Monday, September 21, 2009

Steelers-Bears Recap

I’m still trying to figure out how the Steelers lost on Sunday. The offensive line played much better than week one as Roethlisberger was sacked only twice (once because he held on to the ball too long) and the team rushed for 105 yards on 22 carries (4.8 yards per carry). The defense held the Bears’ Matt Forte, one of the best running backs in the league, to 62 total yards and Devin Hester had only 21 yards receiving and did little on special teams. So how did the team lose? I didn’t wear my Louis Lipps jersey or have my Terrible Towel with me. My bad. Wearing my Heinz pickle watch wasn’t enough, but I won’t let it happen again.

On the serious side, the Steelers played okay, but not good enough to win. As I mentioned, the running game and line were fine and Roethlisberger played good enough to win. However, he did throw an interception and the receivers (Santonio Holmes comes to mind) dropped several passes. Defensively, I mentioned the positives above, but the team only had one sack and did not force any turnovers. Plus, Jay Cutler was solid completing 27 of 38 passes for 236 yards, 2 touchdowns and no picks. Although the team went three and out on their first two series, the Bears ended up going 7 of 14 on third down conversions. The special teams was the big negative though. Mr. Automatic Jeff Reed missed both field goal attempts and Stefan Logan fumbled at the end of the game. Plus, Ike Taylor and Patrick Bailey had costly penalties on kick returns putting the Steelers in poor starting field position.

Back to the non-serious side.

* Where can I get a pair of Estrada sunglasses?



* When Bears' Jeffrey Knox made his first catch, I thought the announcer referred to the WR as Cox. Cox was covered by William Gay on the play. The inner-immature-7th grader in me chuckled.

* Afalava: Best last name ever. Sepulveda is a close second (he had another good game).

* During the telecast, there was an advertisement for free fantasy football on NFL.com. However, the text stated except in California and Puerto Rico. So if you live in CA or PR, do you have to pay to play fantasy football on NFL.com? If so, wouldn't you just try a free league on Yahoo or ESPN? Can someone explain how this works?

Big picture: The Steelers are 1-1 and a game behind the Ravens in the division. This loss is not going to make or break the season. It was a road game against an NFC team, so there are no concerns about the conference tie-breaks. Next week's game against the 1-1 Bengals is much more important.

2 comments:

Messiah said...

Where'd you watch the game? I gave in and purchased the RedZone Channel. Got to see the Spaeth TD live, and the Hester catch and end FG as well (The Wiggles were in control during the Reed misses, but I assume I would've experienced the agony of those as well -- not much else was going on).

Sean said...

I wasn't feeling well and didn't want to go far from home to I went to a Chaamps near me. There were plenty of Steelers fans, but it's definitely not a Steelers bar. If I felt better, I would have gone to the Pour House in DC or Fast Eddie's in Fairfax. My former go-to place for Steelers games, O'Toole's in Centerville, doesn't appear to be open anymore. The website and phone number didn't work.

The Wiggles would have been preferable over Reed's kicks!