December 2, 2024 • 46 mins
The Steelers remain in first place after a huge victory against the Cincinatti Bengals yesterday. Matt and Dale recap the win in the first hour and are joined by Rob King in the second segment.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Least.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
He's the Drive with Dale Lolly and Matt Williamson on
your twenty four to seven Home of the Black and
Gold Steelers Nation.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Radio and welcome to the Drive.
Speaker 4 (00:17):
It is a Chile victory Monday here in Pittsburgh. It
was a Chili Day Sunday in Cincinnati. But well, it
just warmed your heart to the concols to see the
Escalooser fire up at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
Speaker 5 (00:31):
I had someboddies over at the williame and taking pictures.
Seven to me say, this thing is rolling already. I mean,
the hearts of Bengals fans are turned to stone the Grinch.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I mean they might have frozen a little bit, but
there was plenty of action going back and forth in
that game. There's Matt Williams and I'm Dale LOLLI by
the way, this is the Drive on the Steelers Audio Network.
But Matt so much done. Peel from that game yesterday
in Cincinnati at the pay Corpse Stadium, Russell Wilson was fabulous, fabulous. Yeah,
(01:05):
he was great, fantastic, however you want. He actually outplayed
Joe Burrow to a large degree.
Speaker 5 (01:12):
I played super impressed with both Burrough.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Played very good, yes, but he did throw an interception, yep,
and his was a legit interception.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
It wasn't that made me great, Let's get out of
the way. How is that not called? I don't know.
I mean, I understand, I do think Pickens was falling,
but then you helped them by grabbing his helmet, not
even like nudge them shoulder pad or whatever him to
the ground into the head. Illegal use of hands of
the head, right, I mean, I thought, man, they're gonna
lose this game because of that. And frankly, the teams
(01:43):
from the last five years or so would have done so.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
They would have they got to score like that earlier
in the game it was done and had to throw.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
I mean, they didn't have to throw, they chose to throw.
They threw a high percentage of the time in the
first half, I'm sure by design. But then when you're
down seven nothing before you know it, maybe even more
and you could you know, I mean part of it
to Bengals defense is really really bad. But I thought
Wilson was tremendous.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Tremendous.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
They answered every time that the Bengals would score, including
that one. Yeah, the Steelers answered with the score of
their own and then finally took the lead in the
at the end of the first half and basically just
kind of continue to expand upon that.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
Yeah. Yeah, and then I thought the pass rush took
over in the second half to some degree. When I
mean they're a pass eavy team to begin with, defense
made plays. We knew they were going to allow yardage
and points. I mean, you just knew that. And again Burrow,
Chase Higgins, Chase Brown, I mean, those guys are playmakers.
Those guys are really really good. I think it's a
top three type offense. But I think the overriding thing
(02:50):
is now you can play that style a game. You know,
if you want to play thirteen nine against the Ravens
and hand you over and over and over and play
with big people and battle it out and be the
more physical team against the Chargers in round one or whatever, Okay,
we can play that style fight, you know. I mean
there's been a lot of good Steeler teams that can't
play every style of fight.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, this one can, this one can.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
And you know that's I'm just looking at comments on stuff,
and you know, well, the defense.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Had an awful day.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
I don't think guys get paid two and your defense
took the ball away three times, your sack Burrow four times,
you hit him eleven times. Yeah, yeah, I thought the
defense played pretty damn well.
Speaker 5 (03:32):
Absolutely. I thought, with all respect to Wilson and Burrow,
who were awesome, I thought Cam Hayward is the best
player in the stadium.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
If you look back at their big runs, including that
there's one, the big one, Yeah he was. He wasn't
on the field for the thirteen yard run before the
forty yard run, and he wasn't on the field for
the forty yard run, So fifty three of those rushing
yards came with Cam Hayward wasn't on the field.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
He was unbelievable in this.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
When he was out there, they didn't run the football.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
They didn't run the football at all. And his pass
rush is dominant. I mean, I know it didn't matter,
but he made he splatters Chase Bras. I mean, wow,
he had a couple of plays for he's chasing the football.
That's ridiculous. I was just on with Mark Madden and
in a different show I said the exact same thing.
I firmly believe he is the best player in the
(04:16):
league at swatting passes at the line of scrimmage.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
He's got eight of them. He's got eight of them,
which is bonkers.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
Most cornerbacks don't have right that they get thrown at
time and time again. And I believe TJ. Watt is
the best at causing fumbles in the whole league. And
it's trickling down to all their teammates too. You know,
everyone else around them is getting really, really good at
those two things too.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah, huge plays.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
So Watt now has five forced fumbles this season, which
leads the league. He has thirty two since he came
into the league, which is the most over that period. Yeah,
to your point, it has trickled down. He and Herbig
are tied for the league lead and strip sacks of
the quarterback with Miles Garrett.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
I didn't know if you do that. I was like, yeah,
I'm like I was gonna phrase it like this. Well,
t J. Watt and Garrett are tied for strip sacks
with Herbig, who plays half the stats that those guys do.
You know, he's a part time player over the course
of a year, but a really good one. And whipping
up one Orlando Brown, who's one hundred pounds heavy year
(05:14):
extreme length difference and is allowed to leave early.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Apparently he's allowed to get a jump start on that.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
Ye yeah, time and time again, and you're allowed to
go early. Okay. I was on a show with Wolf
just a little bit ago. I'm like, would it have
been helpful if you could move anytime you wanted? Yeah,
that wouldn't have been bad. What is going on with
the league with that?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I don't get.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
Yeah, they get away with it constantly, and you know,
it seems to me maybe these good offenses.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
And some of these older guys are just we'll let
that go.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
I mean some of it who are just not gonna
throw a flag every time or no one's gonna watch.
But come on, man, Yeah he's bad.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
It is bad.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
And they still lost to herbig consistently in the past game.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Yeah, but just a I thought it was a great
game plan by Arthur Smith, a lot of past the
backs early again. All right, you're gonna drop your linebackers
ten yards off to the line of another one. I
don't get from the Bengals perspective, just just keep dumping
it off, dumping it off, and yeah, you're getting ten
yards a pop every time you did it.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
All right, Right, over the middle field over and over
and over. We're gonna do it until you stop it.
Sometimes you get them either with their just back, you know,
giving you showing their numbers, you know, or getting them
in stride. But either way they flip their hips and
run over a defensive back and get eight more on
top of it. And watch on TV. There's a lot
of those plays where you don't even see a Bengal
in the frame.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
It was like stealing.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
It's like, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
And back to Wilson, he did so many good things.
And I'm not privy to what goes on obviously behind
the scenes, but it seemed more than ever he was
making things happen at the line of scrimmage pre snap
justin protects whatever they were doing. He was yeah, okay,
tight end over here. I mean sometimes they almost didn't
(06:56):
get the snap off.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
They're going to the line of scrimmage with fifteen to
twenty seconds left, even late in the game when they're
trying to run the block out and he's just directing.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Guys, all right, you go over. He just it was
like he was practicing calculus.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
Yeah, absolutely, and the result we saw the result, but
the result that people don't always think about was he
gets you out of the bad plays. You know, like,
no one's a perfect play caller. You don't know what
the defense is going to be, so you call in
a play or two or however they do it through
the headset. He comes to the line of scrimmage and
we be like, this play is designed to run where
all their dudes are at or you know, I'm getting
(07:29):
out of that. You know where fields Picket, Rudolph, all
those guys aren't that advanced. You know, maybe they will
be in ten years, but they're just not that advanced.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
I thought the perfect example of that. The Steelers are
leading forty one thirty one. There is what do we
have left on the clock? Heer, just over seven minutes
left in the game. Let's steal a ballgame. Oh yeah, yeah,
that's a dangerous team. On the other side, it's third
and nine at the Pittsburgh forty two. He goes up
to the line of scrimmage with about again fifteen twenty
(08:00):
seconds on the on the play clock, looks around, starts
moving some receivers around, gets Van Jefferson matched up one
on one on on the right side of the field.
It hit him on a like a little skinny post. Yeah,
that might be the hardest football I've ever seen thrown.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
I mean he just gunned that.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
Going there before the snap obviously, the safety, all the
safeties went okay, you're gonna put all these guys on
that side of the field. Boom, I'm gonna hit you
on a slant with an inbreaking route against outside leverage.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
That bar before he even came out of his break. Yeah,
it was just like right there and again stealing. But
that ball had I mean.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
He's throwing with velocity. I know we're gonna have Rob
on next segment. And he said this before, you and
I have said this before too. But the word Rob
always uses for Wilson, which I think we both agree with,
is crisp. I mean, even at camp, he would throw
a touchdown pass. He's not high five, he's looking the sideline.
What's the next play? I mean, everything's crisp. It's now
(08:59):
I'm using every second efficiently, you know, and same thing,
you know, like, I know my linemen are in a stance,
but the defense is telling me more. I'm gonna adjust.
With five seconds left in the playclock, Boom, gonna switch
to a run against this bubble nausey for eight you know,
I mean it's getting out of bad stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Yeah, I thought, Mike when Mike Tomlin said, Hey, this
is AFC North football, We're not playing checkers, We're playing.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Chess, And that was chess. There was a lot of
chess going on out there.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Because Loui an Arumo, despite not having any talent on
that Cincinnati defense, that's a tough watch man. I still
think he's a good defensive coordinator. He throws a lot
of different stuff at you. I don't think he'll be
back next year.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I don't think either.
Speaker 5 (09:42):
Someone else is gonna hire him up. Yeah, exactly. And hey,
if he wants to be a consultant on this staff,
I'm all for it, you know what I mean, in
a flora as like manner or whatever. But he still
has a great mind for it. They just don't have
a talent anything. Yeah, they're the guys that they have drafted.
Are we shot up last week? It's glaring the.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Guys they have drafted in the high rounds, who you
expect to play right now?
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Just they stink, they stink. They're misses.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Wilson's not the greatest linebacker in the league, but he's
the green doc guy, and I mean he's the second
most important guy in that unit, and he was out.
They had some backup.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Sheldon Rankins was out.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
Yeah, and they've had issues all year and not only
their young guys not hitting. But I hate to say it,
but like Mike Hilton's getting shot the guys they went
out and bought several years ago. Austin runs right by him.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
By way, Trey Henderson playing that game yesterday.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
I mean that poor guy too. He's like Burrow, like
I'm the one man show. Here is a team game. Yeah,
and you can you other ten could help me out.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Yeah, the Steelers did a much better job this week
of making sure he didn't wreck the game, and they
did the week before. It gets scaredt and that was
you know, it was a situation where it was, hey,
guys were when Dan Moore was supposed to have help
against Garrett and it didn't happen.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
They made sure they fixed that a in the second
half of that game, but then carried it over to
this game. And you're not going to leave your guys
one on one. Nobody leaves their Yeah, you don't leave
your right tackle alone by himself against what sure not
consistently anyways. And yeah, he had an assisted tackle in
one quarterback hitting that game.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
I don't know what his stat line was, I mean
it wasn't much. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
And now by the same token, I thought, what was
his typical thumb? He had five quarterback hits in that game.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
I know, I thought him and Hayward were phenomenal. Her
Big was really really good too. It was a big
thing we talked about last week, was this game needs
to be on the D line, you know. I mean,
after the D line underachieved in Cleveland. I mean, I'm
sure they weren't happy at all about that. And I'm
bet over ten days they heard about it, or Cam
told him about it, what told him about it. And
(11:55):
it was a really impressive performance against a quarterback who's
really hard to sack too. I mean, he moved around well,
he gets the ball out. He had a really short
time to throw, which reminds me too. I Mean Wilson
had his lowest time to throw and lowest average up
the target. As a stealer, It's like, we will take
our shots, but if you're gonna let me have these
long handoffs in the middle of field. I'll do it
(12:17):
over and over and over.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
He still averaged ten point nine yards per attempt and.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
The results were better than everge. Yeah, there's a lot
of ways to do it. That's not negative, you know.
But the ball came out.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
The ball came out, It went to the people who
needed to get it. I didn't ten receivers.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
I don't think there was a pass in the game
outside outside of the interception that.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
If the Bengal was going to hand on.
Speaker 5 (12:40):
A ball, probably not. I mean, I can't think of one.
The interception was a goofy player.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
They had two pass defenses on the interception, so they
got one hand on it.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
They give you a pass defense on interceptions, kind of
like a sack and a quarterback.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
So they had one other pass that they broke up. Okay,
the whole everything else threw a lot. Yeah, I mean
he had nine incompletions, Like four of those were throwaways.
Speaker 5 (13:04):
Yea. You know there's also two quote negative plays were sacks.
One of them he kind of took on purpose, you know,
just to play it safe, keep the game.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Keeping because they've used all their timeouts.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
He probably could have thrown it out the back of
the end and avoid the sack. And the second one
I thought was a weird scorer situation where I thought
he was becoming a runner. I would not have called
that a sack. You know, so sacks have been a
problem over his career. In this game, he had a
really good feel for it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
That that that first one that you're talking about, and
I think that was in the early in the third quarter.
He ran towards the line of scrimmage and slide and
actually the line was slid well past the line the
line of scrimmage before he was touched. But once you
start that slide, that's where that's where it goes. It
takes one more step, sack, it was no gain.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
If he goes two inches farther, it's it's oh he
got a he got a yard.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
That wasn't his O line breaking down, you know, right
right right. I played well. It's so easy to focus
on some of the other things or even catch it
or running backs catching ball, big firemouth game, all the stuff.
Pickings did good and bad. I thought the O line
had a really good game too.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah, they opened up holes. You know, Nausey was running hard.
I think all the backs really had big games they did.
Speaker 5 (14:16):
They did again, big Friarmouth game. I thought the right
side of the line had maybe their best game of
the year. The opponent has something to do with it.
I mean, that's not Miles Garrett on the other side
of them and all that.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
But with young guys, that helps build confidence absolutely.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
And I know Broderck Jones is been up and down,
but he's super young and I think he's a tier
above since the bye, you know, I.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Think that like the last four games or so have
been what you want to see.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Yeh, the best going at the reason Now he did
miss the block on the blocked field goal?
Speaker 5 (14:48):
Oh was that him? That was louder Milk.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Okay, louder Milk blocked to the right.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
They didn't show that well or I wasn't paying enough
attention and okay, proder didn't block anybody.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Okay, guys, the guys slipped in between.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
It's easy to happen in those kind of situations because
the other teams have coaches too, just like the other
teams are professional.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
We'll be talking about how smart Danny Smith is. Right
la block, you know, right, So there's two sides to it.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
So just something you have to clean up there.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
I mean, but if you look at that from that perspective,
they had ten drives in the game.
Speaker 5 (15:18):
Steelers are Bengals, the Steelers.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
That didn't include a kneel down.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
Yeah, yeah, the one.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
So ten drives they punted once, they had a field
goal blocked six pick six, they would have lost the
game ten out of ten times.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
They had seven scoring drives in the game.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
Out of ten, right, right, right, that's pretty awesome, right,
I mean, just pretty dominant.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Doing whatever you wanted to against.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
And that was the thing when we were talking about
this game last week, and I kept hearing from you,
I don't know this, you know this, uh, this Bengals
team they could score on. I'm like, oh yeah, but
the defense is really bad.
Speaker 5 (15:55):
Again, we kept calling him even Steven. I mean, the
defense is as bad as the offense is good. And
you had a great quote in the lobby here, like
Joe Burrow is one of the best five quarterbacks on
them every week every week, one hundred percent degree. But
who else is the top five quarterback every week? The
guys that play the Bengels.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
By and large, right, unless it was Daniel Jones or
Deshaun Watson R. Everybody else has torn that defensive part.
Speaker 5 (16:18):
Four a part, and that has to be so hard
if you're borrow, I'm like, I can live with I'm
I duel Mahomes or Allen and it's a fair fight
and I lose thirty one thirty. But if I'm doing
you know, Joe blow. And I'm not calling Wilson Joe blow.
But if it's every week against average quarterbacks and they're
out playing me and I'm better than them, this is
(16:39):
getting old, quick, guys. Yeah, And I'm sure we'll talk
about next two hours, but state of the really, the
two Ohio teams is getting work. I mean, the arrow
is going down.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Looks pretty bad big time. And there's no quick sixes
there for either one of them.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
No, not at all. I mean Higgins isn't going to
be back. He's a really good player. They got some issues, man.
I would mean if Hendrickson's on a difference, even.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
If they tried to, even if they went out and
they figured out a way to resign Higgins, they also
have to give Chase a new contract.
Speaker 5 (17:09):
He's gonna be the richest fever.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Yeah, and so you're not going to tie up let's
say sixty five million dollars in salary cap between those
two receivers because the defense, you're not fixing that and
you're not fixing your offensive line.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah, which is also a problem.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
Again. They when they spent a lot of money on
like the Hiltons of the world, they also went out
and got the Kappas of the world too, who were fine, just.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Guys that was better than one. But you're probably you
probably paid them a little bit more than what they
were worth.
Speaker 5 (17:33):
They get you moren't super psyched to go there for
one thing, and you needed them bad. And anytime you're
buying an O line on the open market, you're overpaying.
And Burrow was getting killed his first two years in
the league, so we actually overspent and built a line
that was respectable. Well, now of those guys are falling
off too, you know, like they're getting old. And you
mentioned it before it went on the air. They need
(17:54):
seven new defensive starters. Yeah, it sounds about the one
draft doesn't do that for you.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Plus plus you know, strengthening the offensive line, like, yeah,
you only have so.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
Many picks exactly exactly. It's a problem. I mean it's
gonna be borrough swimming up scream for a while.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Now, Yeah, he's gonna he may get tired of that. Yeah,
might get tired of that because he's very competitive.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Absolutely tough place to win.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Yeah, absolutely, Let's get to a break. We're gonna talk
more about the Steelers big win. Get some to nine
and three love it. Clinch is the twenty first consecutive
non losing season, which ties the record, ties the all
time record with the Dallas Cowboys. Now, the next step
here is getting playoff wins and some things changed around
(18:41):
the league as well yesterday. We'll talk about that more.
But before we do that, we got Rob King joining
us here in the next segment. He's Matt Williamson. I'm
Dale Lolly. You're listening to the Drive here on the
Steelers Audio Network. We'll be back with more right after this.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
At least.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
He's the Drive with Dale Lolly and Matt Williams on
your twenty fourth having home of the Black and Gold
Steelers Nation Radio.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
And we are back. I am Dale Lalli.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
He is the Matt Williamson and we're joined on the
Justin Miller hot Line by Steelers play by play announcer
Rob King and published author.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Now Rob King, so congratulations, the book is out.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
You want to tell people before we tell tell people
about the book a little bit here.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So it's a it is a uh, the first book
of the Fantasy trilogy. It's seemed largely at middle grade students.
Although everybody that's.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
So it's right up our alley.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
So maybe I can read it. I don't understand right,
So it's it's do you have to dumb it down
for wolf yees?
Speaker 4 (19:54):
It have lots of pictures, come on, there are or illustrated.
Speaker 5 (20:02):
Very yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
She did the cover. Two. She's a very talent artist.
It's called The Door in the Stone. It can be
purchased on Amazon. Rob King the Door in the Stone.
Wonderful holiday gift idea for all those young readers out there.
But you know, so, you know, when I was a kid,
I was always a big reader. We're not a big
TV family. Go read a book or go play outside,
(20:23):
you know, that was that was our options. So as
a kid I always read just nothing but like hardy
boy books and whatever sports biography I could find. I mean,
I read, you know, I wore out the library. I
was down to like rock seriously, like Rocky Colavito, Jim
Jensen uh, you know people like that that are barely
remembered by by sports people. And then around that middle grade,
(20:46):
you know age, it was uh you know the Lion,
the Witch and the Wardrobe and all those books, you know,
the Narnie of books and all that stuff, and it
really opened up, uh, the kind of reading I was.
I went on to be an English literature major in
college and still loved to read. So those books hold
a special part in my heart, which is why I
wrote for that age group. Although again, you know, if
you're a if you're a grown up and you go
(21:07):
back and read those Narnia books, they're still very readable.
So that's that's why I wrote them for that age
and and so hopefully people will read them and enjoy him.
And uh, yeah, thanks guys, I appreciate it's been It's
been a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Absolutely, Oh yeah, thank you. Absolutely. So check that out again.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
That's Rob king the author, and you can you can
get that just in time for Christmas. Kingly speaking of
lots of fun, Yeah, yes, you had to have a
lot of fun calling that game yesterday because there was
all kinds of action went on a little bit up and.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Down the field, absolute flast I remember looking up at
the clock. I think it's like seven minutes left in
the second quarter or whatever. It was twenty one twenty one.
I was like, oh my goodness. You know, I was
joking with Walter and Commercial and I said, uh, you know,
had a bit of like a fake play by play boys.
I said, you know, all right, well sixty three to
(22:02):
sixty three, you know, thirty five seconds left to this one.
And he goes, what wait, wait did I miss something?
Just bessing around, man, But you know, it was it
was an incredible pace and very heartening to see the
Steelers be able to win a game that I don't
think over the last what four or five years, frankly
(22:22):
they would be capable of winning. And so you know, again,
was this the Kansas City Chiefs? Is that the Buffalo Bills? No,
but I think it's a very dangerous team. I think
it's going to be a team that'll be back next year.
They've had some health problems. I think that they have
a specific need or two that can get them right
(22:43):
back to contention very quickly. It's a very talented roster.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
I think Matt and I was just talking about that, yeah,
oh yeah, that that they.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Need like seven defensive players.
Speaker 5 (22:53):
We're talking about the Bengals, right.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Chase.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
I don't think that Higgins will be there next year.
I mean, it's not going to be quite the.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Same, but no, it won't be. I mean, I think
that they are hoping that Jermaine Burton, who's a super
talented guy, you know, first round talent, third round pick,
and that obviously there are reasons for that. You're hoping
that he's going to pan out for you. You know,
Zach Moss wasn't having a great year when he got hurt.
But you know, really the back end I think was
(23:24):
really hurt by DJ Turner and Dax Hill being hurt.
The defensive line I think the biggest problem on the team.
You know, the two linebackers are good, solid professional linebackers,
Pratt and Wilson. I like them both. I think they're
both good players. The biggest problem to me is that
they thought Sheldon Rankins was going to be able to
replace DJ Reeder and he's not been the same player.
(23:46):
The defensive line has not been good. Now they drafted
guys in the second and third round that again, I
think will mature and I think the decision you have
to make on Hubbard. Is is he just having an
injury plagued year or for some reason, is he just
hit a wall. He had injury problems early on. He
has not been the same guy. So when I say,
you know, I think you shore up the defensive line,
(24:09):
maybe you get you know, an interior offensive a lignement,
and sure you want a little help in the back end,
but that's not you know, a thousand problems. I think
their problems, I guess their problems to me are pretty
easily recognizable. And it's a matter of whether they have
the resources financially in draft pickwise to be able.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
To fix or the wherewithal to use those.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Yeah, they start hitting on picks.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
They they've not right.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
They've not spent a lot over the years in terms
of free agency. So yeah, we'll see about that. But
it doesn't it doesn't take away from what the Steelers
did on the field yesterday. You know, you mentioned Kansas
City and Buffalo. Cincinnati's offensive skill position players are better
than both of those teams. If you take everything into
(24:54):
the equation. Quarterback, running back, wide receivers are better than
Buffalo and Kansas City. You went out there and outscored
those units, right.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
I think for you know, when you look at quarterback
and top two receivers, that combination of players, if you
took the quarterback out, and I think Burrows phenomenal. No
team's got two receivers quite as good as Jason Higgins agreed.
So yes, I think that it is. You know in Gasiki,
you know, working out of the slot. And there's another thing,
you know, Eric All is another guy, that young tight
(25:26):
end who they really missed because they really have to
mix and match. I mean, Gasiki's a receiving tight end.
But regardless, I'm forget the bank, They're uh, you know,
they're They're a formidable challenge. And I think it underscores
the importance of what the Steelers did to get faster
(25:49):
and better on defense, faster and better in the middle
of the field. You know, Joey Porter Junior had had
the penalties, we understand that he's been, uh just as
he's a really solid job against a lot of tough
matchups early on in the season, I think, but then
you have Dante Jackson on the other side. Man, what
an upgrade he's been. He gives you that second guy
(26:12):
that can cover when you run into a team like Cincinnati,
and then you have Queen and Peyton Wilson with their
speed in the middle of the field. Deshaun Elliott adds
a different speed element in the back end alongside micka Fitzpatrick.
I just think and then of course, you know the
bounce back season for Cam Hayward. I mean I can
name the whole defense. You know her big. You know
(26:33):
what a luxury to have a guy like that be
your third guy. So when when high Smith is out,
you're not really feeling it. I mean it's it is,
you know, off of the cap for sure. Look, people,
you gave up thirty one points. Why are you dofpin
the cap? Well, because it's an explosive offense. It was
a shootout type of game and you were able to
(26:56):
make the plays you needed to to win the game.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
Soon we can all admit that since he's defensive line besides,
Hendrickson isn't great, but right, I really like the way
kind of an underreported issue because's easy to focus on
Cam and Watt and Russ and all these stars that
are playing like stars. But I think the Steelers OH
line every week takes kind of a baby step forward,
baby step forward and the right side of the line,
(27:21):
this game took a nice step forward.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
To me. Yeah, I think that's a great point, Matt.
You know, and first of all, you know, Dan Moore
continues to to have a very good season at a
very good time for him, you know, without a contract
after the season. Henderson didn't do anything yesterday. I mean,
he did nothing, and Dan morgants a lot of credit
(27:44):
for that. But you know, when I think of the season,
and look, you want to always play the best possible
game you could play. But I really think that this
becomes the time of season in which you want to
start finding yourself. You want to start peeking towards the postseason.
And I think it's understandable that when you have, you know,
(28:08):
young players and Roderick Jones is still a young player
at right tackle, and you have Zach Frazier who's been
really pretty darn goods from the get go, and Mason
McCormick who's starting, and again, don't forget Troy Faltanu was
your starting right tackle and Daniels was your starting right guard.
So you would hope that these guys would progress as
(28:32):
the season goes on. It's never going to be a
linear fashion. It's just, you know, it's not a bar
graph where you go from you know, the left hand corner,
bottom left hand corner to the upper right hand corner.
Just doesn't work that way. But you know, these guys
playing at the level they're playing at and hopefully getting
better as you get into the playoffs and reaching a
(28:53):
peak as the playoffs begin. That is, I think encouraging.
That's what you want as a team. Nobody remembers who
was the best team in the NFL in Week ten
and that best team in week ten Injuries, players petering out,
players hitting a wall. It's not always the team that
also wins the Super Bowl.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
And I like that the five of them are starting
to get some continuity. We can't overlook all the combinations
they've had to play early in the season.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Absolutely, I totally, Matt, It's one hundred percent right. It
is a you know it is it's a unit. It
is vitally important for that group to be able to communicate,
to know the strengths and weaknesses that people buy you
because it just takes one sliver, one guy shooting a
(29:43):
gap in a passing situation. Look at yesterday, look at
the plays that the Steelers defense made that were vital
at vital times, whether it's Cam Hayward getting a hand
up and deflecting a ball, or you know, rocketing through
for a sack, whether it's TJ. Watt with a couple
of sacks, herbig maybe the biggest play of the game
that Strip sacked that Wilson picked up and ran in
(30:04):
for a score. It just takes a little flash, a
little bit of room, a little bit of space, a
little bit of miscommunication upfront for a defense to be
able to turn a game like the Steelers defense turned
the game yesterday.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Oh, there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
And you know, we talked about it even last week
that you knew you were gonna have to score points
against this Bengals team because they were going to score points.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
They're gonna put points on board.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
They've now lost three games this season where they've scored
more than thirty three points.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
For the rest of the league's lost two.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
It's crazy, it really is.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
There's it four, yeah, it's now three, right, there's some
obscene numbers with it.
Speaker 5 (30:45):
I mean, depending where you put the cutoff at thirty
or thirty.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Three, it's it's insane. But they've scored pretty much against everybody.
It's just a matter of can you outscore them? And
to me that was the big thing. Your offense showed
that it is capable of doing that. Yes, your defense
gave up, you gave up some yards and stuff like that,
but I mean, in the grand scheme of skin, grand
scheme of things, your defense forced three turnovers, you had
(31:11):
four sacks, you had, you got stops against you had
a couple of three and outs against the Bengals, which
gave your offense a chance to get back on the field.
And the offense answer to Bell, I thought that was
a pretty complete game yesterday.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
Yeah, and along those lines, ok we were talking about.
I mean, the Bengals have scored thirty five points three
times and are one and two in those games. The
rest of the league is thirty five and oh when
they scored thirty five points, I mean, come on, man.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah. The other stat I think that I was told
before this game was that they had three losses in
which they scored thirty three or more points and the
entire rest of the NFL had two, and Tom Brady
had four in his career. So the Bengals have now
had more. Yeah, in the first twelve games of this
season losses with scoring thirty three or more points Brady
(32:00):
had in his entire career. That's crazy.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
And they have a bunch of opportunities to add to it.
They're not done yet.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, yeah, yes, they keep going. And you know when
when you look at this team and the reason that
this game scared me, well, we just saw it. They
scored thirty eight points seven of my defense, we get that.
And again, you know, going back to what we were
talking about at the beginning, how many times over the years,
including against the Bengals, have we seen a team be
(32:28):
able to score points against the Steelers? And the Steelers
just don't have an answer. And I've said this a
couple of times this year. But to me, you know,
for for fans, and look, we all all you know, hey,
you could have managed that situation bet at the first half. Okay,
maybe you could have uh and and clock management wise,
I understand that. But this, to me, what the Steelers
(32:50):
are doing now is a reminder to me of what
a great job Mike Tomlin and his staff has done
the last couple of years. Because we're seeing the importance
to the quarterback position, right and think about all the
teams around the league in which their quarterback is hurt.
And that's it. They're four and thirteen. You know, they're
(33:10):
five and twelve. They're done.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
It's done, yes over, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
And and you know the Steelers are running out a
guy from Duck dynasty, and and you know, you know,
making it to five hundred, pushing a playoff spot. It's
remarkable what they've been able to do. Remarkable. They've been
able to win one score games and now we're seeing
what happens. And again, I'm just as guilty of this
(33:35):
as anybody else guilty of forgetting what you know, a
championship caliber, Hall of Fame caliber quarterback can do for
a team. What Ben Roethlisberger used to be able to
do for the Steelers. Hey, we're losing in the fourth quarter,
Ben says, don't worry about it, I got it. You
know we have to get in a shootout. Ben says,
don't worry about it, I got it. Well, now we
have Russell Wilson being able to say those things in
(33:57):
the huddle and do his teammates as well. And we
saw evidence of that yesterday.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
And the other big thing, Rob is, you know, people
were harping on the red zone offense all last week
because obviously they didn't. They didn't score in the red
zone against the Ravens even though they won the game.
And you know, they went one for two in the
red zone against the Browns and lost that game. The
red zone offense, red zone offense, red zone offense all
we heard about, and I kept telling people, including people
(34:20):
you know who listened to this show and respond in
the comments section, I'm like, it's it's not I don't
think it's an issue. And here's why every red zone
trip is not the same. They scored on their first
two trips in the red zone yesterday, they score touchdown
on both of them. The next time they go into
the red zone is at the end of the first half.
(34:43):
They hit a pass to Jaylen Warren to get to
the sixteen. They call time out and kick a field goal.
That counts as a failed red zone trip, but in reality,
it was not a failed.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Red zone trip.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
You did exactly what you were trying to do in
that situation, which was to put some points on the
board before the end of the half. The last red
zone trip, they get to the four, but they're running
the ball trying to get the Bengals to use their timeouts.
They get them to use all their all three timeouts.
Wilson takes a sack on purpose on third down to
let the clock continue to run because Bengals are now
(35:13):
out of timeouts, and so you kick another field goal.
Again counts as a failed red zone trip. But in
reality it was a very good trip. It was a
very very successful trip because you ate, you went the
length of the field, you kick the field goal to
make it a thirteen point game, and you force them
to use all their timeouts.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Right, But that's next level.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
It's next level thinking on this stuff. You can't just
look at the numbers and say, well, this offense is
forming one.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's the thing too.
They're they're you know, I love statistics, but they do
have to be taken into context, and it's not always
easy to do that. And you know, you sometimes think,
and I would say this, like, over the course of
you know, if we get to the end of the
regular season, there are going to be there's going to
(36:00):
be enough statistical evidence that within some plus or minus
scale you're gonna be able to say, okay, uh, the
students have been good in the red zone. They were
good in the red zone in Washington, right, So, uh,
you know, I think that that you know, look, there
are still uh stories to be told in this team.
You know, we talked about yesterday's game. You know, you
(36:21):
get a pick six, you get a block field goal.
That's unlike the Steelers is you know, the Steelers special
teams have been a plus almost uniformly throughout the season.
But there are still there's still time left to tell
the story of what this team is gonna look like
going into the playoffs, and then of course the playoffs
you know, it can be entirely different as well. But
(36:42):
I think that that's you know, you'll find out what
trends there are and what things you need to improve
upon when you just have a little more evidence. I mean,
this is Russell Wilson has started was a six Ers
is it six games five and one as a starter,
averaging twenty nine points a game. Still, that number, that
number feels real to me, you know, because look, you're
(37:06):
you're reduced by what you can do offensively in the
snow in Cleveland. You know, the Studens and Ravens always
score under twenty points when they play and then the
other games of Stula's offense has been explosive. So uh
you know again, well, you know, let's check back in
a couple of weeks from now and after you played
Baltimore again, and after you played Philadelphia and after you
played Kansas City, we'll see where those numbers lie. I
(37:27):
suspect they're gonna lie in a good spot. But that's
why you play the games, you know. As I said before,
it's not like two guys run out there with statistics
at midfield and my stick. Yeah he runs off with
his hands in the air. That's it. Yeah, jeeps have won.
You know, you got to actually play the game.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
So it's not rock paper scissors out there.
Speaker 5 (37:47):
And yeah, no, no, it.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Is heavy emphasis on the paper.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Well, Kinger will let you go again. You can check
out Rob's book. Where can they buy that at rub Amazon? Amazon?
Speaker 1 (38:00):
There you go Rob the Stone. If you get to
Rob King and there's like some complex book on mathematical equations,
that's a different Rob.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
That's not you.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
This is called The Door in the Stone. It's a
middle grade fantasy book. Thanks for the plug, guys, Hope
people buy it and enjoy it, and thanks for.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Having me on always Rob.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
That's Rob King, Steelers play by play announcer, the voice
of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He's Matt Williamson. I am Dale Lolly.
You're listening to the Drive here on the Steelers Audio Network.
Will be back with more right after this.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Least.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
He's the Drive with Dale Lolly and Matt Williamson on
your twenty four to seven home of the Black and
Gold Steelers Nation Radio.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
And welcome back to the Drive. I am Dale Lolly.
He is the Matt Williamson and Matt. We've now has
to follow through with our conversation there with Rob King.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
Yeah, it was great.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
Russell Wilson now five and one as a starter. Now
Joe Euston Fields was four and two. Again, I mean
when a lot of games is here, if they've won,
they're nine and three as a team. Wilson now has
sixteen hundred and fifty three passing yards in his six games,
ten touchdown passes, another rushing. He's gonna have six more
(39:19):
games to add to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I'm sorry,
five more games to add to that, yes, add to
those toles. So he'll make eleven starts this year if
he can get the three thousand yards again. Wow, what
do you say is that now he's at sixteen fifty
three through.
Speaker 5 (39:36):
Six another five? Yeah, close, close, Yeah, probably won't throw
for four to fourteen again, but probably Well they get
the Bengals again, you can play them again, you play
the Chiefs.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
I mean that, you know, maybe that's a shootout.
Speaker 5 (39:50):
Yeah, Ravens pass defense isn't glorious either.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
Yeah, you might have to get into a different Typically,
what happens in conference games or division games, I should
say is if one game is high scoring, the second
one is low scoring, and vice versa.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Yeah, that just seems to be how they go.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
Now, Steeler Ravens games have always gone, They've just been
low scoring.
Speaker 5 (40:11):
But will seem shocked off. Week eighteen is ten to
seven though, Yeah, you know against the Bengals.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Every season in his career has passed for three thousand yards.
Even last year, last year he sat down, he had
he had three thousand and seventy with twenty six touchdown passes.
Speaker 5 (40:25):
Durability has been a huge key to it, of course,
you know, right, knock on wood, yeah right, Yesterday was
the second best passing day in terms of yardage in
his career.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
I know, this guy's put up a lot of big
career numbers.
Speaker 5 (40:39):
Oh yeah, I mean he's a massive producer, I mean
through his whole career, and this is his second highest scoring,
your best game of his life. Yeah. Now, you're not
going to count on four hundred plus every every week.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
But you got it in your hip pocket. Now you
know you can do it.
Speaker 5 (40:56):
Yeah, right, it exists and.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
He can do it and take care of the football.
Speaker 5 (40:59):
Yeah. And my co host on the podcast asked me,
He's like, if I told you before the season started
that a Steeler quarterback threw for over four hundred yards
in the first game in December, what would you think
I'd be like, it must have been a flukey one,
you know, like three defensive backs fell down, loan coverage,
somehow you had a ninety yard catch and run. You know,
(41:21):
there was none of that. There was none of that.
It was efficiency, throw after throw, take what's there? You know,
good run after catch too. I mean teammates always helped,
but it was smart, efficient football.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
It was more like him playing point guard yesterday. Yeah, yeah,
just getting the ball to people for layups, lay up,
lay up, lay up, lay up, layup. Absolutely, this guy's
you know, Shack's got a great matchup in the post.
I'm gonna feed him over and over. I mean, whatever
it is. But where keeping out of negatives I keep
coming back to with him. Yeah, to your point, the
(41:53):
Steelers got I think it was six ten. They got
thirteen catches from the running backs. Yeah, yeah, for almost
one hundred and fifty yards, and they're all highly capable.
They got six They have eleven I think eleven catches
for the tight ends. Yeah, again for over one hundred yards.
(42:14):
And then the wide receiver. There wasn't a lot of
you know, wide receiver stuff. You know, Pickens had three
catches for seventy four yards, Austin had two for this was.
Speaker 5 (42:21):
His lowest target share with Wilson. You know, they just
didn't pump it into Pickens over and over.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
Jefferson had one for forty three that was a catch
and run, and Ben Scronik had one for twenty three.
Speaker 5 (42:33):
So this was the road I was going to go
down with Rob, but we ran out of time, and
there's a million things to talk about with him. Ten
guys cup balls, and we were talking about the maturity
of Wilson, and I think you can overestimate the human
element of that. If I'm Scornic or prou It or
Washington and I'm out there doing the dirty work, yeah
I'm happy to be there.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
But if I can get the ball in my hands
once or twice, you were rewarded.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Yeah, yeah, this is fun. There was guy Ben's is either.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
People were asking why's Ben Skronic out there instead of
Mike Williams Because.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
Ben'skronick is a ridiculous hard nose blocker.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
Not that Mike Williams can't do it, but Ben'skronick is
blocking like defensive ends.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Same thing with Van Jefferson. They're putting their nose in there.
Speaker 5 (43:15):
And plus, when Austin went out, Scronic directly replaced him
as the slow.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Williams out there. Williams might have been. Williams and Connor Hayward.
I think were like the only two guys who played
a significant amount of snaps yesterday who didn't catch balls.
Speaker 5 (43:29):
Is the time you get worried about Williams. I know
this is a positive Monday after.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
I'm not.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
I just haven't seen separation, you know, other than one
big play.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
There's a big play.
Speaker 5 (43:43):
They haven't needed them. I mean, it's one of them
was also a snow game, and I mean, I get
the circumstances, but I don't know if he's gonna be
a big contributor or not. Who knows.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Yeah, I mean it gives you another guy. I think
he will contribute down the stretch. I'm not concerned about
that at all. I mean, this isn't a Deontay Johnson
situation in Baltimore, which is really blowing up by the way.
Folks get zero snaps, Yester zero snaps yesterday, and Bateman
got hurt.
Speaker 5 (44:08):
And got hurt and he's struggling that he wants out. Yeah,
you know it's not going well.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
He's got five targets or six targets, and since he's
played them, he's got one catch for like five yards.
Speaker 5 (44:18):
I'll be the first to admit, like when my front
phone blew up this summer and I'm like, oh, they
traded Deontay. What did they Get'm like, oh, I thought
they'd get more than that. They got more than they
should have got.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
For Dante, Jackson is tied for the league lead with
five interceptions among all cornerbacks.
Speaker 5 (44:33):
He's more valuable than Johnson, yes, no question. I mean
I bet the Panthers will tell you that. I bet
the Ravens will tell you that. And you got more
draft picks than you gave up, you know, so be
happy about it, folks.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
Yeah, I think that that deal.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
But my point was that all this time, but yeah,
you threw for four hundred yards and your receivers weren't
the major rush into that.
Speaker 5 (44:56):
Right, right? Was It was it around and taking what's
given and tight ends and running backs. Like you said,
it's great. I mean, I think it's a great thing
to build on going forward.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
We've been waiting for Friarmouth to be a bigger part
of the passing game all season long. Well, six six
catches on seven targets for sixty eight yards and a touchdown.
Speaker 5 (45:14):
Yeah all right, Yeah, you're not built like the Bengals
with Chasing Higgins that you can just pump, you know,
twenty five targets to a week. So how do you
manufact ot how do you make the stew out of
a lot of different ingredients? Well, they're showing you how.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:27):
If I'm future opponents, I'm looking at this game and going, well,
wait a second, Pickens caught three passes and they threw
for four hundred yards and scored forty four points.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
Like if I'm the Ravens, for example, because the Ravens
took Kyle Hamilton and really dedicate them to Pickens. But
I want to do that again, and then if I don't, well,
then they're gonna throw to Pickens, you know, I mean obviously,
But yeah, I do think there's a maturity, advanced quarterback,
human element of I'm gonna make sure everybody gets one. Yeah,
(45:58):
I'm gonna make sure proud who's been fighting and scrapping
at least gets to touch the ball.
Speaker 4 (46:03):
I also thought it was interesting one last thing here
that one of the knocks against Wilson coming out of
Denver was well, he's a checkdown artist. All he wants
to do is check the ball down. We threw for
four hundred yards yesterday checking the ball down.
Speaker 5 (46:15):
Yeah, and that's also a peytent thing too. I mean
that's I mean the top of league again to throwing
the ball to running backs, which is a highly efficient
manner of It's like a handoff. If you can get
nause of your war and touching the ball in front
of the line of scrimmage instead of behind the line
of scrimmage. Great, yeah, give me it all day long.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
Absolutely, but let's get to a break.
Speaker 4 (46:36):
That's going to do it for our number one of
the drive here on the Steelers Audio Network.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Matt and I will be back with our number two
right after this
Least.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
He's the Drive with Dale Lolly and Matt Williamson on
your twenty four to seven Home of the Black and
Gold Steelers Nation.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Radio and welcome to the Drive.
Speaker 4 (00:17):
It is a Chile victory Monday here in Pittsburgh. It
was a Chili Day Sunday in Cincinnati. But well, it
just warmed your heart to the concols to see the
Escalooser fire up at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
Speaker 5 (00:31):
I had someboddies over at the williame and taking pictures.
Seven to me say, this thing is rolling already. I mean,
the hearts of Bengals fans are turned to stone the Grinch.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I mean they might have frozen a little bit, but
there was plenty of action going back and forth in
that game. There's Matt Williams and I'm Dale LOLLI by
the way, this is the Drive on the Steelers Audio Network.
But Matt so much done. Peel from that game yesterday
in Cincinnati at the pay Corpse Stadium, Russell Wilson was fabulous, fabulous. Yeah,
(01:05):
he was great, fantastic, however you want. He actually outplayed
Joe Burrow to a large degree.
Speaker 5 (01:12):
I played super impressed with both Burrough.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Played very good, yes, but he did throw an interception, yep,
and his was a legit interception.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
It wasn't that made me great, Let's get out of
the way. How is that not called? I don't know.
I mean, I understand, I do think Pickens was falling,
but then you helped them by grabbing his helmet, not
even like nudge them shoulder pad or whatever him to
the ground into the head. Illegal use of hands of
the head, right, I mean, I thought, man, they're gonna
lose this game because of that. And frankly, the teams
(01:43):
from the last five years or so would have done so.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
They would have they got to score like that earlier
in the game it was done and had to throw.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
I mean, they didn't have to throw, they chose to throw.
They threw a high percentage of the time in the
first half, I'm sure by design. But then when you're
down seven nothing before you know it, maybe even more
and you could you know, I mean part of it
to Bengals defense is really really bad. But I thought
Wilson was tremendous.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Tremendous.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
They answered every time that the Bengals would score, including
that one. Yeah, the Steelers answered with the score of
their own and then finally took the lead in the
at the end of the first half and basically just
kind of continue to expand upon that.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
Yeah. Yeah, and then I thought the pass rush took
over in the second half to some degree. When I
mean they're a pass eavy team to begin with, defense
made plays. We knew they were going to allow yardage
and points. I mean, you just knew that. And again Burrow,
Chase Higgins, Chase Brown, I mean, those guys are playmakers.
Those guys are really really good. I think it's a
top three type offense. But I think the overriding thing
(02:50):
is now you can play that style a game. You know,
if you want to play thirteen nine against the Ravens
and hand you over and over and over and play
with big people and battle it out and be the
more physical team against the Chargers in round one or whatever, Okay,
we can play that style fight, you know. I mean
there's been a lot of good Steeler teams that can't
play every style of fight.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, this one can, this one can.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
And you know that's I'm just looking at comments on stuff,
and you know, well, the defense.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Had an awful day.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
I don't think guys get paid two and your defense
took the ball away three times, your sack Burrow four times,
you hit him eleven times. Yeah, yeah, I thought the
defense played pretty damn well.
Speaker 5 (03:32):
Absolutely. I thought, with all respect to Wilson and Burrow,
who were awesome, I thought Cam Hayward is the best
player in the stadium.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
If you look back at their big runs, including that
there's one, the big one, Yeah he was. He wasn't
on the field for the thirteen yard run before the
forty yard run, and he wasn't on the field for
the forty yard run, So fifty three of those rushing
yards came with Cam Hayward wasn't on the field.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
He was unbelievable in this.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
When he was out there, they didn't run the football.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
They didn't run the football at all. And his pass
rush is dominant. I mean, I know it didn't matter,
but he made he splatters Chase Bras. I mean, wow,
he had a couple of plays for he's chasing the football.
That's ridiculous. I was just on with Mark Madden and
in a different show I said the exact same thing.
I firmly believe he is the best player in the
(04:16):
league at swatting passes at the line of scrimmage.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
He's got eight of them. He's got eight of them,
which is bonkers.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
Most cornerbacks don't have right that they get thrown at
time and time again. And I believe TJ. Watt is
the best at causing fumbles in the whole league. And
it's trickling down to all their teammates too. You know,
everyone else around them is getting really, really good at
those two things too.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah, huge plays.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
So Watt now has five forced fumbles this season, which
leads the league. He has thirty two since he came
into the league, which is the most over that period. Yeah,
to your point, it has trickled down. He and Herbig
are tied for the league lead and strip sacks of
the quarterback with Miles Garrett.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
I didn't know if you do that. I was like, yeah,
I'm like I was gonna phrase it like this. Well,
t J. Watt and Garrett are tied for strip sacks
with Herbig, who plays half the stats that those guys do.
You know, he's a part time player over the course
of a year, but a really good one. And whipping
up one Orlando Brown, who's one hundred pounds heavy year
(05:14):
extreme length difference and is allowed to leave early.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Apparently he's allowed to get a jump start on that.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
Ye yeah, time and time again, and you're allowed to
go early. Okay. I was on a show with Wolf
just a little bit ago. I'm like, would it have
been helpful if you could move anytime you wanted? Yeah,
that wouldn't have been bad. What is going on with
the league with that?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I don't get.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
Yeah, they get away with it constantly, and you know,
it seems to me maybe these good offenses.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
And some of these older guys are just we'll let
that go.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
I mean some of it who are just not gonna
throw a flag every time or no one's gonna watch.
But come on, man, Yeah he's bad.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
It is bad.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
And they still lost to herbig consistently in the past game.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Yeah, but just a I thought it was a great
game plan by Arthur Smith, a lot of past the
backs early again. All right, you're gonna drop your linebackers
ten yards off to the line of another one. I
don't get from the Bengals perspective, just just keep dumping
it off, dumping it off, and yeah, you're getting ten
yards a pop every time you did it.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
All right, Right, over the middle field over and over
and over. We're gonna do it until you stop it.
Sometimes you get them either with their just back, you know,
giving you showing their numbers, you know, or getting them
in stride. But either way they flip their hips and
run over a defensive back and get eight more on
top of it. And watch on TV. There's a lot
of those plays where you don't even see a Bengal
in the frame.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
It was like stealing.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
It's like, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
And back to Wilson, he did so many good things.
And I'm not privy to what goes on obviously behind
the scenes, but it seemed more than ever he was
making things happen at the line of scrimmage pre snap
justin protects whatever they were doing. He was yeah, okay,
tight end over here. I mean sometimes they almost didn't
(06:56):
get the snap off.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
They're going to the line of scrimmage with fifteen to
twenty seconds left, even late in the game when they're
trying to run the block out and he's just directing.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Guys, all right, you go over. He just it was
like he was practicing calculus.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
Yeah, absolutely, and the result we saw the result, but
the result that people don't always think about was he
gets you out of the bad plays. You know, like,
no one's a perfect play caller. You don't know what
the defense is going to be, so you call in
a play or two or however they do it through
the headset. He comes to the line of scrimmage and
we be like, this play is designed to run where
all their dudes are at or you know, I'm getting
(07:29):
out of that. You know where fields Picket, Rudolph, all
those guys aren't that advanced. You know, maybe they will
be in ten years, but they're just not that advanced.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
I thought the perfect example of that. The Steelers are
leading forty one thirty one. There is what do we
have left on the clock? Heer, just over seven minutes
left in the game. Let's steal a ballgame. Oh yeah, yeah,
that's a dangerous team. On the other side, it's third
and nine at the Pittsburgh forty two. He goes up
to the line of scrimmage with about again fifteen twenty
(08:00):
seconds on the on the play clock, looks around, starts
moving some receivers around, gets Van Jefferson matched up one
on one on on the right side of the field.
It hit him on a like a little skinny post. Yeah,
that might be the hardest football I've ever seen thrown.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
I mean he just gunned that.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
Going there before the snap obviously, the safety, all the
safeties went okay, you're gonna put all these guys on
that side of the field. Boom, I'm gonna hit you
on a slant with an inbreaking route against outside leverage.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
That bar before he even came out of his break. Yeah,
it was just like right there and again stealing. But
that ball had I mean.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
He's throwing with velocity. I know we're gonna have Rob
on next segment. And he said this before, you and
I have said this before too. But the word Rob
always uses for Wilson, which I think we both agree with,
is crisp. I mean, even at camp, he would throw
a touchdown pass. He's not high five, he's looking the sideline.
What's the next play? I mean, everything's crisp. It's now
(08:59):
I'm using every second efficiently, you know, and same thing,
you know, like, I know my linemen are in a stance,
but the defense is telling me more. I'm gonna adjust.
With five seconds left in the playclock, Boom, gonna switch
to a run against this bubble nausey for eight you know,
I mean it's getting out of bad stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Yeah, I thought, Mike when Mike Tomlin said, Hey, this
is AFC North football, We're not playing checkers, We're playing.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Chess, And that was chess. There was a lot of
chess going on out there.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Because Loui an Arumo, despite not having any talent on
that Cincinnati defense, that's a tough watch man. I still
think he's a good defensive coordinator. He throws a lot
of different stuff at you. I don't think he'll be
back next year.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I don't think either.
Speaker 5 (09:42):
Someone else is gonna hire him up. Yeah, exactly. And hey,
if he wants to be a consultant on this staff,
I'm all for it, you know what I mean, in
a flora as like manner or whatever. But he still
has a great mind for it. They just don't have
a talent anything. Yeah, they're the guys that they have drafted.
Are we shot up last week? It's glaring the.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Guys they have drafted in the high rounds, who you
expect to play right now?
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Just they stink, they stink. They're misses.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Wilson's not the greatest linebacker in the league, but he's
the green doc guy, and I mean he's the second
most important guy in that unit, and he was out.
They had some backup.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Sheldon Rankins was out.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
Yeah, and they've had issues all year and not only
their young guys not hitting. But I hate to say it,
but like Mike Hilton's getting shot the guys they went
out and bought several years ago. Austin runs right by him.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
By way, Trey Henderson playing that game yesterday.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
I mean that poor guy too. He's like Burrow, like
I'm the one man show. Here is a team game. Yeah,
and you can you other ten could help me out.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Yeah, the Steelers did a much better job this week
of making sure he didn't wreck the game, and they
did the week before. It gets scaredt and that was
you know, it was a situation where it was, hey,
guys were when Dan Moore was supposed to have help
against Garrett and it didn't happen.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
They made sure they fixed that a in the second
half of that game, but then carried it over to
this game. And you're not going to leave your guys
one on one. Nobody leaves their Yeah, you don't leave
your right tackle alone by himself against what sure not
consistently anyways. And yeah, he had an assisted tackle in
one quarterback hitting that game.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
I don't know what his stat line was, I mean
it wasn't much. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
And now by the same token, I thought, what was
his typical thumb? He had five quarterback hits in that game.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
I know, I thought him and Hayward were phenomenal. Her
Big was really really good too. It was a big
thing we talked about last week, was this game needs
to be on the D line, you know. I mean,
after the D line underachieved in Cleveland. I mean, I'm
sure they weren't happy at all about that. And I'm
bet over ten days they heard about it, or Cam
told him about it, what told him about it. And
(11:55):
it was a really impressive performance against a quarterback who's
really hard to sack too. I mean, he moved around well,
he gets the ball out. He had a really short
time to throw, which reminds me too. I Mean Wilson
had his lowest time to throw and lowest average up
the target. As a stealer, It's like, we will take
our shots, but if you're gonna let me have these
long handoffs in the middle of field. I'll do it
(12:17):
over and over and over.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
He still averaged ten point nine yards per attempt and.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
The results were better than everge. Yeah, there's a lot
of ways to do it. That's not negative, you know.
But the ball came out.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
The ball came out, It went to the people who
needed to get it. I didn't ten receivers.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
I don't think there was a pass in the game
outside outside of the interception that.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
If the Bengal was going to hand on.
Speaker 5 (12:40):
A ball, probably not. I mean, I can't think of one.
The interception was a goofy player.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
They had two pass defenses on the interception, so they
got one hand on it.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
They give you a pass defense on interceptions, kind of
like a sack and a quarterback.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
So they had one other pass that they broke up. Okay,
the whole everything else threw a lot. Yeah, I mean
he had nine incompletions, Like four of those were throwaways.
Speaker 5 (13:04):
Yea. You know there's also two quote negative plays were sacks.
One of them he kind of took on purpose, you know,
just to play it safe, keep the game.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Keeping because they've used all their timeouts.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
He probably could have thrown it out the back of
the end and avoid the sack. And the second one
I thought was a weird scorer situation where I thought
he was becoming a runner. I would not have called
that a sack. You know, so sacks have been a
problem over his career. In this game, he had a
really good feel for it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
That that that first one that you're talking about, and
I think that was in the early in the third quarter.
He ran towards the line of scrimmage and slide and
actually the line was slid well past the line the
line of scrimmage before he was touched. But once you
start that slide, that's where that's where it goes. It
takes one more step, sack, it was no gain.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
If he goes two inches farther, it's it's oh he
got a he got a yard.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
That wasn't his O line breaking down, you know, right
right right. I played well. It's so easy to focus
on some of the other things or even catch it
or running backs catching ball, big firemouth game, all the stuff.
Pickings did good and bad. I thought the O line
had a really good game too.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah, they opened up holes. You know, Nausey was running hard.
I think all the backs really had big games they did.
Speaker 5 (14:16):
They did again, big Friarmouth game. I thought the right
side of the line had maybe their best game of
the year. The opponent has something to do with it.
I mean, that's not Miles Garrett on the other side
of them and all that.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
But with young guys, that helps build confidence absolutely.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
And I know Broderck Jones is been up and down,
but he's super young and I think he's a tier
above since the bye, you know, I.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Think that like the last four games or so have
been what you want to see.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Yeh, the best going at the reason Now he did
miss the block on the blocked field goal?
Speaker 5 (14:48):
Oh was that him? That was louder Milk.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Okay, louder Milk blocked to the right.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
They didn't show that well or I wasn't paying enough
attention and okay, proder didn't block anybody.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Okay, guys, the guys slipped in between.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
It's easy to happen in those kind of situations because
the other teams have coaches too, just like the other
teams are professional.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
We'll be talking about how smart Danny Smith is. Right
la block, you know, right, So there's two sides to it.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
So just something you have to clean up there.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
I mean, but if you look at that from that perspective,
they had ten drives in the game.
Speaker 5 (15:18):
Steelers are Bengals, the Steelers.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
That didn't include a kneel down.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
Yeah, yeah, the one.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
So ten drives they punted once, they had a field
goal blocked six pick six, they would have lost the
game ten out of ten times.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
They had seven scoring drives in the game.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
Out of ten, right, right, right, that's pretty awesome, right,
I mean, just pretty dominant.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Doing whatever you wanted to against.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
And that was the thing when we were talking about
this game last week, and I kept hearing from you,
I don't know this, you know this, uh, this Bengals
team they could score on. I'm like, oh yeah, but
the defense is really bad.
Speaker 5 (15:55):
Again, we kept calling him even Steven. I mean, the
defense is as bad as the offense is good. And
you had a great quote in the lobby here, like
Joe Burrow is one of the best five quarterbacks on
them every week every week, one hundred percent degree. But
who else is the top five quarterback every week? The
guys that play the Bengels.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
By and large, right, unless it was Daniel Jones or
Deshaun Watson R. Everybody else has torn that defensive part.
Speaker 5 (16:18):
Four a part, and that has to be so hard
if you're borrow, I'm like, I can live with I'm
I duel Mahomes or Allen and it's a fair fight
and I lose thirty one thirty. But if I'm doing
you know, Joe blow. And I'm not calling Wilson Joe blow.
But if it's every week against average quarterbacks and they're
out playing me and I'm better than them, this is
(16:39):
getting old, quick, guys. Yeah, And I'm sure we'll talk
about next two hours, but state of the really, the
two Ohio teams is getting work. I mean, the arrow
is going down.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Looks pretty bad big time. And there's no quick sixes
there for either one of them.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
No, not at all. I mean Higgins isn't going to
be back. He's a really good player. They got some issues, man.
I would mean if Hendrickson's on a difference, even.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
If they tried to, even if they went out and
they figured out a way to resign Higgins, they also
have to give Chase a new contract.
Speaker 5 (17:09):
He's gonna be the richest fever.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Yeah, and so you're not going to tie up let's
say sixty five million dollars in salary cap between those
two receivers because the defense, you're not fixing that and
you're not fixing your offensive line.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah, which is also a problem.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
Again. They when they spent a lot of money on
like the Hiltons of the world, they also went out
and got the Kappas of the world too, who were fine, just.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Guys that was better than one. But you're probably you
probably paid them a little bit more than what they
were worth.
Speaker 5 (17:33):
They get you moren't super psyched to go there for
one thing, and you needed them bad. And anytime you're
buying an O line on the open market, you're overpaying.
And Burrow was getting killed his first two years in
the league, so we actually overspent and built a line
that was respectable. Well, now of those guys are falling
off too, you know, like they're getting old. And you
mentioned it before it went on the air. They need
(17:54):
seven new defensive starters. Yeah, it sounds about the one
draft doesn't do that for you.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Plus plus you know, strengthening the offensive line, like, yeah,
you only have so.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
Many picks exactly exactly. It's a problem. I mean it's
gonna be borrough swimming up scream for a while.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Now, Yeah, he's gonna he may get tired of that. Yeah,
might get tired of that because he's very competitive.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Absolutely tough place to win.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Yeah, absolutely, Let's get to a break. We're gonna talk
more about the Steelers big win. Get some to nine
and three love it. Clinch is the twenty first consecutive
non losing season, which ties the record, ties the all
time record with the Dallas Cowboys. Now, the next step
here is getting playoff wins and some things changed around
(18:41):
the league as well yesterday. We'll talk about that more.
But before we do that, we got Rob King joining
us here in the next segment. He's Matt Williamson. I'm
Dale Lolly. You're listening to the Drive here on the
Steelers Audio Network. We'll be back with more right after this.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
At least.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
He's the Drive with Dale Lolly and Matt Williams on
your twenty fourth having home of the Black and Gold
Steelers Nation Radio.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
And we are back. I am Dale Lalli.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
He is the Matt Williamson and we're joined on the
Justin Miller hot Line by Steelers play by play announcer
Rob King and published author.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Now Rob King, so congratulations, the book is out.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
You want to tell people before we tell tell people
about the book a little bit here.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So it's a it is a uh, the first book
of the Fantasy trilogy. It's seemed largely at middle grade students.
Although everybody that's.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
So it's right up our alley.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
So maybe I can read it. I don't understand right,
So it's it's do you have to dumb it down
for wolf yees?
Speaker 4 (19:54):
It have lots of pictures, come on, there are or illustrated.
Speaker 5 (20:02):
Very yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
She did the cover. Two. She's a very talent artist.
It's called The Door in the Stone. It can be
purchased on Amazon. Rob King the Door in the Stone.
Wonderful holiday gift idea for all those young readers out there.
But you know, so, you know, when I was a kid,
I was always a big reader. We're not a big
TV family. Go read a book or go play outside,
(20:23):
you know, that was that was our options. So as
a kid I always read just nothing but like hardy
boy books and whatever sports biography I could find. I mean,
I read, you know, I wore out the library. I
was down to like rock seriously, like Rocky Colavito, Jim
Jensen uh, you know people like that that are barely
remembered by by sports people. And then around that middle grade,
(20:46):
you know age, it was uh you know the Lion,
the Witch and the Wardrobe and all those books, you know,
the Narnie of books and all that stuff, and it
really opened up, uh, the kind of reading I was.
I went on to be an English literature major in
college and still loved to read. So those books hold
a special part in my heart, which is why I
wrote for that age group. Although again, you know, if
you're a if you're a grown up and you go
(21:07):
back and read those Narnia books, they're still very readable.
So that's that's why I wrote them for that age
and and so hopefully people will read them and enjoy him.
And uh, yeah, thanks guys, I appreciate it's been It's
been a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Absolutely, Oh yeah, thank you. Absolutely. So check that out again.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
That's Rob king the author, and you can you can
get that just in time for Christmas. Kingly speaking of
lots of fun, Yeah, yes, you had to have a
lot of fun calling that game yesterday because there was
all kinds of action went on a little bit up and.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Down the field, absolute flast I remember looking up at
the clock. I think it's like seven minutes left in
the second quarter or whatever. It was twenty one twenty one.
I was like, oh my goodness. You know, I was
joking with Walter and Commercial and I said, uh, you know,
had a bit of like a fake play by play boys.
I said, you know, all right, well sixty three to
(22:02):
sixty three, you know, thirty five seconds left to this one.
And he goes, what wait, wait did I miss something?
Just bessing around, man, But you know, it was it
was an incredible pace and very heartening to see the
Steelers be able to win a game that I don't
think over the last what four or five years, frankly
(22:22):
they would be capable of winning. And so you know, again,
was this the Kansas City Chiefs? Is that the Buffalo Bills? No,
but I think it's a very dangerous team. I think
it's going to be a team that'll be back next year.
They've had some health problems. I think that they have
a specific need or two that can get them right
(22:43):
back to contention very quickly. It's a very talented roster.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
I think Matt and I was just talking about that, yeah,
oh yeah, that that they.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Need like seven defensive players.
Speaker 5 (22:53):
We're talking about the Bengals, right.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Chase.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
I don't think that Higgins will be there next year.
I mean, it's not going to be quite the.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Same, but no, it won't be. I mean, I think
that they are hoping that Jermaine Burton, who's a super
talented guy, you know, first round talent, third round pick,
and that obviously there are reasons for that. You're hoping
that he's going to pan out for you. You know,
Zach Moss wasn't having a great year when he got hurt.
But you know, really the back end I think was
(23:24):
really hurt by DJ Turner and Dax Hill being hurt.
The defensive line I think the biggest problem on the team.
You know, the two linebackers are good, solid professional linebackers,
Pratt and Wilson. I like them both. I think they're
both good players. The biggest problem to me is that
they thought Sheldon Rankins was going to be able to
replace DJ Reeder and he's not been the same player.
(23:46):
The defensive line has not been good. Now they drafted
guys in the second and third round that again, I
think will mature and I think the decision you have
to make on Hubbard. Is is he just having an
injury plagued year or for some reason, is he just
hit a wall. He had injury problems early on. He
has not been the same guy. So when I say,
you know, I think you shore up the defensive line,
(24:09):
maybe you get you know, an interior offensive a lignement,
and sure you want a little help in the back end,
but that's not you know, a thousand problems. I think
their problems, I guess their problems to me are pretty
easily recognizable. And it's a matter of whether they have
the resources financially in draft pickwise to be able.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
To fix or the wherewithal to use those.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Yeah, they start hitting on picks.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
They they've not right.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
They've not spent a lot over the years in terms
of free agency. So yeah, we'll see about that. But
it doesn't it doesn't take away from what the Steelers
did on the field yesterday. You know, you mentioned Kansas
City and Buffalo. Cincinnati's offensive skill position players are better
than both of those teams. If you take everything into
(24:54):
the equation. Quarterback, running back, wide receivers are better than
Buffalo and Kansas City. You went out there and outscored
those units, right.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
I think for you know, when you look at quarterback
and top two receivers, that combination of players, if you
took the quarterback out, and I think Burrows phenomenal. No
team's got two receivers quite as good as Jason Higgins agreed.
So yes, I think that it is. You know in Gasiki,
you know, working out of the slot. And there's another thing,
you know, Eric All is another guy, that young tight
(25:26):
end who they really missed because they really have to
mix and match. I mean, Gasiki's a receiving tight end.
But regardless, I'm forget the bank, They're uh, you know,
they're They're a formidable challenge. And I think it underscores
the importance of what the Steelers did to get faster
(25:49):
and better on defense, faster and better in the middle
of the field. You know, Joey Porter Junior had had
the penalties, we understand that he's been, uh just as
he's a really solid job against a lot of tough
matchups early on in the season, I think, but then
you have Dante Jackson on the other side. Man, what
an upgrade he's been. He gives you that second guy
(26:12):
that can cover when you run into a team like Cincinnati,
and then you have Queen and Peyton Wilson with their
speed in the middle of the field. Deshaun Elliott adds
a different speed element in the back end alongside micka Fitzpatrick.
I just think and then of course, you know the
bounce back season for Cam Hayward. I mean I can
name the whole defense. You know her big. You know
(26:33):
what a luxury to have a guy like that be
your third guy. So when when high Smith is out,
you're not really feeling it. I mean it's it is,
you know, off of the cap for sure. Look, people,
you gave up thirty one points. Why are you dofpin
the cap? Well, because it's an explosive offense. It was
a shootout type of game and you were able to
(26:56):
make the plays you needed to to win the game.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
Soon we can all admit that since he's defensive line besides,
Hendrickson isn't great, but right, I really like the way
kind of an underreported issue because's easy to focus on
Cam and Watt and Russ and all these stars that
are playing like stars. But I think the Steelers OH
line every week takes kind of a baby step forward,
baby step forward and the right side of the line,
(27:21):
this game took a nice step forward.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
To me. Yeah, I think that's a great point, Matt.
You know, and first of all, you know, Dan Moore
continues to to have a very good season at a
very good time for him, you know, without a contract
after the season. Henderson didn't do anything yesterday. I mean,
he did nothing, and Dan morgants a lot of credit
(27:44):
for that. But you know, when I think of the season,
and look, you want to always play the best possible
game you could play. But I really think that this
becomes the time of season in which you want to
start finding yourself. You want to start peeking towards the postseason.
And I think it's understandable that when you have, you know,
(28:08):
young players and Roderick Jones is still a young player
at right tackle, and you have Zach Frazier who's been
really pretty darn goods from the get go, and Mason
McCormick who's starting, and again, don't forget Troy Faltanu was
your starting right tackle and Daniels was your starting right guard.
So you would hope that these guys would progress as
(28:32):
the season goes on. It's never going to be a
linear fashion. It's just, you know, it's not a bar
graph where you go from you know, the left hand corner,
bottom left hand corner to the upper right hand corner.
Just doesn't work that way. But you know, these guys
playing at the level they're playing at and hopefully getting
better as you get into the playoffs and reaching a
(28:53):
peak as the playoffs begin. That is, I think encouraging.
That's what you want as a team. Nobody remembers who
was the best team in the NFL in Week ten
and that best team in week ten Injuries, players petering out,
players hitting a wall. It's not always the team that
also wins the Super Bowl.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
And I like that the five of them are starting
to get some continuity. We can't overlook all the combinations
they've had to play early in the season.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Absolutely, I totally, Matt, It's one hundred percent right. It
is a you know it is it's a unit. It
is vitally important for that group to be able to communicate,
to know the strengths and weaknesses that people buy you
because it just takes one sliver, one guy shooting a
(29:43):
gap in a passing situation. Look at yesterday, look at
the plays that the Steelers defense made that were vital
at vital times, whether it's Cam Hayward getting a hand
up and deflecting a ball, or you know, rocketing through
for a sack, whether it's TJ. Watt with a couple
of sacks, herbig maybe the biggest play of the game
that Strip sacked that Wilson picked up and ran in
(30:04):
for a score. It just takes a little flash, a
little bit of room, a little bit of space, a
little bit of miscommunication upfront for a defense to be
able to turn a game like the Steelers defense turned
the game yesterday.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Oh, there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
And you know, we talked about it even last week
that you knew you were gonna have to score points
against this Bengals team because they were going to score points.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
They're gonna put points on board.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
They've now lost three games this season where they've scored
more than thirty three points.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
For the rest of the league's lost two.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
It's crazy, it really is.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
There's it four, yeah, it's now three, right, there's some
obscene numbers with it.
Speaker 5 (30:45):
I mean, depending where you put the cutoff at thirty
or thirty.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Three, it's it's insane. But they've scored pretty much against everybody.
It's just a matter of can you outscore them? And
to me that was the big thing. Your offense showed
that it is capable of doing that. Yes, your defense
gave up, you gave up some yards and stuff like that,
but I mean, in the grand scheme of skin, grand
scheme of things, your defense forced three turnovers, you had
(31:11):
four sacks, you had, you got stops against you had
a couple of three and outs against the Bengals, which
gave your offense a chance to get back on the field.
And the offense answer to Bell, I thought that was
a pretty complete game yesterday.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
Yeah, and along those lines, ok we were talking about.
I mean, the Bengals have scored thirty five points three
times and are one and two in those games. The
rest of the league is thirty five and oh when
they scored thirty five points, I mean, come on, man.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah. The other stat I think that I was told
before this game was that they had three losses in
which they scored thirty three or more points and the
entire rest of the NFL had two, and Tom Brady
had four in his career. So the Bengals have now
had more. Yeah, in the first twelve games of this
season losses with scoring thirty three or more points Brady
(32:00):
had in his entire career. That's crazy.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
And they have a bunch of opportunities to add to it.
They're not done yet.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, yeah, yes, they keep going. And you know when
when you look at this team and the reason that
this game scared me, well, we just saw it. They
scored thirty eight points seven of my defense, we get that.
And again, you know, going back to what we were
talking about at the beginning, how many times over the years,
including against the Bengals, have we seen a team be
(32:28):
able to score points against the Steelers? And the Steelers
just don't have an answer. And I've said this a
couple of times this year. But to me, you know,
for for fans, and look, we all all you know, hey,
you could have managed that situation bet at the first half. Okay,
maybe you could have uh and and clock management wise,
I understand that. But this, to me, what the Steelers
(32:50):
are doing now is a reminder to me of what
a great job Mike Tomlin and his staff has done
the last couple of years. Because we're seeing the importance
to the quarterback position, right and think about all the
teams around the league in which their quarterback is hurt.
And that's it. They're four and thirteen. You know, they're
(33:10):
five and twelve. They're done.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
It's done, yes over, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
And and you know the Steelers are running out a
guy from Duck dynasty, and and you know, you know,
making it to five hundred, pushing a playoff spot. It's
remarkable what they've been able to do. Remarkable. They've been
able to win one score games and now we're seeing
what happens. And again, I'm just as guilty of this
(33:35):
as anybody else guilty of forgetting what you know, a
championship caliber, Hall of Fame caliber quarterback can do for
a team. What Ben Roethlisberger used to be able to
do for the Steelers. Hey, we're losing in the fourth quarter,
Ben says, don't worry about it, I got it. You
know we have to get in a shootout. Ben says,
don't worry about it, I got it. Well, now we
have Russell Wilson being able to say those things in
(33:57):
the huddle and do his teammates as well. And we
saw evidence of that yesterday.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
And the other big thing, Rob is, you know, people
were harping on the red zone offense all last week
because obviously they didn't. They didn't score in the red
zone against the Ravens even though they won the game.
And you know, they went one for two in the
red zone against the Browns and lost that game. The
red zone offense, red zone offense, red zone offense all
we heard about, and I kept telling people, including people
(34:20):
you know who listened to this show and respond in
the comments section, I'm like, it's it's not I don't
think it's an issue. And here's why every red zone
trip is not the same. They scored on their first
two trips in the red zone yesterday, they score touchdown
on both of them. The next time they go into
the red zone is at the end of the first half.
(34:43):
They hit a pass to Jaylen Warren to get to
the sixteen. They call time out and kick a field goal.
That counts as a failed red zone trip, but in reality,
it was not a failed.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Red zone trip.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
You did exactly what you were trying to do in
that situation, which was to put some points on the
board before the end of the half. The last red
zone trip, they get to the four, but they're running
the ball trying to get the Bengals to use their timeouts.
They get them to use all their all three timeouts.
Wilson takes a sack on purpose on third down to
let the clock continue to run because Bengals are now
(35:13):
out of timeouts, and so you kick another field goal.
Again counts as a failed red zone trip. But in
reality it was a very good trip. It was a
very very successful trip because you ate, you went the
length of the field, you kick the field goal to
make it a thirteen point game, and you force them
to use all their timeouts.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Right, But that's next level.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
It's next level thinking on this stuff. You can't just
look at the numbers and say, well, this offense is
forming one.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's the thing too.
They're they're you know, I love statistics, but they do
have to be taken into context, and it's not always
easy to do that. And you know, you sometimes think,
and I would say this, like, over the course of
you know, if we get to the end of the
regular season, there are going to be there's going to
(36:00):
be enough statistical evidence that within some plus or minus
scale you're gonna be able to say, okay, uh, the
students have been good in the red zone. They were
good in the red zone in Washington, right, So, uh,
you know, I think that that you know, look, there
are still uh stories to be told in this team.
You know, we talked about yesterday's game. You know, you
(36:21):
get a pick six, you get a block field goal.
That's unlike the Steelers is you know, the Steelers special
teams have been a plus almost uniformly throughout the season.
But there are still there's still time left to tell
the story of what this team is gonna look like
going into the playoffs, and then of course the playoffs
you know, it can be entirely different as well. But
(36:42):
I think that that's you know, you'll find out what
trends there are and what things you need to improve
upon when you just have a little more evidence. I mean,
this is Russell Wilson has started was a six Ers
is it six games five and one as a starter,
averaging twenty nine points a game. Still, that number, that
number feels real to me, you know, because look, you're
(37:06):
you're reduced by what you can do offensively in the
snow in Cleveland. You know, the Studens and Ravens always
score under twenty points when they play and then the
other games of Stula's offense has been explosive. So uh
you know again, well, you know, let's check back in
a couple of weeks from now and after you played
Baltimore again, and after you played Philadelphia and after you
played Kansas City, we'll see where those numbers lie. I
(37:27):
suspect they're gonna lie in a good spot. But that's
why you play the games, you know. As I said before,
it's not like two guys run out there with statistics
at midfield and my stick. Yeah he runs off with
his hands in the air. That's it. Yeah, jeeps have won.
You know, you got to actually play the game.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
So it's not rock paper scissors out there.
Speaker 5 (37:47):
And yeah, no, no, it.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Is heavy emphasis on the paper.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Well, Kinger will let you go again. You can check
out Rob's book. Where can they buy that at rub Amazon? Amazon?
Speaker 1 (38:00):
There you go Rob the Stone. If you get to
Rob King and there's like some complex book on mathematical equations,
that's a different Rob.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
That's not you.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
This is called The Door in the Stone. It's a
middle grade fantasy book. Thanks for the plug, guys, Hope
people buy it and enjoy it, and thanks for.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Having me on always Rob.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
That's Rob King, Steelers play by play announcer, the voice
of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He's Matt Williamson. I am Dale Lolly.
You're listening to the Drive here on the Steelers Audio Network.
Will be back with more right after this.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Least.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
He's the Drive with Dale Lolly and Matt Williamson on
your twenty four to seven home of the Black and
Gold Steelers Nation Radio.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
And welcome back to the Drive. I am Dale Lolly.
He is the Matt Williamson and Matt. We've now has
to follow through with our conversation there with Rob King.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
Yeah, it was great.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
Russell Wilson now five and one as a starter. Now
Joe Euston Fields was four and two. Again, I mean
when a lot of games is here, if they've won,
they're nine and three as a team. Wilson now has
sixteen hundred and fifty three passing yards in his six games,
ten touchdown passes, another rushing. He's gonna have six more
(39:19):
games to add to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I'm sorry,
five more games to add to that, yes, add to
those toles. So he'll make eleven starts this year if
he can get the three thousand yards again. Wow, what
do you say is that now he's at sixteen fifty
three through.
Speaker 5 (39:36):
Six another five? Yeah, close, close, Yeah, probably won't throw
for four to fourteen again, but probably Well they get
the Bengals again, you can play them again, you play
the Chiefs.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
I mean that, you know, maybe that's a shootout.
Speaker 5 (39:50):
Yeah, Ravens pass defense isn't glorious either.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
Yeah, you might have to get into a different Typically,
what happens in conference games or division games, I should
say is if one game is high scoring, the second
one is low scoring, and vice versa.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Yeah, that just seems to be how they go.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
Now, Steeler Ravens games have always gone, They've just been
low scoring.
Speaker 5 (40:11):
But will seem shocked off. Week eighteen is ten to
seven though, Yeah, you know against the Bengals.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Every season in his career has passed for three thousand yards.
Even last year, last year he sat down, he had
he had three thousand and seventy with twenty six touchdown passes.
Speaker 5 (40:25):
Durability has been a huge key to it, of course,
you know, right, knock on wood, yeah right, Yesterday was
the second best passing day in terms of yardage in
his career.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
I know, this guy's put up a lot of big
career numbers.
Speaker 5 (40:39):
Oh yeah, I mean he's a massive producer, I mean
through his whole career, and this is his second highest scoring,
your best game of his life. Yeah. Now, you're not
going to count on four hundred plus every every week.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
But you got it in your hip pocket. Now you
know you can do it.
Speaker 5 (40:56):
Yeah, right, it exists and.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
He can do it and take care of the football.
Speaker 5 (40:59):
Yeah. And my co host on the podcast asked me,
He's like, if I told you before the season started
that a Steeler quarterback threw for over four hundred yards
in the first game in December, what would you think
I'd be like, it must have been a flukey one,
you know, like three defensive backs fell down, loan coverage,
somehow you had a ninety yard catch and run. You know,
(41:21):
there was none of that. There was none of that.
It was efficiency, throw after throw, take what's there? You know,
good run after catch too. I mean teammates always helped,
but it was smart, efficient football.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
It was more like him playing point guard yesterday. Yeah, yeah,
just getting the ball to people for layups, lay up,
lay up, lay up, lay up, layup. Absolutely, this guy's
you know, Shack's got a great matchup in the post.
I'm gonna feed him over and over. I mean, whatever
it is. But where keeping out of negatives I keep
coming back to with him. Yeah, to your point, the
(41:53):
Steelers got I think it was six ten. They got
thirteen catches from the running backs. Yeah, yeah, for almost
one hundred and fifty yards, and they're all highly capable.
They got six They have eleven I think eleven catches
for the tight ends. Yeah, again for over one hundred yards.
(42:14):
And then the wide receiver. There wasn't a lot of
you know, wide receiver stuff. You know, Pickens had three
catches for seventy four yards, Austin had two for this was.
Speaker 5 (42:21):
His lowest target share with Wilson. You know, they just
didn't pump it into Pickens over and over.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
Jefferson had one for forty three that was a catch
and run, and Ben Scronik had one for twenty three.
Speaker 5 (42:33):
So this was the road I was going to go
down with Rob, but we ran out of time, and
there's a million things to talk about with him. Ten
guys cup balls, and we were talking about the maturity
of Wilson, and I think you can overestimate the human
element of that. If I'm Scornic or prou It or
Washington and I'm out there doing the dirty work, yeah
I'm happy to be there.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
But if I can get the ball in my hands
once or twice, you were rewarded.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Yeah, yeah, this is fun. There was guy Ben's is either.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
People were asking why's Ben Skronic out there instead of
Mike Williams Because.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
Ben'skronick is a ridiculous hard nose blocker.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
Not that Mike Williams can't do it, but Ben'skronick is
blocking like defensive ends.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Same thing with Van Jefferson. They're putting their nose in there.
Speaker 5 (43:15):
And plus, when Austin went out, Scronic directly replaced him
as the slow.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Williams out there. Williams might have been. Williams and Connor Hayward.
I think were like the only two guys who played
a significant amount of snaps yesterday who didn't catch balls.
Speaker 5 (43:29):
Is the time you get worried about Williams. I know
this is a positive Monday after.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
I'm not.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
I just haven't seen separation, you know, other than one
big play.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
There's a big play.
Speaker 5 (43:43):
They haven't needed them. I mean, it's one of them
was also a snow game, and I mean, I get
the circumstances, but I don't know if he's gonna be
a big contributor or not. Who knows.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Yeah, I mean it gives you another guy. I think
he will contribute down the stretch. I'm not concerned about
that at all. I mean, this isn't a Deontay Johnson
situation in Baltimore, which is really blowing up by the way.
Folks get zero snaps, Yester zero snaps yesterday, and Bateman
got hurt.
Speaker 5 (44:08):
And got hurt and he's struggling that he wants out. Yeah,
you know it's not going well.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
He's got five targets or six targets, and since he's
played them, he's got one catch for like five yards.
Speaker 5 (44:18):
I'll be the first to admit, like when my front
phone blew up this summer and I'm like, oh, they
traded Deontay. What did they Get'm like, oh, I thought
they'd get more than that. They got more than they
should have got.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
For Dante, Jackson is tied for the league lead with
five interceptions among all cornerbacks.
Speaker 5 (44:33):
He's more valuable than Johnson, yes, no question. I mean
I bet the Panthers will tell you that. I bet
the Ravens will tell you that. And you got more
draft picks than you gave up, you know, so be
happy about it, folks.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
Yeah, I think that that deal.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
But my point was that all this time, but yeah,
you threw for four hundred yards and your receivers weren't
the major rush into that.
Speaker 5 (44:56):
Right, right? Was It was it around and taking what's
given and tight ends and running backs. Like you said,
it's great. I mean, I think it's a great thing
to build on going forward.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
We've been waiting for Friarmouth to be a bigger part
of the passing game all season long. Well, six six
catches on seven targets for sixty eight yards and a touchdown.
Speaker 5 (45:14):
Yeah all right, Yeah, you're not built like the Bengals
with Chasing Higgins that you can just pump, you know,
twenty five targets to a week. So how do you
manufact ot how do you make the stew out of
a lot of different ingredients? Well, they're showing you how.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:27):
If I'm future opponents, I'm looking at this game and going, well,
wait a second, Pickens caught three passes and they threw
for four hundred yards and scored forty four points.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
Like if I'm the Ravens, for example, because the Ravens
took Kyle Hamilton and really dedicate them to Pickens. But
I want to do that again, and then if I don't, well,
then they're gonna throw to Pickens, you know, I mean obviously,
But yeah, I do think there's a maturity, advanced quarterback,
human element of I'm gonna make sure everybody gets one. Yeah,
(45:58):
I'm gonna make sure proud who's been fighting and scrapping
at least gets to touch the ball.
Speaker 4 (46:03):
I also thought it was interesting one last thing here
that one of the knocks against Wilson coming out of
Denver was well, he's a checkdown artist. All he wants
to do is check the ball down. We threw for
four hundred yards yesterday checking the ball down.
Speaker 5 (46:15):
Yeah, and that's also a peytent thing too. I mean
that's I mean the top of league again to throwing
the ball to running backs, which is a highly efficient
manner of It's like a handoff. If you can get
nause of your war and touching the ball in front
of the line of scrimmage instead of behind the line
of scrimmage. Great, yeah, give me it all day long.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
Absolutely, but let's get to a break.
Speaker 4 (46:36):
That's going to do it for our number one of
the drive here on the Steelers Audio Network.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Matt and I will be back with our number two
right after this
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