Forbes Avenue » Mike Tomlin

Steelers-Chargers Week 4 postgame: First-round knockout

griffn — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:00:57 +0000

Mendenhall is faster than Fast Willie Parker, but is he the Steelers new starter?

Steelers 38, Chargers 28

▪ Another week, another complete 4th quarter collapse by the Steelers. After taking a 28-0 lead in the 3rd quarter, the Steelers were then outscored 28-10 in the final 17 minutes. In the 4th quarter of the last three weeks, they’ve given up 10 points to the Bears, 14 points to the Bengals, and now 21 points to the Chargers. There’s a lot to like about a big win at home over the Chargers, but the Steelers obviously still have some issues that need to be addressed.

▪ At some point during the second half, Cris Collinsworth reported a quote from Mike Tomlin this week that I think is the key to the Steelers late game troubles. I don’t remember it verbatim, but Tomlin said something to this effect: “Everybody wants me to play like Bill Cowher when we get the lead. But I don’t want to play like Cowher, I want to play like Chuck Noll. Those ‘70s teams were versatile. They had Bradshaw and Stallworth and Swann and a lot of other options to move the ball late.”

Okay, here’s the thing, Coach. I don’t know what Chuck Noll’s record was, but I do know that Bill Cowher had a 102-1-1 career record when playing with an 11-point lead or more at any time in the game. Let me say that again. 102 wins, 1 loss, 1 tie. Last night, your Steelers team almost blew a 28-point lead with 17 minutes left in the game. So, yes, you definitely do want to play like Bill Cowher when you get a lead, and you definitely do want to be boring and predictable if it means winning 98% of the time. What you don’t want is a versatile team that’s full of options and routinely blows leads. So, yeah, next time you get a 28-point lead on a team that can’t stop the run, how about don’t have your offense come out in a shotgun throwing the football like we’re down by 10. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel and just do what everybody else does with a lead: Run. The. Football.

▪ Speaking of reinventing the wheel, that touchdown pass on the halfback option that Mewelde Moore threw to Heath Miller was a terrible, horrendous call. I don’t care that it worked. That was something you’d do at the end of a late-night Madden session, not a call you make in the 4th quarter up by 14 against a team you have no problem moving the ball against. If that pass gets picked off, the Chargers probably win.

▪ Last week, I wrote this about the Steelers 4th quarter defense:

When teams get behind late and go four and five wide to catch up, it forces the Steelers into dime. That takes all our linebackers off the field and replaces them with mediocre defensive backs like Keiwan Ratliff and Ryan Mundy. If I’m playing the Steelers, I would go two-minute drill at least once a quarter regardless of the situation. You’re not gonna beat the Steelers defense in an I-formation, but you have a good chance of marching down the field practically escorted and untouched in a five-wide hurry-up.

In the first three quarters, the Chargers were determined to move the football in traditional formations. It wasn’t until they got down by four touchdowns in the 3rd that they really put Philip Rivers in a shotgun, spread out the offense, and started opening up the middle of the field. And surprise, surprise, Keiwan Ratliff can’t cover Antonio Gates. It took Norv Turner three quarters to figure that out. Which is why he’s Norv Turner.

▪ 2008 first-round draft pick Rashard Mendenhall definitely delivered the knockout blow to San Diego with 166 yards and 2 TDs. (Suddenly, the Steelers 2008 draft class doesn’t look so bad after all.) After posting the best game by a Steelers running back since 2006, there’s going to be some controversy this week about whether Mendenhall should replace Willie Parker as the Steelers starter. Here’s the short answer: Yes. Parker’s yards per carry average has declined steadily every year from 4.7 in 2005 to 4.4 in 2006 to 4.1 in 2007 to 3.8 in 2008 to 3.1 this year. Part of that can be attributed to a decline in the Steelers offensive line, but Parker has clearly lost a step. Let’s be honest, the Chargers defensive line playing without nose tackle Jamal Williams was terrible. But the decisiveness and speed that Mendenhall showed through the holes made it pretty clear that he’s the Steelers best running back right now. Thing is, he’s got some serious fumbling issues and you definitely don’t want him carrying 29 times a game unless you want his entire career burnt out in two years. I would start Mendenhall, put Parker in every third series, and then lean more heavily on the sure-handed Parker in the 4th quarter until Mendenhall proves himself there.

▪ I knock the Steelers offensive line a lot, but they played a near flawless game. They made Mendenhall look like LaDainian Tomlinson, and the three sacks Ben took were all coverage sacks. The props Collinsworth kept giving to Chris Kemoeatu all night were well deserved.

▪ At the end of last week’s game with the Bengals marching down the field, I was thinking, somebody on defense is going to have to make a play here– a sack, a turnover, something big. They didn’t. This week, James Harrison got the sack and forced fumble at the end of the game to seal it.

▪ The search for LaMarr Woodley continues. Zero sacks, zero INTs, zero forced fumbles, one tackle. That gives him zero sacks, zero INTs, zero forced fumbles, and three tackles on the entire season. His face should be on a milk carton right now.

▪ Stefan Logan has touched the ball 23 times this season on kickoff and punt returns and fumbled twice. As exciting as he’s been to watch, he’s going to have to learn that a good 75% of his job is avoiding those deadly special teams turnovers. When you’re a small guy like Logan and you get wrapped up by two or three NFL-sized guys, don’t fight for that extra meaningless yard.

▪ Hines Ward is a Hall of Famer. He’s got the numbers, he’s got the longevity, he’s got the rings, and no other wide receiver plays the game of football the way he does. He blocks on the line better than most tight ends, and he blocks in the open field better than any other receiver. Oh, and 8 catches for 113 yards. On that last reception, he put his head down and absolutely ran over one of the Chargers DBs.

▪ Going into the weekend, the Steelers were in danger of falling three games behind the Baltimore Ravens, but now they’ve pulled to within one. The Ravens next two games are against the Bengals (3-1) and the Vikings (3-0). The Steelers play the Lions (1-3) and the Browns (0-4).

▪ Now would be a fantastic time to trade for LaDainian Tomlinson in your fantasy league. He’s done absolutely nothing the first four weeks of the season, and his owner is almost certainly looking to sell. True, he’s lost half a step, but that still makes him better than half the running backs in the league, and the Chargers have no other options. Darren Sproles just isn’t going to get it done between the tackles.

▪ The NFL deserves a world of credit for making such an enormous effort to bring attention to breast cancer screening. It would have been one thing to have everyone come out in pink laces or to put a pink ribbon sticker on every helmet. But they had pink receiver gloves, pink wrist bands, pink cleats, and even pink hat brims on the coaching staff. Good look for a really important cause.

Supreme Court should force Redskins to drop racist name, legacy

griffn — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:00:08 +0000

Last week, a group of Native American leaders asked the Supreme Court to rule that the Washington Redskins team name is too offensive to be protected by U.S. trademark law. The law states that trademarks will be refused if they consist of “matter which may disparage … persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute.” The Redskins franchise has argued that the name is not meant to be offensive. Native American writer, lecturer and curator Suzan Harjo, the lead plaintiff in the case, has summed up the debate like this:

“The argument has always been the same,” Harjo said. “‘We are honoring you,’ they say. ‘No, you’re not,’ we reply. ‘Shut up,’ they say. That’s pretty much the divide for 17 years.”

The Redskins can claim the name is not meant to be offensive, but consider this. It was chosen by their first owner, George Preston Marshall, a virulent racist who pushed to segregate the NFL for a decade (from 1934 to 1945) and refused to sign black players to the Redskins until 1962, when he was forced to by the federal government. According to Wikipedia:

[Marshall] is best known for his intractable opposition to having African-Americans on his roster. According to professor Charles Ross, “For 24 years Marshall was identified as the leading racist in the NFL”. Though the league had previously had a sprinkling of black players, blacks were excluded from all NFL teams just one year after Marshall entered the league. Ross asserts that Marshall propelled the NFL to institute a “color barrier” akin to that of its baseball brethren. …

While the rest of the league began signing individual blacks in 1946 and actually drafting blacks in 1949, Marshall held out until 1962 before signing a black player. Moreover, the signing only came when Interior Secretary Stewart Udall issued an ultimatum – unless Marshall signed a black player, the government would revoke the Redskins’ 30-year lease on the year-old D.C. Stadium (now Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium), which had been paid for by government money and was owned by the Washington city government…

The flipside of this argument is that Marshall picked the name Redskins to honor the team’s Native American coach William “Lone Star” Dietz, and thus the name was not originally meant to be offensive. Bill Poser, writing for a University of Pennsylvania’s blog on linguistics, argues:

I think that it is well established that redskin is taken by most people today to be disparaging. What is more interesting is whether it has always been so, as Harjo et al., as well as various others, claim. One interesting piece of evidence is the origin of the name Washington Redskins. In 1933, George Preston Marshall, the owner of the team, which was then located in Boston, renamed it the Boston Redskins in honor of the head coach, William “Lone Star” Dietz, an American Indian. When the team moved to Washington in 1937 it was renamed the Washington Redskins. George Marshall clearly did not consider the name disparaging.

Notice that Poser begins his argument in favor of the name Redskins by acknowledging that the name is “disparaging” to most people today. Really, that’s the end of the discussion right there, since “matter which may disparage” is not protected under trademark law. As for whether the name was always disparaging, it doesn’t matter. American history is filled with words that were acceptable 70 years ago that are not today. Whether a racist like Marshall considered the name disparaging in 1933 is irrelevant. At the least, it speaks to a man who saw everything through the prism of race. Marshall could have named the team the Washington Lone Stars, after Coach Dietz’s nickname. Instead, he chose to single out Dietz’s race. What would the response be if the Rooneys “honored” head coach Mike Tomlin by changing the Steelers name to the Pittsburgh Coloreds? (Another word that has evolved over time.)

But the worst thing about the Redskins name may be that it forces millions of fans to be complicit in the franchise’s history of racism. It’s one thing to be a fan of a team with an ugly past– most Major League Baseball teams fall in that category. It’s another thing to preserve and pass down that legacy to fans too young to remember commercialized racism and segregated sports leagues. Every dollar that goes to the Redskins is a validation of George Marshall’s belief that basic respect of other human beings is secondary to entertainment. It’s an embarrassing testament to the unwillingness of Redskins fans and ownership to face up to their franchise’s original sin.

There are already a number of newspapers around the nation who refuse to use the word Redskins, and most of them are in areas with significant Native American populations. There’s no question the name is disparaging. In 1962, it took an act of federal government to force George Marshall to integrate his team. It’s amazing that 47 years later, long after his death, it may take a Supreme Court ruling to finally put his ugly legacy to rest.

UPDATE: Gather round, kids, it’s analogy time. It’s not a perfect one, but it’ll do. Here’s what anyone who defends the name Redskins basically amounts to.

Imagine we’re living in the Jim Crow South and segregated drinking fountains have just been outlawed. And imagine there’s a large group of people who want to keep the “Whites only” and “Coloreds only” signs over the fountains, even though the signs no longer have any power. People can drink from whatever fountain they want, they just want to keep the signs up because they’re a part of our history and it would be too much of a hassle to change them. Of course, African-Americans feel angered and humiliated by the signs, and they fight for decades to get them taken down, but that’s only because they don’t realize the signs aren’t meant to be offensive.

That’s what Redskins fans and ownership amounts to. They’re people who see no problem with keeping “Whites only” and “Coloreds only” signs over the fountains.