Neander-ball

Vic Ketchman, on Jaguars.com :

Floyd from Charlotte, NC: I noticed that on Pittsburgh's final drive on Monday night they didn't abandon the run, even though Baltimore successfully defended the Steelers' running attack most of the night. Pittsburgh didn't change who they are because they were down with time running out. Is there a lesson there for the Jags who didn't run the ball once in the final four minutes of the game?

Vic: The Steelers are a unique team. Nobody plays the game as they do, as witnessed by the fact that Ben Roethlisberger is averaging slightly more than 21 passes a game. Byron Leftwich is at 30 passes a game and that's toward the low end of the league average. The Steelers are not a scheme team. Preparing for them schematically is easy because you know what they're going to do. The Steelers are very close-to-the-vest on offense. They get a lead and they sit on it. Their idea of stepping on another team's throat, so to speak, is to get a lead going into the fourth quarter and then expire the clock with their running game. The Monday Night Football telecast tossed out a statistic that was so fantastic I thought they had surely made a mistake. The stat is that the Steelers have a streak of 126 home games in which they have not lost when they've had a seven-point or greater lead heading into the fourth quarter. The streak goes all the way back to 1970. What that means is the Steelers are very good at running out the clock with their running game when they have the lead and the ball. That's "Neander-ball" and Jaguars fans don't want that kind of football. They hate that kind of football. This is a town that wants a wide-open game. To play it the Steelers' way, you have to commit to it completely. You have to draft to play that way. You have to condition your fans to that style of offense with years and years of playing that way. You have to regard the pass as the thing you have to do to be able to do what you really want to do. That wouldn't work in Jacksonville or anywhere else in the league except Pittsburgh.

Wow, I say. I will have more comment on this later.