What about next year????

[OX1947]

Steelers D-Line is the one area I am not concerned with. You have 2 young studs and another guy who had a career year. Get some depth in FA and in the draft and they will be fine. The secondary has some young pups who will be better next year, which is good. Woodley and Harrison are good and Worilds should be better next year as well. Steelers need a run stuffer in the middle. I think if Dont'a Hightower out of Alabama is there at 24, they take him and sure up the middle with Levon Kirkland II.

It would be nice if the Steelers could go after a Carl Nicks in free agency, but with them being over the cap so much, even if they went that route this year, it would be impossible so lets home a good one comes in in the 2nd or 3rd rounds.

I am not too worried with the Steelers draft wise, they always get at least two studs out of the 7 rounds, each year.

My only hope next year is that who ever comes in as the offensive coordinator, they devise a system that can protect Big Ben. They need a OC who can figure that out somehow without killing Big Ben's effectiveness.

The other thing, hopefully they do not get injured at every major position and Pouncey can have a full year. Not having Pouncey in the last two playoff games cost us a lot. And for god sakes, get David Johnson out of here. His shitiness cost us so much in the Super Bowl and he is dropping machine even at his natural position.

My hope is that Mendenhall can recover quick. Welker recovered blowing out his knee in the second to last game of the regular season a few years back pretty well and shows no signs of it. A healthy Mendy and Redman would be nice to have with some dedication in the run game. PLEASE, give Redman the ball in the RED ZONE!!! And hopefully the new OC actually uses Mendy as a receiver once in a while or check down guy, for the love of god. No one is more effective then Mendy in the open field, yet that idiot Arians never set things like that up for him.

1998 Denver Broncos offense. Steelers need to go back to that season and see that offense operate. You had John Elway who could barely make it throughout the year, had Bubby Brister fill in for a few games. They protected him with a great running game and solid defense and he was pretty good. John got rid of the ball quick and with the running game being effective, play action left a heck of a lot of receivers wide open. Elway took the least amount of sacks that year in his career with 18.

In conclusion, Big Ben is just as important to this as the new OC. Ben needs to start getting to the point in his brain that he can not continue to play rugby out there. Steve McNair did it for 10 years and hit the wall extremely quick. It would be nice to have another 5 years of prime ball with Ben, but if he continues to let himself take 45 sacks a season, I just do not see him lasting more then two more seasons.

[PhantomJB93]

The entire Steelers D will be fine at every position next year with the exception of ILB and NT. One of those, if not both, is sure to be addressed in the first two rounds of the draft, depending on whether or not we take a guard first. In a worst case scenario, if we have nobody at NT, Hood and Mclendon could platoon the position (assuming neither is dominant enough to take over completely) with Heyward rotating in and out at DE. Outside of that, and Farrior's ILB slot (which I'm not too worried about), no other component of the defense is going to suffer a serious regression or need to be drastically improved.

Harrison, Timmons, Woodley, Keisel, Hood, Polamalu, Clark, Gay, and Ike are all fine right now, and will be for at least the next two years before any of them REALLY start to show any age. The "30" thing really only applies to running backs who are absolutely pounded every play, for pretty much every other position it's more like 35. Not to mention Worilds, Allen, Brown, Heyward all look like they could make major contributions if anybody at their positions actually did start to severely under-perform.

The reason we had trouble getting pressure was because both of our pass rushers were hurt all year. Even when they were playing they weren't 100%.

[LayingTheWoodley56]

Originally Posted by FrancoLambert

Inside linebacker = 1st need
D-Line = 2nd need
But both are behind our first overall need = O-line

I was thinking the same thing, there was no way our O-line would have held their own against ANY of those pass rushing fronts (maybe the Pats? maybe?).

We're not as spare along the O-line as people are making us out to be. Pouncey is clearly entrenched as a starter for the long haul, and Gilbert showed these year that he has the makings of an effective right tackle. Starks will be okay, I think, for at least one more year at LT, or Colon if he can stay healthy. The real problems are at the guard positions, which I do agree we need to draft one in the 1st or 2nd round.

At least two-fifths of our line looks like they are here to stay. We can get away with Starks or Colon at LT for another year or two, if they see fit to bring him back. Foster and Legursky (Kemo appears to be gone by consensus) are both undrafted FAs who have played beyond expectations just by starting. I don't think either of them is an awful player, but I do agree that we need to draft a stud to plug into one of those guard positions.

Past that, we clearly need a middle linebacker to replace Farrior, eventually if not this year, unless the organization has high hopes for Slyvester or Chris Carter. I haven't seen enough of either of them to pass my own judgement. Other need is in the middle of the D-Line with Casey departing, unless we move Zig inside to make a space for Heyward at end.