You want to run a screen play in that situation? Have you seen this offense try to execute a screen play? I would have flown to Pittsburgh and strangled schotty if he called a screen there and it didn't work.
I think Im the only one who likes to defend Schotty in most cases. Keller dropped a TD pass in the EZ. How can that be on Schotty? Then Hunter gave away the play where Woodley batted down a slant. It would have been complete had it not been for the stance Hunter was in, cuz you could clearly see Woodley not going for the pressure at all. Running in both situations would have been the right call, but a play action was ideal. We had their D beat, just dropped the pass. In other words, both the plays had TD written all over them if the execution was better. When the execution falls apart, don't blame the coach. Blame the player. Coach can not execute plays.
That wasn't my point. People around here want to accuse Schotty of being the reason for our every failing. Playcalling - 1 issue - that's on Schotty. Stance - another issue - that's not on Schotty.
Woodley would expect a run. Or atleast be double minded. Since it was a very quick release, it would have been a completion (or a chance for Holmes to make the catch).
I usually defend him but this is another one of those situations where he doesn't deserve very much. The only real defense of him here is that headsets went out and if Sanchez didn't need to rush that play to Keller it probably would have worked. Everything else is valid criticism.
But you have to put your players in a place to succeed. That is Schotty's job, and he failed. Running Greene up the gut on 3rd is setting up your offense for success. The risk of the pass plays is not worth the marginal increase in likelihood of scoring over a pair of runs.
The WHOLE problem with blaming an OC or a DC, and I don't care what team you are talking about, is the fact that we as fans can never reeally know who is to blame for what. Sometimes it's transparent, like when Herm made Solari the OC in KC. He was hired to be ONE thing, the scapegoat. He did ONLY what Herm told him to do, and took the bullet. Sutton took the bullet for Mangini. Ryan loves Tomlinson, who BTW is one of the best short yardage red zone RB's statistically in the history of the NFL. Was it Ryan who wanted LT in there instead of Greene? Preferring to trust the vet over the young RB? Who made that decision? We don't know. If Ryan said keep LT in there, that is what Schottenhiemer is going to do. If Hunter gave away the play, isn't that on Callahan, and oh, btw on Hunter too? Is it automatically Schotty's fault? Blame the obvious target, it happens all the time when fans think they know who is calling all the shots. This is why I take ANY critisisms of coaches with a huge grain of salt. Fans just don't know enough to place blame where it belongs, and we never will, with some very few exceptions, a couple of which I sited. Case in point.... why is Petine getting a free pass here? The D failed to show up in the first half, but NO ONE is blaming Petine. That collapse was who's fault? The first half is when the game was lost. The defense lost that game. Yet it's Schottenhiemer getting all the heat. There is blame to spread around, it's just that we don't know where to place it, we guess and are hell fire sure we know what the F we are talking about, and we don't. Rant over. It still falls at the feet of Ryan. Oh crap, I didn't even mean to go there.
I can see where you might want to criticize him. We passed on 2nd and 3rd down while rushing on 4th. But the problem I have is that the plays we passed on, they were good enough to score TD on. It wasn't like the receivers were not open. Keller was and so was Holmes on that slant. Keller dropped the TD, and Hunter let Woodley tip the pass. To me, I can't criticize the coach for calling passing plays. The situation we were in, we just couldn't afford running it four times in a row. We had to conserve time as well.
If this was at the beginning of the game, we would score. We would run it 3 out of 4 times, and would call a TO before the pass to Keller since the headsets weren't working and we rushed in to the play. But we couldn't call TO at that stage and we just couldn't take 100+ seconds off the game clock by rushing it three of four times.
The tipping plays thing is just mind-boggling and completely unacceptable. To not take care of a detail like that in the AFCCG is fucking deplorable. Wayne Hunter WTF were you thinking?! Actually, why the fuck weren't you thinking!? Moron....
Both plays were there but they didn't work and now he is open for criticism for it. We don't know why Hunter lined up in a 2 point stance but I have to put that on the player unless I hear otherwise. With that being said at that point the clock is an issue but getting 7 points is more important than the minute you lose off the clock by running it on 3rd and 4th.
2 point stance in that situation is almost certainly on the player. He probably didn't really hear the play call and just heard enough to recognize it was a pass.
If the defense would have played better this wouldn't be an issue the Defense fucked up end of story....
While I agree that the decision not to use the TO was based on how late in the game we were, I do not agree that the clock should have been a consideration at all with respect to play selection. There were still 7 and change minutes left. You had to treat this as a must score situation, no matter how long it takes. If you score on the 4th run, at worst, there is still like 6:30 on the clock, and you have 3 TOs remaining AND the 2 minute warning. The Steelers would have been forced to pick up like 3 first downs before checkmate (I know they later picked up 2 but thats not relevant).
Very well said. No one will blame Petine cuz the players were in position to make plays, yet missed tackles. But everyone will blame Schotty even though he had the players in place to make the plays, but just missed the pass, or stance or whatever. Thats why I don't blame the OC when its our players are dropping passes (cotchery dropped a 3 and long pass that had a chance to get a first down).
