Steelers Today – A Pittsburgh Steelers blog

The Pittsburgh Steelers will face the Kansas City Chiefs this week on Monday Night Football.

The Steelers are coming off of an impressive win over the reigning world champion New York Giants.    Now they face the 1-7 Kansas City Chiefs.  The Chiefs have been a model of futility.  They’ve turned the ball over more than any other team in the NFL.  They’re so bad on offense that they’ve actually struggled to decide which is the better choice for starting quarterback, Matt Cassell or Brady Quinn.  That alone should be a clear indication of how bad they are.  If Brady Quinn were on the Steelers, he’d be the 4th string quarterback.  Or the backup holder for field goals.

But let’s not take the Chiefs too lightly.  After all, their lone win did come against the New Orleans Saints.   Yeah, the ones with Drew Brees.  So the Steelers have to be careful to stay focused on the Chiefs, and not look past them to next week’s game against the Baltimore Ravens.  If they take the Chiefs too lightly, they may join the Saints in losing to them.

One person who will have extra incentive to win the game is offensive coordinator Todd Haley.  Haley was the Chiefs head coach before being fired.  While Haley says that this game has no special meaning for him, we all know that that’s not true.  He’d like to beat that Chiefs 150-0.  In fact, he may even allow Big Ben to throw long passes to Mike Wallace (something we haven’t seen very often this season), just to embarrass the Chiefs.

For the Steelers, there will be good news and bad news when they face the Chiefs.  The good news is that they’ll have far more running backs available to them than they had last week.  Rashard Mendenhall returned to practice this week, and he’ll be available to the Steelers in a pinch.  However, the team probably won’t use him.  But they will use Jonathan Dwyer.  Dwyer was also out last week.  Chris Rainey will also be returning this week.  And last week’s hero, Isaac Redman will also be playing.  That’s good for the Steelers, but bad for the Chiefs.

But the bad news for the Steelers is that wide receiver Antonio Brown still won’t be available to play.  In fact, he’s likely to be out for several more games.  And on defense, Troy Polamalu still isn’t ready to return to the lineup.

Even playing at less than full strength, the Steelers should still be able to beat the Chiefs.  The Chiefs rank 29th in the NFL in points scored, while the Steelers have the #1 defense in the NFL.  That should prove to be a mismatch.

I’m predicting a Steelers win, with a final score of 31-13.

Go Steelers!

It’s time to announce the winners of this week’s haiku contest.  Once again, we had some very good entries.

I struggled to select this week’s winner.  I went back and forth between the first and second place entry.  In all fairness, there probably should have been a tie for first place.  But we had a tie last week, so I thought that I should probably pick a single winner this week.  So here are this week’s winners.

In third place, we have Jim, who submitted this entry.

Refs gave the Giants
a score, turnover, and more
Redman saved the day

In second place (but actually tied for first place) is Seff.

Salsa dancing Cruz
Clark has other plans for you
Alligator arms

And this week’s 1st place winner is Robert Souza, who came up with this creative beauty.

Watch evil zebras
Stalk prey on the Meadowlands
Steelers still prevail

Contratulations Robert!  That was excellent!

The Steelers now have to face the hapless KC Chiefs on Monday Night Football.   On paper, it should be an easy win.  But I think we’ve all learned that the Steelers can’t afford to take any opponent for granted.

Go Steelers!

The Steelers needed a 4th quarter comeback to beat the NY Giants 24-20 on Sunday.  Now it’s time for fans to capture the key elements of the game in a haiku.

The contest rules are simple. You must summarize the Steelers-Giants game in a haiku.  A haiku is a form of Japanese poetry that contains only 3 lines. The first line has 5 syllables, the second line has 7 syllables, and the third line has 5 syllables. Typically, haiku do not rhyme.

Please note, the emphasis is on syllables, not words.  Remember, 5/7/5.

I usually start the competition by offering a haiku of my own. Then you readers write a haiku of your own to try to beat mine.  But this week, one of our readers on Facebook (Joe Marthey) has already offered up an entry, so I’ll use his haiku as the one to beat this week.

On Thursday I’ll announce this week’s contest winner.  But remember, your haiku has to be better than Joe’s.  If none of your entries are better than his, then Joe is this week’s winner.

Here’s Joe’s haiku:

Refs tried to give it
But the Steelers took it back
Here we come Ratbirds

Okay readers, it’s your turn.  Lets see who can come up with the best haiku about the Steelers-Giants game.  Your haiku must be about the game, or any other interesting topics that are directly related to the game (e.g. same-day travel, bad calls by the refs, etc).  You may enter the contest as many times as you like.

Any entries that do not follow the 5/7/5 format will be automatically disqualified, so remember to count your syllables.

Are you ready for some haiku?!!

In an article that I wrote prior to today’s game, I said that Ben Roethlisberger was a better quarterback than Eli Manning.  And Big Ben did a lot today to prove that I was right, as he led the Pittsburgh Steelers to a 24-20 come from behind victory.

The Steelers played an unusually sloppy game in which they were penalized 6 times for 119 yards.  That’s almost twice as much yardage as the Giants were able to gain on the ground.  In fact, it’s only 6 yards less than Eli Manning passed for during the game.  So in some ways, the Giants’ most effective offense was the referees.

The refs called phantom helmet-to-helmet hits.  They called imaginary pass interference penalties.  They allowed arguable fumbles.  And they failed to call blatant clipping penalties.

Partially due to the terrible calls by the referees, the Steelers found themselves trailing 20-10 going into the 4th quarter.  Fortunately, the Steelers didn’t allow the Refs to snatch victory from their hands.

Mike Wallace outran the Giants’ defense for a 51 yard touchdown, and Isaac Redman scored a touchdown late in the game to give the Steelers a 24-20 win.

The Steelers probably should have had another score, but they failed to go for a first down on 4th and 1.  Instead, they opted to fake a field goal and have Shaun Suisham attempt to run for a TD.  The play failed miserably, and the Steelers got no points despite being in the red zone.

The hero of Sunday’s game was definitely Steelers running back Isaac Redman.  He ran the ball 26 times for 147 yards.  That’s a 5.7 yards per carry average.  Redman’s constant pounding seemed to demoralize the vaunted Giants defense.

Big Ben also outplayed his 2004 draft class rival Eli Manning.  Manning only passed for 125 yards, and end ended the game with a paltry 41.1 passer rating.  He also threw an interception.  Meanwhile, Ben threw for 216 yards, two touchdowns, and had a 98.8 passer rating.

The Steelers now trail the Baltimore Ravens by one game in the AFC North, but they face them twice in the next 4 weeks, so their fate is in their own hands.

Go Steelers!

Back in 2008, I wrote an article called “Top 10 reasons why “Big Ben” is better than Eli Manning“.  On Sunday, the two quarterbacks meet again for only the third time in their careers.  Each has won once.  So in some ways, this will be a rubber match between the two.

With that in mind, I decided that it was time to once again evaluate which of the two quarterbacks is better at this point in their career.

The first article that I wrote on this topic was meant to be a partially humorous piece.  But this one will be a serious analysis of how the two quarterbacks have played up to this point in their careers.

I’m sure that everyone remembers that both quarterbacks were drafted in the first round of the 2004 NFL Draft.  Eli Manning was the first player picked, San Diego Chargers QB Philip Rivers was drafted 4th, and Ben Roethlisberger was drafted 11th.  The class was further strengthened by the fact that Houston Texans QB Matt Schaub, who has also had an excellent career, was drafted in the 3rd round by the Atlanta Falcons.

There is no doubt that Big Ben’s career got off to a much better start.  He led his team to 13 straight wins as a rookie.  He lost to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship that year, but he went on to lead his team to a Super Bowl victory the following year.

Meanwhile, Eli Manning struggled early on.  He didn’t become a starter until the 10th game of his rookie season.  He ran up 6 straight losses before finally winning the final game of the season.  Even the New York media and fans began calling Eli a “bust”.

As their careers have gone on, both players have established themselves as solid NFL quarterbacks.  There are no longer any questions about whether either of them deserved their first round draft selection.  Big Ben has led his team to three Super Bowls, winning two of them and losing once to the Green Bay Packers.  Eli Manning has appeared in two Super Bowls, and won each time.  Combined, the two quarterbacks have appeared in 5 of the 9 Super Bowls that have taken place since they entered the league.  That’s an incredible record for two incredible quarterbacks.

But the question still remains, which quarterback is better?

So let’s take a look at their career statistics.  Eli has run an offense that passed more often than Ben’s.  Eli has attempted almost 700 more passes than Ben.  But despite that, Eli has only thrown for 1,314 more yards.  He’s averaged 7.1 yards per completion, compared to 8.0 yards per completion for Ben.  So Eli has thrown more times for more yards than Ben, but Ben has thrown longer passes on average.  More importantly, he has a higher completion percentage despite throwing more long passes.

Another key measure of quarterbacks is how often they throw interceptions.  Eli Manning has thrown more interceptions than Big Ben, but that’s not a fair comparison since he’s also thrown more passes.  But if we look at each quarterbacks interceptions as a percentage of their total pass attempts, Big Ben definitely comes out on top.  Eli Manning has thrown interceptions on 5% of his pass attempts, while Ben has thrown interceptions on only 3% of his passes.

In the statistic that is supposed to measure the quality of a quarterback, QB rating, Big Ben wins by a large margin.  Roethlisberger’s career QB rating of 92.8 is a full 10 points higher than Manning’s 82.6 career QB rating.  This year, Roethlisberger has a 101.4 QB rating, compared to 89.1 for Manning.  In fact, Roethlisberger has had a better QB rating than Manning in 6 of the 9 seasons that they’ve been in the league.

Another advantage that Ben has over Eli is his ability to run the ball.  Ben has made a career out of extending the play.  He has a level of mobility that Eli just doesn’t have.  While neither quarterback has been Michael Vick, Ben has run for far more yards than Eli.  Eli has only 372 rushing yards in his career, while Ben has rushed for 989 yards.

In fact, the only statistic in which Eli Manning is clearly superior to Ben Roethlisberger is in his ability to avoid sacks.  Big Ben’s tendency to try to extend the play has led him to take an inordinate number of sacks.  He’s taken over 40 sacks in 5 of his 9 NFL seasons.  Meanwhile, Eli Manning has never taken 40 sacks in a season.  In fact, he’s only taken 30 sacks in one season during his career.  In total, Ben has taken 327 sacks compared to only 200 sacks for Eli Manning.

If winning championships is the true measure of a quarterback, then Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning are two of the best of their time.  Both men have won two Super Bowls.  So in that regard, they’re equals.  But by just about every other measure, Ben Roethlisberger is the better quarterback.

These two quarterbacks are in the prime of their careers.  They both still have plenty of time to lead their teams to more Super Bowls.  So this argument will continue until they’ve both retired and we can look back at their careers in their entirety.

But at this point in their careers, I think the data is pretty clear.  Both are good quarterbacks, but Big Ben is better.  Ben is bigger, stronger, faster, and he’s accumulated better statistics throughout his career.  Some will disagree with me, but I find it hard to make a case for Eli Manning.  In my opinion, Ben is definitely the better of the two.  In fact, it’s not even close.