Game Balls & Goats

on another pulling play by feiler to the short side of the field, both feiler and decastro fail miserably. if snell bounces it wide he may get a yard or two instead of losing. i dont think the RB's are gaining the most out of bad situations the way bell did, but the Oline is definitely creating the bad situations. i think they should  move some people around and find a better combination which includes Dotson at left guard and possibly feiler back at RT. Feiler will likely be an odd man out next season with the emergence and game experience of cheaper younger options such as Dotson, Banner and chuks. i would be curious to see the PFF's grades on our linemen so far this year.

PFF grades:

Villanueva 76.4
Feiler 65.2
DeCastro 62.8
Dotson 60.8
Pouncey 58.3
Okorafor 54.5

Except Villanueva, average and below average. Our once great OL has seriously declined since Munchak left.

age is catching up to

Villanueva
DeCastro
Pouncey

Gonna have to spend some draft picks and bring in some young blood to that Oline this next draft.

Master_Of_Puppets wrote:

LambertWardSteel wrote:

Master_Of_Puppets wrote:

solardave wrote:

As usual Kirk I can't argue anything you said. I will add that they showed Connor in the 2nd half on the sideline looking like someone stole his favorite bicycle.

JuJu did get his bike stolen and didnt mope like that....

id say he looks like a guy who knows he aint gettin a huge contract next year ...

every shitty game he has is probably tens of thousands knocked off what he can expect to be offered. i honestly dont see him signing any where for more than 2 million a year.

I am more of a stats and history freak as opposed to x's and o's, maybe it is in part the offensive line. But yeah, you gotta think that the contract isn't going to be too impressive for him. Steelers football is strong running attack and defense. Really want to see them get back to the punishing run game. Hopefully they can still find it this year, if not hoping they start building towards it in the offseason.

oh for sure this is an Oline failure. but those stats are a players resume. is it odd that 2 of the 3 100 yd games for connor was when dotson was starting for decastro ?
personaly i think they should try dotson in feilers position to see if things improve. most likely thats where he will be starting next year anyway   . feilers contact is up and they need some serious cap trimming for next year. chuks has done a decent job at RT, but if feiler is a better run blocker than chuks, he should move back to RT.

To the point you were making here about Dotson. I saw this in Brian Batko's chat ay Post Gazette. It seems the stats in a short sample size are backig up Dotson in the run game:

Quote :

MikeM65: Charlie Batch made a comment during the post game show that you can't fix the running game on the fly because you don't want to (or cannot) wear pads and hit during the season. Can't they do things like work on blocking technique out of a three point stance, work on blocking schemes, and do other non-contact drills to improve the running game? Or is it simply these linemen are built to pass protect and cannot improve with their run blocking?

Brian Batko: Charlie has forgotten more about playing in the NFL than I'll ever know, so that's an insightful comment from him. Here's a fun fact, though, for what it's worth: in the three games Kevin Dotson started or played most of the snaps, the Steelers ran for 100 yards in all three, against Denver, Philly and Cleveland. No slouches on defense. In the six games without Dotson in there, they ran for 100 twice (Texans, Giants).

https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/steelers/2020/11/16/Brian-Batko-s-Steelers-chat-11-16-20/stories/202011160091