.
When your offensive line isn’t slowing the other team’s
rush, you’ve got to do something to counteract it. How many
screen passes did we throw? By my count, zero. Swing passes
to our running backs? Two at the most. Compare that to the
numerous times Brady hit Kevin Faulk or Patrick Pass out of the
backfield.
Or, we could have thrown some quick tosses over the middle to the tight
end. We did draft a tight end number one for that reason,
didn’t we? Yet Heath Miller caught exactly one pass, which
not coincidentally was the number of passes thrown to him. Maybe
we’re saving him for the Detroit Lions game in January.
Of course, it’s only one game. Every team is bound to have a bad
game. But when the other team has three turnovers and ten
penalties, as the Patriots did, and can’t run the ball for the
majority of the game, they are basically saying, “Here, take the
game. Please.” We could have. It may have been as
easy as one, two three-step.
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