AFC North Offseason: 2nd Edition

Because Ben has a million sacks with that line. Yes I know he holds hit a little longer, but the games I’ve watched over the last few seasons they have not been that good. You guys need interior help. That one crazy samoan or whatever is a beast, I like him.

God if it was Orton back there it would be close to 115 sacks over the last 2 years.

I feel like I have gone over this a lot with people outside the Steelers fanbase. From an outsider looking in perspective it is easy to think “lots of sacks = bad OL.” And you would be right if Ben Roethlisberger was not our QB. Ben’s style of play is to extend the play and hope for WRs to break their routes and get open (if an initial route did not work). So typically a good OL holds his block for 3-4 seconds, but under Ben an OL might have to hold it for 5+ seconds, which is no easy task for even the best OLs in the league.

Just look at the sack per drop back numbers when the team went from Maddox to Ben without changing OL from 2003 to 2004. In 2003 it was 7.1% and went to 9.3% in 2004 after Ben took over in week 2. That is a lot when you consider a QB takes on average 400-500 drop backs. So 2% more is equivalent to 8 to 10 extra sacks per year. Ben is not great, but getting better, at checking down. He is bad at abandoning a play that never develops. Sometimes that works out great, but sometimes it ends in a sack, which is not the OLs fault. Ben does scramble a lot, but that is in a large part due to the fact that he holds on to the ball and the pocket breaks down.

So, remember when the Steelers had that great OL with Faneca and Marvell Smith? Well Ben was still getting sacked at about the same rate, 9.2 in 04, 8% in 05 compared to 8.2% in 08 and 9% in 09. So our OL is not that much worse as far as pass blocking goes. What we could use is a guard who can pull really well (Iupati), but no OL is going to drastically reduce the sack number.

Essex isn’t really starter material, hes an above average career back-up. Hartwig is decent but hes not gonna get any better, hes already up there in age. So essentially i think we need to replace Essex soon before Hartwig experiences a significant drop off, then we’d be a pretty solid group. (I still think we are at least average though)

To me, the NFC East is the most competitive. They always have tough defenses and good offenses, except for the ‘Skins. I would have to also say that I don’t believe Chicago was a winner this offseason. I think they overpaid greatly for the talent that they good. They are throwing money at Peppers, who, even though he is good, is getting up there in years.

I’ll agree that the NFC East has gotten weaker, but I ask you to please not call NYG superbowl a fluke. They were the better team that day and 100% deserved to beat the Pats. Come on now man.

But everything came together for them at the right time when they won. We should respect NYG for a win like that considering how much of a fluke our Superbowl is to alottttttttttt of people.