I don't expect everyone to subscribe to the All-22. It's not cheap and it's an investment in time to watch each week. But if you do watch you will see things that you simply can't see watching the live game. And you'll see the things a box-score can't show you ie. missed opportunities. if there is one really glaring hole in Kenny's game it's the missed opportunities. They don't show up in a box score. 1st drive Kenny makes the nice throw to Pickens to get them down to the 16. Steelers went with play action - 7 man protection. Clearly a scripted play and Pickett never looked anywhere else. But he made a nice throw. 2nd and 5 at the 11 yard line - after a 5 yard run on 1st down Cardinals in zone. They motioned Freiermuth outside in. Muth does a little wiggle, safety never moves and then turns it up field. Clean Pocket for Kenny. He has three options here. Keep in mind. It's 2nd and 5. Gotta avoid a negative yardage play. A 1st down here gives you three cracks from the 5 yard line to score. He has 3 guys at or near the sticks. He can jam it into Muth, put it on his body or take either of the receivers at tthe sticks. 1st and goal or 3rd and short. Instead he holds it. Now the clock is ticking in his head, he has zero pocket presence and he feels like he needs to get out. Classic Kenny Pickett escape to the right. If he instead has his head up he has Pickens open - his defender got caught turning his hips. Here is the pocket he ran out of. Still has a chance. Pickens turns the DB again, breaks outside and Kenny throws it at his feet. 3rd and 5 at the 11 yard line Pretty good coverage here but Pickett sees something pre-snap and never looks anywhere but Freiermuth. Warren misses a blitz pickup - mostly because the blitzer fell down and Warren didn't anticipate him recovering so quickly. Pickett had Robinson at the sticks for the 1st down and held it waiting for Muth to come open which wasn't going to happen because the DB held him - should have been a flag. Pickett's lack of pocket presence on display here. Had a nice area in front of him to step up and avoid the blitzer. In this scenario (3rd down) you'd like to see Kenny try and buy some time and find an open guy instead of just throwing wildly to a guy who wasn't even remotely open and getting hit in the process. Very lucky it wasn't a turnover. Field Goal
2nd drive 7 yard run on 1st down. At this early point in the game the Steelers have run 4x for 28 yards. 2nd and 3 At this point I have to wonder what in the world is going through Kenny's head. What is he seeing? What is he looking for? Cardinals are playing Cover-2. Diontae is running a deep crosser and runs it to perfection. He stems it up field to turn the safety (successfully) and is WIDE OPEN in the middle of the field. The ball should already be out. X marks the spot. Pretty simple play design, as basic a read as you can get and Kenny holds the football. Okay you missed it. No worries. It's 2nd and 2 and you have your RB wide open in the flat for an easy pitch and catch, move the chains. Nope. Still holds it and now as happens so often the clock is ticking in Kenny's head. Better take off, we don't want to hang around in this beautiful pocket for someone to come open! And of course even after you run out of the pocket you're allowed to look downfield. This would be next level play and it will never happen but if he's looking downfield he has a guy wide open. Low snap on 3rd down. Punt
Trubisky is worse. If he played all season we would have a top five pick. At least Pickett doesn’t turn the ball over. Trubisky always turns the ball over.
3rd drive Warren runs for 7 yards on 1st down. 5 carries for 35 yards now by the Steelers RBs. 2nd and 3 - okay I'm going to nitpick a bit here. Kenny throws to Diontae for a 1st down on this play. Never looks anywhere else. Successful play, moves the sticks but look at the defenders on the right side of the field pre-snap. And look at Jaylen Warren in the open field to his left. Again, not something you're going to see from Kenny at this point but a veteran QB is going to be all over this. Warren literally only has to beat one man and he's gone. Again. 1st down. No worries. Yes, I'm nitpicking here. But another example of a lost opportunity in my opinion. Others will disagree I'm sure. 1st and 10. Steelers in shotgun. Cardinals playing with one deep safety and Budda is in the box. Robinson runs behind the LOS to the flat and Budda immediately buzzes down to cover the flat. This should be Kenny's 1st read. Where is the safety? Oh he's buzzing the flat? I have the middle of the field wide open. Pickens is running a 10 yard curl. The middle of the field is wide open because Budda vacated the spot to take away the flat. The safety has two guys both running vertical routes (this is the play design - stress the safety). If the safety is coming up the ball goes over top. If he's sitting on his heels the ball goes to Pickens in the middle. Just throw the damn ball! X marks the spot! Okay he doesn't like what he sees. Now get the ball out of your hands. You know where everyone is on the field (it's safe to assume he does, right?). Get the ball out. You're safety valve is open. If you have to take a couple steps back to get the ball off do it. That's moving in the pocket. Buying extra time. Creating throwing lanes. Whatever you do don't do that thing where you turn your back on the play. I hate that thing... Yeah he did it again. He does manage to get it to Warren but with his back turned the DB is already running downhill now. Why couldn't we just hit Pickens on the curl? 4 yd loss, 9 yard run on 2nd down and then an unsuccessful bubble screen on 3rd down. There ya go Canada haters. it took 3 drives but we got to a play we can bitch about.
4th drive After a Cardinals 3-and-out the Steelers run twice for 4 yards. 3rd and 6 - Cardinals blitz both LBs and Kenny has a great opportunity here. I'll let the pictures do the talking but man oh man if you want teams to stop blitzing you this is how you do it. All you need to do is drift a little and let it fly... 3 and out
5th drive This is the Steelers best drive of the half. They get a PI penalty on 2nd down and then Warren and Najee run 4x for 40 yards. Kenny hits Pickens on a slant and Muth on a catch and run down to the 7 and it's 1st and goal. Good, efficient, balanced offense. Najee runs twice to get down to the 3 yard line and it's now 3rd and goal. This is the play Kenny scrambles and gets injured and as you probably expect it was completely unnecessary. Steelers motion right to left. No one follows. Pickens is one-on-one on the outside (if I'm the QB that's my 1st read). Safety is just outside the hash. Pickens running a dig. There is no help inside obviously because if your the QB the safety is right in front of you. Throw the football. The ball should be out. Throw it right into his body. It should be right there. X marks the spot again. Didn't throw it. He's looking in the middle of the field. There's a nice clean pocket for you to step into. There's big #80 right in the middle. Step up. Buy yourself a few seconds. It's 3rd and goal. Nope. He's going to put his head down and run. And he's going to miss several open receivers. Line of scrimmage is the 3. If you have your head up you have Muth wide open here. Easy toss over the LBs. 4th and goal. Out for 3-4 weeks. All on the QB.
Here's Kenny's first half. I read on-line somewhere that Kenny had a "good 1st half, he was 7 for 10 for 70 yards. It's not his fault." It is his fault. He's not an NFL QB and I could demonstrate this every week if I had 4 hours to kill every week. i don't.
It’s not a good look especially #80 Was drafted to be a red zone target. JHC the dude has a catch radius of a Boeing 767 how do you NOT SEE HIM ? . Kinda disgusts me to see what could have been a very winnable game. Michael Penix Jr. Quarterback Washington | NFL Draft Profile & Scouting Report
Really like Penix but not sure I can draft a guy with his injury history. Not in the 1st round for sure.
Yeah that is what I posted on another thread, I replied to Dirk and said his medical and injury history will cause him to slide. I have seen the better part of 3 games he has played, there are so many good players in the Pacific Northwest, hoping Steeler's scout Mark Bruener can convince the team to look hard at that area. Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State all have very talented players and will have some late round or undrafted steals. But alas they will be targeting the SEC and The Big Ten before the soon to be defunct PAC12. Since the games are on later in the day and sometimes at night, much easier for me to watch them live. I find taping games when I know the outcome just blows. I am no scout just a fan and when I knew Georgia lost I lost interest in the taped game. So many players they will be looking at in the first two days were on the field. SVP, Kool-Aid, Latham, Mims, Lassiter, Bullard, Stackhouse, Arnold.......
Great stuff beloved Beachbum. I saw something on Twitter about that 3rd down play on the 1st drive blaming the play call. A man beater pass-play against zone coverage. Basically the guy was blaming the play not Pickett. What say you?
I noticed this one live at that stadium, I mentioned last week one of Pickett's biggest weaknesses is the lack of recognizing when a receiver is coming open.
That's one of the things I saw when looking at what beach posted. He just sees a covered receiver rather than a receiver that will come open if he just stays with him.
Do one of these for Trubisky, now. You've got the All 22, last night was a full game's worth of footage - show us what, in your eyes, Trubisky did.
How are they supposed to know what coverage the defense is going to run when they call the play? QB has to read the defense and make the adjustment. It also ignores the fact that he had 3 options to throw to.
