Let's take a look around the rest of the NFL to see how the rest of the competition is stacking up outside of the AFC North. Let's get it started with the AFC East. The order I select corresponds with how I think the division standings will look after Week 17.

New England Patriots

From where I'm sitting, it seems as if the Patriots have stood pat this offseason. They made no significant upgrades along an offensive line that got smoked during the Super Bowl; Donte Stallworth was allowed to walk; so was Asante Samuel. Nevertheless, they still have the best or second best QB in the game, a cheating great coach, Richard Seymour back healthy, and younger, more athletic legs at the LB position with the draft choice of Jerod Mayo.

They also have an incredibly manageable schedule. The AFC East matches up against the not-so-daunting NFC West, and with two games against Miami, Buffalo and the Jets, at least ten wins and another playoff berth is inevitable. The Pats do have tough road games at San Diego, Indianapolis, and Seattle, plus a home contest against the Steelers, so any talk of a repeat perfect regular season is ignored by me at this point.

New York Jets

The brass of the New York Jets essentially shoved every last chip to the middle of the table this offseason. General Manager Mike Tannenbaum, who at 37 years of age might be a bit underseasoned for the job, spent nearly $140 million in free agent contracts this offseason. The prize of the bunch was Alan Faneca of course, but they also brought in versatile OL Damien Woody, LB Calvin Pace, NT Kris Jenkins, and TE Bubba Franks.  What do all have in common? Ding ding ding. That's right, they're all old. Only Pace Jenkins are under the age of 30, with Pace turning 28 in October and Jenkins already 29.

Nevertheless, the additions of Woody and Faneca should help a team that gave up 56 sacks and only rushed for 1700 yards as a team. The question, of course, is who will the retooled line be protecting? Chad Pennington or Kellen Clemons. I have issues with both QBs, but to me, the Jets have to go with Pennington. Why? Because they spent all this darn money to be competitive...NOW. There's no time to wait for Clemons to potentially develop.  We'll see what happens, but don't be surprised if Tannenbaum and Eric Mangini are both canned before the start of the next decade. The bottom line is this is a poorly run football team for the better part of two decades now.  My personal take is that the front office got fooled by their fluky playoff berth in 2006, and are making a foolish 'all-in' wager to try to push themselves over the top. Problem is, that push might just take them back to respectability. Not the playoffs.

Buffalo Bills

I should probably give more credit to Buffalo than I am, but something about this team is uninspiring to me. They seem to be a fairly well-run organization lately. If I recall correctly, former long-time coach Marv Levy is in charge of personnel decisions, and he's done a nice job acquiring talent on both sides of the ball, particularly defense. The problem though, is the Bills offense. It was near the bottom of every significant statistical category last year, even though rookie RB Marshawn Lynch was outstanding.

What do you know? It starts at the QB position. Trent Edwards? JP Lohsman? Yikes. The Bills did draft Indiana WR James Hardy to play alongside Lee Evans and return-man-extraordinare Roscoe Parrish, but I'm not sure that will help too much in the short-run. By the way, anybody know what has happened to that incident involving Lynch and the hit-and-run? If he's in a world of trouble legally, the Bills will be too.

Miami Dolphins

All eyes (at least those of the national media) will be on South Florida this year, as Bill Parcells has been given a mountain of cash to fix the mess that is the Dolphins organization.  He most likely will, though it won't happen overnight.  Outside of Chad Henne, who the Big Tuna drafted in the 2nd round, Parcells did what he always does: stockpile beef in the trenches: Jake Long (OT), Phillip Merling (DE), Kendall Langford (DE), Shawn Murray (OT). That's what he does.

Talent at the skill positions is still too spotty for the Dolphins to be serious contenders this year, but if this year's draft class pans out and the team finds something in either John Beck or Chad Henne, it might not be too long before Miami is back in the mix in the AFC East.

A few things to start off the week. A quick housekeeping note, I suppose, might be in order. This will be my last week at my job. What's that mean? Time to clean up all those loose ends I left unattended while bringing you Steelers commentary :) So, keep the fan posts section rocking and we'll see what shakes out on my end as the week progresses.

* More impressive offseason preparation from James Farrior. James, Santonio Holmes, Ike Taylor, and Bryant McFadden are all utilizing their pre-camp time at the Tom Shaw Performance Enhancement Camp. Farrior, who is 33 years of age, understands what he needs to do to keep up with the younger players chomping at the bit to get their opportunity:

"It's the Fountain of Youth down here," said Farrior, at 33 the second oldest player on the Steelers. "This is probably the biggest key to my offseason and my training program, as far as me playing at a high level. A guy my age, it takes a little bit extra. You've got to do a little bit more, work a little bit longer, just to keep up with the younger guys."

I got to say, I sure like that four of our very best players are leading the way in terms of preparation.

Oh, here's one other worthwhile quote from that article from Holmes:

"It gives you a totally different mind-set because you know you're coming out here with about 15-20 other guys from different teams in the NFL that want to compete a lot harder than you.

"When you have teammates, throughout practice you're gonna get that urge to take a step back," said Holmes, who also led the Steelers in receiving yards and touchdowns in 2007. "You don't want to hurt your teammates. You don't want to go too hard. But down here, you're going to get guys working at 100 mph every time."

* Our first rookie to sign! Tony Hills, the 4th round OT selected out of the University of Texas, will receive a signing bonus of $304,500, and his three-year deal with pay him league minimum base salaries of $295,000, $385,000 and $470,000.  Hopefully Mendenhall, Limas, Bruce Davis, Ryan Mundy, Mike Humpal, and Dennis Dixon will follow suit soon before camp opens on July 27th.

* Good, I'm not the only one who thinks Mewelde Moore will make a huge impact this year. 

I hope all your 4th of July weekends are enjoyed in health and good spirits with friends and family. A special shout out to the men and women of the military past and present!

 

The following post is quite long. If you're in a hurry, stop now, and read later, if at all. It is not intended to generate some firestorm debate. It is merely an attempt by me to provide you with something different to read and think about during this long last stretch of the offseason. Many will think that the ideas contained within are not quite organized coherently. I would not disagree. But, hopefully it's entertaining and thought-provoking nevertheless. As always, feedback is welcome.

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Nathan Myhrvold met Jack Horner on the set of the “Jurassic Park” sequel in 1996. Horner is an eminent paleontologist, and was a consultant on the movie. Myhrvold was there because he really likes dinosaurs. Between takes, the two men got to talking, and Horner asked Myhrvold if he was interested in funding dinosaur expeditions.

Myhrvold is of Nordic extraction, and he looks every bit the bearded, fair-haired Viking—not so much the tall, ferocious kind who raped and pillaged as the impish, roly-poly kind who stayed home by the fjords trying to turn lead into gold. He is gregarious, enthusiastic, and nerdy on an epic scale. He graduated from high school at fourteen. He started Microsoft’s research division, leaving, in 1999, with hundreds of millions....

“What you do on a dinosaur expedition is you hike and look at the ground,” Myhrvold explains. “You find bones sticking out of the dirt and, once you see something, you dig.” In Montana, which is prime dinosaur country, people had been hiking around and looking for bones for at least a hundred years. But Horner wanted to keep trying. So he and Myhrvold put together a number of teams, totalling as many as fifty people. They crossed the Fort Peck reservoir in boats, and began to explore the Montana badlands in earnest. They went out for weeks at a time, several times a year. They flew equipment in on helicopters. They mapped the full dinosaur ecology—bringing in specialists from other disciplines. And they found dinosaur bones by the truckload.

Once, a team member came across a bone sticking out from the bottom of a recently eroded cliff. It took Horner’s field crew three summers to dig it out, and when they broke the bone open a black, gooey substance trickled out—a discovery that led Myhrvold and his friend Lowell Wood on a twenty-minute digression at dinner one night about how, given enough goo and a sufficient number of chicken embryos, they could “make another one.”

There was also Myhrvold’s own find: a line of vertebrae, as big as apples, just lying on the ground in front of him. “It was seven years ago. It was a bunch of bones from a fairly rare dinosaur called a thescelosaurus. I said, ‘Oh, my God!’ I was walking with Jack and my son. Then Jack said, ‘Look, there’s a bone in the side of the hill.’ And we look at it, and it’s a piece of a jawbone with a tooth the size of a banana. It was a T. rex skull. There was nothing else it could possibly be.”

People weren’t finding dinosaur bones, and they assumed that it was because they were rare. But—and almost everything that Myhrvold has been up to during the past half decade follows from this fact—it was our fault. We didn’t look hard enough.

Myhrvold gave the skeleton to the Smithsonian. It’s called the N. rex. “Our expeditions have found more T. rex than anyone else in the world,” Myhrvold said. “From 1909 to 1999, the world found eighteen T. rex specimens. From 1999 until now, we’ve found nine more.” Myhrvold has the kind of laugh that scatters pigeons. “We have dominant T. rex market share.”

The previous excerpt is from a recent article by Malcolm Gladwell about how innovative ideas, even ones that are big enough to change society, are not so rare as we might think. It prompted me to think about the game of football and what changes, if any, might be in store for the great game in the future. Though the fundamental structure of football is largely the same as it was early in the 20th century, I have to believe that if the game's pioneer players from back then would have a hard time recognizing what us fans presently see each Sunday.

How useful is it to have a group of really smart people brainstorm for a day? When Myhrvold started out, his expectations were modest. Although he wanted insights like Alexander Graham Bell’s, Bell was clearly one in a million, a genius who went on to have ideas in an extraordinary number of areas—sound recording, flight, lasers, tetrahedral construction, and hydrofoil boats, to name a few. The telephone was his obsession. He approached it from a unique perspective, that of a speech therapist. He had put in years of preparation before that moment by the Grand River, and it was impossible to know what unconscious associations triggered his great insight. Invention has its own algorithm: genius, obsession, serendipity, and epiphany in some unknowable combination. How can you put that in a bottle?

But then, in August of 2003, I.V. [I.V. is short for Intellectual Ventures - the company Myhrvold started to facilitate the creation of new, innovative ideas] held its first invention session, and it was a revelation. “Afterward, Nathan kept saying, ‘There are so many inventions,’ ” Wood recalled. “He thought if we came up with a half-dozen good ideas it would be great, and we came up with somewhere between fifty and a hundred. I said to him, ‘But you had eight people in that room who are seasoned inventors. Weren’t you expecting a multiplier effect?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but it was more than multiplicity.’ Not even Nathan had any idea of what it was going to be like.”

The original expectation was that I.V. would file a hundred patents a year. Currently, it’s filing five hundred a year. It has a backlog of three thousand ideas. Wood said that he once attended a two-day invention session presided over by Jung, and after the first day the group went out to dinner. “So Edward took his people out, plus me,” Wood said. “And the eight of us sat down at a table and the attorney said, ‘Do you mind if I record the evening?’ And we all said no, of course not. We sat there. It was a long dinner. I thought we were lightly chewing the rag. But the next day the attorney comes up with eight single-spaced pages flagging thirty-six different inventions from dinner. Dinner.”

And the kinds of ideas the group came up with weren’t trivial. Intellectual Ventures just had a patent issued on automatic, battery-powered glasses, with a tiny video camera that reads the image off the retina and adjusts the fluid-filled lenses accordingly, up to ten times a second. It just licensed off a cluster of its patents, for eighty million dollars. It has invented new kinds of techniques for making microchips and improving jet engines; it has proposed a way to custom-tailor the mesh “sleeve” that neurosurgeons can use to repair aneurysms.

Ok, ok. So we're clearly talking about a collection of some of the most brilliant people in the world here. What the hell does this have to do with football? Well, perhaps not much, but what if people with a totally fresh set of eyes took a long hard look at how coaches and teams went about playing the game? Perhaps even folks who had no interest in football.

Last March, Myhrvold decided to do an invention session with Eric Leuthardt and several other physicians in St. Louis. Rod Hyde came, along with a scientist from M.I.T. named Ed Boyden. Wood was there as well.

“Lowell came in looking like the Cheshire Cat,” Myhrvold recalled. “He said, ‘I have a question for everyone. You have a tumor, and the tumor becomes metastatic, and it sheds metastatic cancer cells. How long do those circulate in the bloodstream before they land?’ And we all said, ‘We don’t know. Ten times?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘As many as a million times.’ Isn’t that amazing? If you had no time, you’d be screwed. But it turns out that these cells are in your blood for as long as a year before they land somewhere. What that says is that you’ve got a chance to intercept them.”

How did Wood come to this conclusion? He had run across a stray fact in a recent issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. “It was an article that talked about, at one point, the number of cancer cells per millilitre of blood,” he said. “And I looked at that figure and said, ‘Something’s wrong here. That can’t possibly be true.’ The number was incredibly high. Too high. It has to be one cell in a hundred litres, not what they were saying—one cell in a millilitre. Yet they spoke of it so confidently. I clicked through to the references. It was a commonplace. There really were that many cancer cells.”

Wood did some arithmetic. He knew that human beings have only about five litres of blood. He knew that the heart pumps close to a hundred millilitres of blood per beat, which means that all of our blood circulates through our bloodstream in a matter of minutes. The New England Journal article was about metastatic breast cancer, and it seemed to Wood that when women die of metastatic breast cancer they don’t die with thousands of tumors. The vast majority of circulating cancer cells don’t do anything.

“It turns out that some small per cent of tumor cells are actually the deadly ones,” he went on. “Tumor stem cells are what really initiate metastases. And isn’t it astonishing that they have to turn over at least ten thousand times before they can find a happy home? You naïvely think it’s once or twice or three times. Maybe five times at most. It isn’t. In other words, metastatic cancer—the brand of cancer that kills us—is an amazingly hard thing to initiate. Which strongly suggests that if you tip things just a little bit you essentially turn off the process.”

That was the idea that Wood presented to the room in St. Louis. From there, the discussion raced ahead. Myhrvold and his inventors had already done a lot of thinking about using tiny optical filters capable of identifying and zapping microscopic particles. They also knew that finding cancer cells in blood is not hard. They’re often the wrong size or the wrong shape. So what if you slid a tiny filter into a blood vessel of a cancer patient? “You don’t have to intercept very much of the blood for it to work,” Wood went on. “Maybe one ten-thousandth of it. The filter could be put in a little tiny vein in the back of the hand, because that’s all you need. Or maybe I intercept all of the blood, but then it doesn’t have to be a particularly efficient filter.”

Wood was a physicist, not a doctor, but that wasn’t necessarily a liability, at this stage. “People in biology and medicine don’t do arithmetic,” he said. He wasn’t being critical of biologists and physicians: this was, after all, a man who read medical journals for fun. He meant that the traditions of medicine encouraged qualitative observation and interpretation. But what physicists do—out of sheer force of habit and training—is measure things and compare measurements, and do the math to put measurements in context. At that moment, while reading The New England Journal, Wood had the advantages of someone looking at a familiar fact with a fresh perspective.

That was also why Myhrvold had wanted to take his crew to St. Louis to meet with the surgeons. He likes to say that the only time a physicist and a brain surgeon meet is when the physicist is about to be cut open—and to his mind that made no sense. Surgeons had all kinds of problems that they didn’t realize had solutions, and physicists had all kinds of solutions to things that they didn’t realize were problems. At one point, Myhrvold asked the surgeons what, in a perfect world, would make their lives easier, and they said that they wanted an X-ray that went only skin deep. They wanted to know, before they made their first incision, what was just below the surface. When the Intellectual Ventures crew heard that, their response was amazement. “That’s your dream? A subcutaneous X-ray? We can do that.”

Insight could be orchestrated: that was the lesson. If someone who knew how to make a filter had a conversation with someone who knew a lot about cancer and with someone who read the medical literature like a physicist, then maybe you could come up with a cancer treatment. It helped as well that Casey Tegreene had a law degree, Lowell Wood had spent his career dreaming up weapons for the government, Nathan Myhrvold was a ball of fire, Edward Jung had walked across Texas. They had different backgrounds and temperaments and perspectives, and if you gave them something to think about that they did not ordinarily think about—like hurricanes, or jet engines, or metastatic cancer—you were guaranteed a fresh set of eyes.

The article, which contains other anecdotes and hypotheses, was fascinating to me for a number of reasons not worth discussing on a football oriented site, but it made me think about the game. My personal opinion is that it is just a matter of time before the strategy of the game evolves drastically, particularly on offense. 

Because of the strict set of rules defining the game, there's only so much that can change. But I immediately think of the offenses orchestrated by Mike Leach at Texas Tech University. Despite being in the veritable wasteland that is West Texas, Coach Leech has managed to assemble offenses that annually outpace the competition throwing the ball. People argue that his philosophy puts too much pressure on his defense, which accounts for why Texas Tech has not yet managed to have a truly breakthrough season. My take, however, is that he simply doesn't have the horses on defense to get the job done. What if you combined the defensive talent at a school like Ohio State, with the high-octane offensive attack that he's able to put together with merely so-so athletic talent? My guess? Sheer domination.

Another relevant example of how NFL coaches and coordinators are inefficient in their decision making and strategic choices is in their decisions on 4th down. Cal professor David H. Romer examined these inefficiencies in a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, yet nearly 6 years later, not much has changed.

Why? Is this just an act of stubborn pride, not wanting some academic to tell real football men how to do their job? Perhaps, and while I wonder how long that mindset can last in such a hyper-competitive industry, I can also understand where it's coming from. My point - and I don't really know if you can call it that - is that even since the 1980s, we've seen a substantial change in the way the game is played. What's next? And what fresh set of eyes might be responsible for helping push the game towards its next evolutionary milestone?

When Bill Walsh implemented the West Coast offense, it was considered gimmicky. Now, he's considered a genious. What about 'trick'' plays? They're considered gimmicky, and coaches are scoffed at when they do not work. But why do offenses limit the amount of preparation defenses need to do by keeping everything so close to the vest? Just because they are not part of a team's regular arsenal of plays, does not make them poor strategy. With all the archived film, not to mention the improved speed and athleticism on defense, it seems to be that teams should be employing new ways to confuse the defense, in whatever way possible, 'gimmicks' and critics be damned.

Your guess is as good as mine as to what the next 'gimmick' that sticks will be, but I, for one, believe the game will continue to evolve so long as new innovative minds are afforded the opportunity to participate in the game. And perhaps more importantly, if teams look outside the traditional ranks of scouts and 'football' minds for help.

After the exodus of Dookie, Legursky, Lorello, Retkofsy, and Zabransky we now have 82 players on the roster.  You can only have 80 players signed maximum during the offseason (plus one NFL Europe player), which basically means we need to cut one more guy before July 28, assuming we sign our rookies.  I have projected my 45-man roster, plus inactives (8 or 7 if we make Dixon #46 as a third QB), plus 8 practice squad.  Note that Marvin Allen cannot be moved from the Practice Squad.  He is the Steelers 2008 NFL Europe player and he must be the 9th player on the Practice Squad.  It's fun to guess which guys go into which category. You can see my predictions in table form, after the jump.  Let the healthy debate begin:

Continue reading this post »

On July 27th, your Pittsburgh Steelers will report to Latrobe, PA to kick off the start of the 2008 season. We'll delve into full anticipatory coverage of camp in the forthcoming weeks, and do our best to provide us with solid coverage of how things shake out in Latrobe, but for now, let's start with a discussion on what I think should be the most interesting developments of the Pittsburgh Steelers 2008 Training Camp and preseason.

1) Max Starks, Marvel Smith, and the rest of the Steelers Offensive Line

Let's just get this one out of the way and start by saying that I can't wait to see how Starks and Smith look once the pads go on. In the case of Starks, I sure hope we see a bull in the china shop mentality from him from Day 1. In the case of Marvel Smith, I'll feel much, much better about our season if he seems to be entirely void of the back issues that were plaguing him at the end of last year. As for the rest of the guys, there's no need to rehash everything that's been said since Hartwig was signed in free agency. I just hope Tomlin, Zierlein, and Arians all stick to the mantra: may the best man win.

2) What's in store for Dennis Dixon?

I've been meaning to mention this for awhile, though I'm not sure what it means, if anything, but Dennis Dixon is easily the most searched for player by Steelers fans on this site. We haven't spent much time discussing him and his future in Pittsburgh, so I doubt too many have come away satisfied in their search. Anyway, I suspect that most of those folks scouring for news and innuendos about Dixon are Oregon Ducks fans, who enjoyed multiple years of Dixon's unique abilities.

What role, if any, will he have on the 2008 Pittsburgh Steelers? It's not very likely that he'll situate himself ahead of Charlie Batch on the depth chart. But it is possible that we see plenty of him during the preseason games to come away sufficiently impressed and convinced that he'll be in the #2 slot in 2009. But, is it also possible that we discover that the coaching staff has other plans to get him involved this year? I sure loved the way we mixed in a gadget play or two during the final years of the Ken Whisenhunt era. Other than the Cedric Wilson 2-pt conversion pass against Jacksonville, I can not recall another instance in which he tried something tricky last year. Might Dixon be the guy we use to shake things up?

3) The Defensive Backfield

We know Ike Taylor, Troy Polamalu, Deshea Townsed, and Bryant McFadden will all see the field and be the primary components of our secondary, provided they're all healthy. What about Ryan Clark, though? Reports confirm he looks good thus far this offseason and should be just fine in 2008. But, again, pads have not yet been put on. What about William Gay? I kinda like the look of the kid. Will he impress in camp and the preseason and work his way into some dime and nickel packages? And what about Anthony Smith and Tyrone Carter? An. Smith is likely going to be an integral part of our defense, but Carter could very well be beat out for a spot, despite counting very little against the cap. Finally, we know Mike Lorello won't be around, but what about Ryan Mundy, Travis Williams, and the other rookies we have. Will any of them stick?

4) The Return Game and Special Teams

There was an article earlier this offseason about the deliberate decision made by Tomlin to spend less time and energy in practice on special teams. For a team that fared poorly for the most part on special teams last year, that seems strange to me, but these are the coaches decisions must make, and for now, I'll just have to assume that Tomlin has a plan.

Who will return punts and kicks for us this year? One would have to imagine that we'll tip our hand during camp and during the preseason. Other than Mewelde Moore fielding punts, your guess is as good as mine as to who might also get a stab as a PR, and who Tomlin and Ligashesky will opt to go with on kick returns. That's enough speculating for now on this subject, but it's worth mentioning that this also ties into....

5) Who Will Win That 5th WR Spot

If Willie Reid, or Kevin Marion can prove themselves enough in the return game, they maybe, just maybe, can sneak onto the squad as the 5th WR. Obviously, that 5th WR won't have his number called much, if at all, as a WR, provided the guys in front of him stay healthy. But if neither of them show enough, the competition may be between Dallas Baker and Micah Rucker. Willie Reid deserves mentioning here for that 5th spot, more so than Rucker in the minds of most fans and reporters. I'm not one of them, really. I personally think that Reid better be rock solid on special teams this camp or he'll be let go. My feelings don't mean much though, so let's just consider many to be in the mix right now, making this internal competition interesting, if not overly critical to the success of the team.

Anyway, many feel Baker has the leg up right now, and I wouldn't disagree. But that theme of 'let's wait till the pads go on' rings true here as well. Baker's yet to prove his meddle when contact's involved. I'll be curious to see how this shakes out.

Others:

Can Kyle Clement make the team and add youthful depth along the D-line?

Can Tony Hills give us reason to hope that, with or without Marvel Smith, our offensive line is in better shape moving forward than we might think?

How hard will Tomlin work the guys, knowing what he now knows about burnout late in the season?

Wil Keyaron Fox, Bruce Davis, and any of our other young additions give us the energetic and sure-tackling head-hunters on special teams that we so sorely missed last year?

Will Jeff Reed leave his clothes on?

Discuss.

 

It's been awhile since we've had some YouTube goodness. I'm not sure there's a better video compilation of the highlights of the Steelers, Pirates, and Penguins franchises. Great, great stuff. Enjoy.

Experience. In life, it's undeniably necessary. In sports? There's more of a debate to be had. Yesterday, we looked at the career resume of offensive line coach Larry Zierlein. Must of us came away with the impression that despite having a tremendous amount of experience coaching at the college level, and to a lesser extent, at the professional level, not much of that experience yielded productive results either in the win column, or in the stat sheets of the offenses working behind his lines.

Today, I'd like to take a look at Mike Tomlin's coaching resume, while keeping an eye on how the Rooney family has made head coaching decisions with their franchise. There have been some valid points made recently by those who are not quite 100% enthused with the selection of Mike Tomlin as the head coach of this proud franchise. Personnel management, both in game and from week-to-week, suspect challenges, and a few crucial tactical misfires are all valid reasons to have reservations about the 16th head coach in Steelers franchise history.

But, to point to his lack of coaching experience as the primary reason for being skeptical, while still professing faith in the Rooneys and how they do business, is incongruous logic.

Since 1969, when Charles Henry Noll was handed the reigns to the organization, there have been just three head coaches at the helm of the team. Noll, Cowher, and now Tomlin.  All were under the age of 40. And none had head coaching experience. At any level.

Noll embarked on his Hall of Fame coaching career in 1960 as a defensive assistant for the Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers (I believe they became the SD Chargers following the 1960 season). He would spend five years in Southern California before moving on to Baltimore, where he would serve as both a defensive backfield assistant and defensive coordinator for the Colts from 1966-1968.

While with the Chargers, Noll's teams finished in first place atop the AFL Western standings in 1960, 1961, 1963, 1964, and 1965. The defenses he helped coach, twice fielded the best scoring defense in the league ('61 and '63), and only once finished outside the top 3 in the admittedly small AFL. Nevertheless, while building up his experience as a professional football coach, he got results. 

In fact, he was so successful that the Baltimore Colts hired him to work with their defense, beginning in 1966. That year, the Colts finished with a solid 9-5 record and the 3rd ranked scoring defense. In 1967, the team compiled an outstanding 11-1 record, and finished the year with the 2nd ranked scoring defense. Though that 11-1-2 record was amazingly not good enough for a playoff berth (the LA Rams edged them out by virtue of a tiebreaker), the head coach of the Colts, Don Shula, was convinced that Noll was ready to be the primary leader of the team's defense.

 In 1968, with Noll as the defensive coordinator, the Colts steamrolled the league, finishing the year 13-1. The defense was historically good, setting an NFL record for fewest points allowed (144). Though the team lost that memorable Super Bowl contest against the New York Jets in the Orange Bowl, the Rooney's had seen enough. He was named the 14th head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers just seventeen days after the Super Bowl, on January 27th, 1969. He was just 37 years old.

 

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When Noll finally called it quits after 23 years of service for the Steelers, the Rooney's emulated the same strategy in their coaching search that they had when identifying Noll as the right man for the job. That is, they looked for a young, defensive oriented football mind. Cowher, like Noll, might not have been the most experienced candidate available, but the Rooney's had already learned that less is sometimes more when it comes to experience as a coach. With experience comes ingrained proclivities and tendencies, and the subsequent possibility for repeat performances of year's past.

Can you spot the chin, in full bloom
during his high school days in the mid 70s?

Cowher though, despite not being a head coach at any level, had also excelled in his coordinator and assistant roles.  After two years in Cleveland as a Special Teams coordinator, Cowher began coaching the Browns' secondary as of 1987. That year, the Browns sported the 2nd best scoring defense. and the 8th best passing defense. Cowher's secondary's only twice allowed an opposing QB to amass 300 yards. Once to the Cincinnati Bengals, and once to the well-oiled offensive machine of the San Francisco 49ers. The following year, Cleveland fielded the 6th best scoring defense, and the 6th best pass defense. Other than Dan Marino's 400+ yard outburst in Week 16, Cowher's secondary held their opponents under 300 yards passing every week, with only the Oilers eclipsing the 250 yard mark.

Cowher's success in Cleveland prompted the Kansas City Chiefs brass to name him defensive coordinator in 1989. It was Cowher's first breakthrough gig, and he would take the most of it. The Chiefs were coming off a 4-11-1 season in 1988, the year before he arrived. In 1989, the Chiefs improved dramatically, finishing the year 8-7-1, barely missing the playoffs. The Chiefs' defense, which was merely average in '88 (15th in scoring defense), took several important steps forward, giving up nearly two fewer points per game, and finishing the year with the 8th best scoring defense.

In 1990, the Chiefs continued to improve, finishing 11-5, making the playoffs, and improving their defense even more. That year, the Chiefs surrendered just 257 points, good for 5th best in the league. So, in just two years, the Chiefs shaved 63 points off their allowed season total, improved their record by 7 games, and were on the brink of making some playoff noise. In Cowher's final year in KC, the Chiefs couldn't get past the upstart Bills in the Divisional Round of the AFC playoffs, but again the team was consistent on defense, finishing the year having allowed just 252 points. Cowher, despite his youth and lack of experience, had taken advantage of his early opportunities in the league. By doing so, he positioned himself as a fresh, young and successful defensive mind. Some owners might have wanted to see more, but for the Rooney's they had seen enough to take the risk on him, before others might snatch him up in the forthcoming years.

Though it took several cracks at it, the Rooney's instincts were correct. Cowher, like his predecessor Noll, led the Steelers to the promised land.

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Enter Mike Tomlin. Tomlin, unlike Noll and Cowher who were both players, albeit for a very short amount of time, had to get his start at the collegiate level.  At just 23 years of age, he would serve as the wide receivers coach at the Virginia Military Institute. He would finish the decade at the University of Cincinnati, with previous stops at Arkansas State and the University of Memphis.

Let's take a second here to remember the symmetry of how Tony Dungy and Mike Tomlin got their first opportunity's as coaches in the National Football League. For Dungy, that opportunity was bequeathed by none other than Chuck Noll. For Mike Tomlin, that opportunity came from Dungy. 

This was no ceremonial hire though. Dungy's Buccaneers were on the cusp of breaking through and competing for a Super Bowl, following years and years of futility. In 2000, the Bucs finished a respectable 10-6 and made the playoffs. Their pass defense was good, but not great, finishing that year with the 13th ranked pass defense.

In 2001, Tomlin's first year as DB coach, the Bucs finished 9-7, and the pass defense improved to 5th. In 2002, the Bucs fielded the best  scoring and pass defense in the NFL, and in just year two of his professional coaching career, Tomlin and the Bucs would hoist the Lombardi Trophy. Though the Bucs would regress collectively in 2003 and 2004, missing the playoffs both years, it wasn't because of the defense, and certainly not because of the pass defense that Tomlin helped coordinate. Those units finished 3rd and 1st in the league in pass defense respectively.

After a very impressive five year run in Tampa, the Minnesota Vikings came calling in the 2006 offseason. New head coach Brad Childress wanted Tomlin to coordinate his defense. It was a fine selection, as the Vikings finished the year 8th in overall defense. Oddly enough, they finished the year with the top rush defense and the worst passing defense. Clearly those two results are by-products of each other - if you can't stop the pass, why run? And if you can't run, why keep trying? Nevertheless, the Vikes improved from 19th to 14th in scoring defense, again extending Tomlin's short but undeniably sound track record of helping teams improve immediately upon his arrival.

 

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It's time to wrap this up, but I'll finish by quickly saying that I count my lucky stars that the ownership of the team I love avoids hiring recycled, mediocre, insiders as head coach of the Steelers. There's no need to name names, but everytime there's a coaching vacancy, certain folks will be mentioned on the short list of potential candidates.

As is often the case in various aspects of business and life, the Steelers find value by contemplating what everybody else is doing, and then sprinting in the other direction. It's the commitment to trusting their instincts, not being afraid to take a chance on the guy they've identified as the right man for the job, and acting before it's too late, even if it means taking a chance on a coach with less experience than the media and other owners would lead one to believe is necessary. Then, perhaps most importantly, they allow their coach to grow and evolve over time.  All of these things are what make the Rooneys special and so successful in not only this endeavor, but in their countless other ventures in Pittsburgh and around the country.

Of the tens of thousands of words dedicated to the offensive line this offseason, not too many of them have centered around the impact of offensive line coach Larry Zierlein.  I realize that above all else, you need the horses, or in the case of the offensive line, the hogs, to be competitive, but surely the maestro of a professional football team's offensive line has the ability to help is players improve individually and collectively.

This coming season, we will do our best to provide some video or snap shots of the play of the offensive line, to see perhaps where we're succeeding and where we're failing, but for now, I wanted to just take a look at Zierlein's career as a coach. Where did he come from? How successful were the offenses that operated behind his offensive lines. It is fairly widely accepted that offensive success starts up front in the trenches, so perhaps even the most simple statistics will give us an idea of the kind of lines that he assembled and coached.

The first thing that jumps out to me when looking at his coaching timeline is that his first gig in the National Football League was not until 2001, when the Cleveland Browns put him in charge of their offensive line.  That might not sound like a big deal until you remember that he's in his 60s, meaning he didn't even get his first crack in the league until his late 50s, despite having been a coach for the better part of three decades. He would remain in Cleveland from 2001 to 2004. Here's how his offenses fared in those years.

	Points Scored/Game	Rushing Yards/Game	Passing Yards/Game	Sacks Allowed
2001(7-9)	17.8 (25th)	84.4 (31st)	175.1 (28th)	51   (4th)
2002(9-7)	21.5 (19th)	100.9 (23rd)	213.3 (18th)	35 (19th)
2003(5-11)	15.9 (29th)	104.4 (20th)	177.1 (25th)	40 (13th)
2004(4-12)	17.25 (27th)	103.6 (23rd)	176.5 (25th)	41 (11th)

In case you were wondering, the years 2001-2003 were the same years that Bruce Arians was calling the shots in Cleveland. Arians was dismissed one year before Zierlein was, but clearly 2004 was not a memorable one for the Big Z.

He would then take 2005 off, before being the Assistant Offensive Line Coach in Buffalo in 2006, when the Bills finished 7-9, with the 23rd ranked scoring offense. His line surrendered 47 sacks (t-7th most), and the passing game and rushing game were ranked 28th and 27th respectively, in terms of yards per game.

Much of Zierlein's career has been the same way
- a band-aid type fix before moving on to the next gig

The reality is, Larry Zierlein has never coached an offensive line that paved the way for a successful NFL offense. As I mentioned to start, that has a lot to do with the players at his disposal. There's only so much you can do with a rotten bag of lemons in Cleveland. That said, his credentials at the professional level leave plenty to be desired.

How about in the college ranks? Zierlein did have a nice run in the now defunct Southwestern Conference, when he coached the O-Line at the University of Houston from 1978-1986. His teams won two conference titles in his first two years on campus, finishing 1978 ranked #10 and 1979 #5, and one more in 1984. 

Following that solid run, Zierlein spent one year coaching the Washington Commandos in their inaugural 4-team demonstration year. Then, two unfruitful seasons in New Orleans coaching the Tulane Green Wave, followed by a two-year stint in the World League of American Football. It should be noted that the two years that he was coaching the NY/NJ Knights of the WFAL, were the first two of the league's existence. I don't want to sound overly critical here, as I commend Zierlein for wanting to be a part of something new and fresh, but let's face it, those leagues were not exactly competing for first-rate talent at the coaching level. 

Somehow, Tulane decided to give him another shot, in 1995-1996, but both he and head coach Buddy Teevens were dismissed following the '96 season. For those who think coaching doesn't matter, remember that Tommy Bowden took over the Tulane job in 1997, and immediately turned the program around, winning 7 games with many of Teeven's and Zierlein's players, followed by an undefeated 12-0 season in 1998.

The last stop on Zierlein's career path before making into the NFL was with the Cincinnati Bearcats. As seems to have been the case in several of his stints, things got off to a nice start, then turned south. In 1997, the squad posted an 8-4 record, followed by 2-9 and 3-8 campaigns the finish out the millenium. In his final year in Cincy, things were better, as the Bearcat rushing attack helped pave the way for a 7-5 record and bowl berth.

In conclusion, allow me to quickly say that so long as Larry Zierlein is a coach on the Pittsburgh Steelers, I support him and have high hopes for him. All offseason, I have thought that it's entirely possible that our offensive line performs at a much higher level in 2008 than it did in Zierlein's first year, even though on paper we shouldn't be much better.  For the sake of his career in Pittsburgh, it better be, because if you had to ask me which assistant coach is most likely to be dismissed in the Mike Tomlin era, it would have to be him.

Anyway, if nothing else, I'm a bit underwhelmed by his resume. Zierlein joined the coaching ranks of the NFL at 61 years old, having never played a down in the league. Outside of his credible stint at Houston, he seemed to have bounced around quite a bit. And then, once in the pros, he struggled similarly. Granted, Cleveland has been a veritable graveyard for coaches up until just recently, but nevertheless, many have done more with less.

With all the weapons stockpiled on our roster, let's hope that Zierlein and his men can put together a solid season in 2008 and in years to come. There's enough talent to make everybody look much smarter than they really are, provided we put the right guys in the right places along the line.

The Pittsburgh Steelers have 19 members of the family in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  Only the Chicago Bears (26) and Green Bay Packers (21) have more.  I've compiled a listing according to five different categories.  For sake of operational definition, only those players who played a majority or plurality of their careers with the Steelers are listed.  They would be "Primary" HOF members.  Kevin Greene played only three years with the Steelers so basically if he gets inducted it will be as a Ram.  Conversely, Jerome Bettis played only three years with the Rams so he will go in proudly as a Steeler.  I'd like to hear your opinions, both in agreement and disagreement and also moving individuals into different categories.  If you are new to the site or haven't commented much, we'd really like to know your thoughts as well.  Join in one and all.
 

Category One:  Slam Dunk, No Debate, Meet Me in Canton

Jerome Bettis:  The Bus played with us for 10 seasons, 1996 through 2005, after three seasons with the St. Louis Rams.  He didn't fit into the Rams' offense. He now fits into the yellow blazer of the Hall of Fame.  Bettis rushed for 13,662 yards and finished his career fifth on the all-time NFL rushing list.  He scored 91 touchdowns rushing and added three more receiving and another three with option passes.  The Bus made the Pro Bowl six times and ended his career in his hometown Detroit, hoisting the Lombardi Trophy as a Super Bowl Champion.

Rod Woodson:  Woodson also played with the Steelers for exactly one decade, from 1987 through 1996.  In one of those seasons he became the first player to ever come back in the same season following major reconstructive knee surgery (the Super Bowl year of 1995).  Woodson played for three more teams after leaving Pittsburgh and finished his career in 2003.  His 71 interceptions are third all-time in the NFL and incredibly, he returned 12 of those for touchdowns.  He compiled a total of 17 touchdowns, including kick, punt and fumble returns - not bad for someone who never played offense.  Woodson made the NFL's 75th Anniversary Team and played in 11 Pro Bowls.

Category Two:  Very Deserving, Shameful if Left Out 

Gary Anderson:  Anderson played 13 of his 23 NFL seasons with the Steelers (1982-94).  He is the NFL's second leading all-time scorer with 2,434 points (behind Morten Andersen), some 400 points ahead of third place.  Anderson not only made the 1980s NFL All-Decade Team, he made the 1990s All-Decade Team as well.  He has been selected All Pro five times and four times he was invited to the Pro Bowl.  In 1998 Anderson became the first kicker in NFL history to go through a perfect regular season not missing a field goal (35) nor an extra point (59).  His 164 points that year is fourth all time in the NFL and the most ever for a player not scoring a touchdown.  If Jan Stenerud, some 700 career points in the rears of Anderson, can make it in the Hall, Gary Anderson should be there also.  (Stenerud is the only pure placekicker in the Hall.  Others like Blanda and Groza kicked well after playing another primary position during their careers.)  Pittsburgh fans will never forget Anderson's 50-yard field goal in overtime at Houston in the 1989 Wildcard Game that game that gave the Steelers a stunning road playoff win over the heavily-favored Oilers.

Bill Cowher:  Cowher was the head coach of the Steelers for 15 season, from 1992 through 2006.  He became the second coach in NFL history to lead his team into the playoffs the first six years of his career.  Paul Brown was the other.  Cowher was the youngest coach (38) ever to guide his team into a Super Bowl (XXX) and during his 15-year tenure, the Steelers had the best regular-season record in football (149-90-1).  Cowher won eight division titles and earned 10 postseason berths.  The Steelers played in 15 home playoff games, averaging one per season, during his reign, and played in 21 playoff games in all.  Six times the Cowher-led Steelers made it to the AFC championship game.

Dermontti Dawson:  Dawson played with the Steelers for all 13 years of his NFL career.  He went to seven straight Pro Bowls (1992-98) and was selected as All Pro six times.  Dawson started an impressive 171 straight games for the Steelers as one of the all-time great centers.  He was named to the NFL's 1990s All-Decade Team.  The Steelers do not officially retire numbers (after Ernie Stautner), but you might have noticed that no one has worn #63 since Dawson retired after the 2000 season.

Alan Faneca:  Faneca played 10 years with Pittsburgh, from 1998 through 2007, primarily as an outstanding left guard.  Seven times Faneca played in the Pro Bowl and five times he was selected All Pro.  Faneca was voted by the Pittsburgh fans to be on the Steelers' 75th Anniversary Team.  Offensive linemen do not get opportunities to pile up statistics, but opposing defensive linemen will attest to how great Faneca was during his career with the Steelers.

Hines Ward:  Like Faneca, Ward came to the team after the 1998 draft and has been a Steeler for an exact decade.  Ward has been the team's MVP three times and was also MVP of Super Bowl XL.  Ward is now the Steelers' all-time leading receiver in yards (8,737) and touchdowns (65) and has racked up an impressive 761 yards and eight touchdowns in postseason play.  Ward was selected to four consecutive Pro Bowls (2001-04) and is a three-time All Pro.

Category Three:  Pro-Rated Possibility,  Needs Multiplied Pace

Willie Parker:  What Fast Willie has done in just three seasons (2004 hardly counts) puts his name into the discussion.  He's rushed for more than 4,000 yards in those three seasons and scored 23 touchdowns.  In 2005 Parker was the Steelers' team MVP and his 75-yard touchdown gallop in the Super Bowl following that season is an NFL record.  Parker's biggest problem at this point may be his age.  He is 27.  NFL running backs are not known for very long career-spans and he may have trouble triplicating his output thus far, which is close to what it would take for a yellow blazer.

Troy Polamalu:  Polamalu has been with the team for five years and has made the Pro Bowl four times.  If you multiply his career,  those Pro Bowl appearances alone would make a good case.  Polamalu tied an NFL record for a safety by recording three sacks in one game and is still the only safety ever drafted by the Steelers in the first round.  Polamalu plays a confusing, aggressive style of defense that commands the respect of NFL opponents.

Ben Roethlisberger:  Roethlisberger has been with the team for four years.  In three of those years his quarterback rating has been at least 98 and in 2007 he was second only to future Hall of Famer Tom Brady with a 104 rating.  Roethlisberger was an obvious selection to the Pro Bowl last season.  He maintains a career 63% of completions.  He has thrown for 11,673 yards and 84 touchdowns.  If you multiply those numbers by three, a fair projection, he will have more than 35,000 yards and more than 250 touchdown passes.  Roethlisberger is the youngest quarterback to ever lead his team to a Super Bowl victory.

Category Four:  Maybe Too Late Now, But Should Be In

L.C. Greenwood:  Greenwood played with the Steelers for 13 seasons (1969-81).  He was a six-time Pro Bowler and four times achieved All Pro status.  Greenwood stockpiled a sterling 73.5 career sacks and recovered 14 fumbles.  He also had an uncanny knack of coming up big in big games.  Greenwood batted away three Fran Tarkenton passes in Super Bowl IX and the next year sacked Roger "The Dodger" Staubach three times in Super Bowl X.  He registered sacks in all four Super Bowls in which he played.  Greenwood was selected to the NFL Silver Anniversary Super Bowl Team and was also a member of the league's 1970s All-Decade Team.

Donnie Shell:   This one baffles me more than any other.  Shell played with Pittsburgh all 14 years of his NFL career (1974-87) after being signed as an undrafted free agent.  His 51 career interceptions, as a safety no less, ranks among the elite in NFL history.  Shell made the Pro Bowl five consecutive years (1978-82) and was a five-time All Pro.  Nicknamed "The Torpedo," Shell's clean slam-to-the-ground tackle of powerful Earl Campbell broke the Houston Oiler's ribs in a critical 1978 contest knocking Campbell out of the game.  Shell was the team's MVP in 1980.  I believe the only reason Shell is being snubbed, likewise Greenwood, is that nine of their 1970s teammates have been inducted and there is a subliminal feeling that nine is enough for any one group of players.

Category Five:  Not Going to Happen, But in My Mind There is a Special Wing

Dick Hoak:  I fully understand we are talking here about the NFL Hall of Fame, not a Steelers Hall of Fame.  Still, I doubt there are many individuals around who played for a team for 10 years (1961-70) then coached the same team for another 35 years, marking 45 years all told.  Up until he retired, Hoak had been a player or coach of the Steelers for 742 of the franchise's 1,057 games, an incredible 70 percent.  Moreover, Hoak hails from nearby Jeannette and played at Penn State, taking the definition of lifelong loyalty to a whole new level.  He made the Pro Bowl once as a Steeler and finished his career as Pittsburgh's second all-time rusher behind John Henry Johnson.  Hoak will not be one of the few who achieve Hall of Fame status, but he is one of fewer who are walking around with five Super Bowl rings.

Art Rooney Jr.:  The world already believes there are enough Rooneys in the Hall of Fame, but Art Jr. is the unsung Rooney.  Two years younger than brother Dan, who is in the Hall of Fame, Art Jr. has also devoted his entire adulthood to the NFL and the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Currently a vice president for the Steelers, Rooney was the team's head of personnel and player acquisition from 1964 to 1986.  He was instrumental in the launching of the league's first scouting combine and he orchestrated the greatest six-year string of team drafts in NFL history.  Nine Steelers' players during that span ended up in the Hall of Fame.  So too should one of the primary architects behind that great dynasty.

Mike Wagner:  I realize if Shell can't get in then Wagner, also a safety, has no chance whatsoever.  I am still going to tout him since I saw most of his games and he played far beyond what statistics can measure.  Wagner and Shell was the smartest safety tandem in NFL history in my opinion.   For as many times as Swann and Stallworth beat the opposition for long receptions, I can barely remember the opposition ever getting behind Wagner and Shell.  Wagner played with Pittsburgh for a decade, 1971-80, and earned two Pro Bowl appearances (1975 and 1976) along with four All Pro teams.  In 1973 Wagner led the NFL in interceptions with eight and ended his career with 36.  He also recovered 11 fumbles.  Like Shell, Wagner was a great tackler and played run support as well as it can be played.

Special Category:  Already In, But Not as a Steeler

Jim Finks:  It bothers me that neither the Steelers nor the Hall of Fame acknowledge the fact that Jim Finks played his entire NFL career with Pittsburgh (1949-1955) and was an outstanding quarterback.  In the Steelers' Media Guide the team accounts for 19 Hall of Famers and then notes players like Cal Hubbard, Marion Motley and Len Dawson who played very briefly with the team, but really earned HOF credentials with other teams.  How can they not mention Jim Finks?  In 1952 he had a Pro Bowl season leading the NFL with 20 touchdown passes (the game was different back then, 20 was an outstanding milestone) and was surprisingly fourth in the league with five rushing touchdowns.  In 1955 he had yet another great season, leading the league in passes attempted (244), completed (165), passing yards (2,270) and yards-per-game (190).  All told, Finks threw 55 touchdown passes, rushed for 12, caught a TD pass and returned an interception for a touchdown.  Agreed, his career and statistics are not the primary reasons for Finks being in the Hall of Fame.  His administrative contributions to the Bears, Vikings and Saints are what propelled him into the Hall.  But his statistical and playing contributions to the Pittsburgh Steelers over his seven-year career surely deserve a secondary affiliation.  If the Steelers can mention the miniscule impact that Cal Hubbard, Marion Motley and Lenny Dawson had on the team, Jim Finks should be recognized as one of ours also.