Scout’s Eye with Matt Williamson: All roses in Jacksonville

Scout’s Eye with Matt Williamson: All roses in Jacksonville

Well, hello everyone. How are you doing this wonderful evening? I am doing great. I just walked in the door from doing the postgame show at the radio station and man uh I assume many of you will be like our callers and myself and Mike Pursuda and everybody that was there that hard to uh come away with many negatives to this outing in Jacksonville for your Pittsburgh Steelers. What a great way to get real football started. And man, I mean, I have some big picture things at the end of the podcast, but I’m just going to go through my notes chronologically and throw some things at you and then go through those big picture things. But I don’t know that you need my expert opinion to really dig into this too heavily because it’s kind of all roses and a good start. I mean, it’s just what you wanted to get out of it. So, the Jags received the ball as I thought. Actually, Bruner made the tackle on the opening kickoff, which was nice play. Uh, looks like he has a very strong special teams background or future. Uh, Liao and Sawyer were the starting edges and that’s kind of what I expected, but what I didn’t expect is the two of them to go deep, deep into the game. I think they’re trying to get a real good look at Liao and that’s a big powerful unit on the edges. Um, quickly into the game, Thornill had a huge hit to dislodge the completion. I thought he had a really good night overall as well. Didn’t play a ton. I think he play, you know, like probably played 15 snaps, something like that was all said and done, but I thought he had a real strong outing. And I also made the note too, this is this early in the game stuff that I thought Lawrence looked really sharp, you know, that I was like, man, he might carve the Steelers up, but he didn’t, you know, the Jags didn’t play super long. Um, but then Steelers come in or just, you know, uh, Rudolph comes in and Steelers get the ball, first throw, rips an inbreaker to Roman Wilson, the middle of this field. Boom. Big game. That was great. Great separation from Wilson. sharp route, really good throw, and then deep into this drive, I’m like, man, he looks really sharp. Zero incompletions on that first drive, and then probably the play of the night for the Steelers is the Washington touchdown right down the seam. Pretty play. Go be huge. What a beast he is. And I’ve been telling you, we’ve been seeing a lot of this type of stuff in camp from Washington. It’s not just the flare out little dump passes. It’s some field straight stretching stuff as well as a lot of red zone shots to Washington. So, as the game’s going on, you know, we’re getting into the first half. Eckles shows up to me again. You know, he has a PBU there. That was nearly an interception. His second play, I thought he had a nice showing tonight today. And I made this note all throughout the game, but started early and it ended up, you know, going deep into the game as well. really good tackling night by the Steelers. And remember, you know, you didn’t have your all your stars out there, of course. And then finally, the the second team O line comes out. And I found this really noteworthy that from left to right, the second team O line who played a lot tonight. Cook at left tackle, Nester Sharping at center, Williams at right guard who played a ton, and Jones at right tackle. Um, I think it’s pretty obvious that McCollum was not, you know, not going to dress for this one because of injury. So, they had to throw sharping in as kind of a break glass of emergency center stuff. And he had some snapping issues all in all, but um, you know, that’s really your third center and a a number two guard. And Calvin Anderson, too, is not quite 100%. I mean, I think he’s going to make this team as a tackle, but Cook, I think, is somebody they’re pretty happy with at left tackle. And Jones has been a pretty pleasant experience at right tackle, too. We’ve talked a lot about him. Guard turned tackle, but really good two-minute drive to finish the half. Uh, run by Skyler Thompson, who clearly played really, really well. Ended with a Hurlman touchdown. Um, I thought Hurlman was big on this drive. I’m a Hurlman fan. and he is growing on me quite a bit. He also had a punt coverage tackle tonight. Pretty good athlete. Throws his body around. And then really the play of the day, unless you’re only looking through it through a Steelers lens, is the 70ard field goal to end the half. Like that was bonkers. But something fun to talk about. So, you know, I I do it into first half numbers and end of game numbers. I’m not going to push that much, but there were a couple things. First half, it was a 14-9 game at that point. Rudolph ended up 9 out of 10 for 84 yards and a touchdown. And at the half, Thompson was eight out of nine for 83 yards and a touchdown. So, one completion each, 84 and 83 yards, respectively, touchdown, touchdown. At this point, Caleb Johnson only was seven for 20. We’ll get to that more, but the Steelers only had 138 13 minutes and 18 seconds of time in possession, but they had 11 first downs and 180 total yards just in the first half and were four of six on third downs. Got to like it. 6.4 yards per play. Strong. And this was something I jotted down at the end of the first half, but it really held true for the entire game. And Tomlin mentioned it a couple times. No obvious mental errors, very good tackling, very clean overall from like a procedural standpoint. Uh they got the starter types out early. I mean, the guys that did play but were the best ones out there. They didn’t stay out there super long. Got them out early. Fine. Great. And then the Steelers get the ball in the second half. It’s that same offensive line. I thought thought that was noteworthy. Um, first play of the half for the Jags. Harmon gets a quarterback hit intercepted by McCutchen, but a roughing the passer by Louderdermilk that they never really showed and I never got a good view of it, but I got the impression that the announcers did not agree with it. But that was a play that got nullified that was great stuff by Harmon and an interception. Um, and then not too far into the second half, the Steelers put Warren at right tackle and they put Pete at left tackle. And that’s something I was really paying attention to is when’s Pete going to enter this game. Um, Thompson hits Surman on a touchdown, untouched screen call. That worked really, really well. Then Surman comes back and gets a big uh tackle on the kickoff right after his touchdown. That’s a great way to double up and warm up to the the your coaching staff. And Harmon at this point, he basically played all of three quarters and I thought he was quite disruptive, especially against backups, but as you would want, you know, and Skyler Thompson at this point, I mean, very sharp, poised all game. Made me think, might you try to sneak him on the practice squad as your fourth quarterback? But he finished the day 20 of 28 for with 233 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions. That’s probably enough for him to get employed by somebody. He’s going to make an NFL paycheck this this year, whether it’s here or somebody else. I don’t know if he could clear waiverss or not, but I’d love to stick him on the practice squad and keep four just because why not, you know? I mean, the practice squads are bigger now, but I bet he is not a Steeler, unfortunately. But such is life. [Applause] [Music] They did allow a strip sack at the end of the third quarter and but that ended a really good drive. But Hull, Evan Hull had great effort to get on that ball. ended up with a field goal. At that point, it made it 24-15. Harmon finally out of the game the fourth quarter was a note I made made and then other than Sawyer and Lia almost that entire fourth quarter, the defense was basically all non-foot players. You know, kind I just mentioned how Skyler Thompson’s going to get a check. Well, I don’t think most of those guys are going to make much money in their football lives this year. So, a lot of non football dudes on the field in the fourth quarter other than Sawyer and Liao. Um, and then Cook came back in for Pete at left tackle pretty quickly after. and Pursuit and I were talking about it and it’s like dude he only played four 57 snaps last year for the Raiders and this is really the first time he’s put on pads was just those practices those two practices been you know right when he was signed and even then you could tell he was struggling a little bit so I just don’t think he’s in football shape yet at all. Um, so they’re going to kind of dip him very slowly into the mix. That doesn’t mean, hey, he’s fat and lazy or anything. It’s just he hasn’t played football in a while. Um, another Skyler Thompson touchdown. Keshan Williams had a nice game here. I thought he played big on that play for the touchdown. Um, he Skyler was under heavy pressure in the pocket and delivered a ball to Williams. He also had a nice return in this game that was brought back from penalty. So, good day by him overall. And then these are just a handful of general thoughts I have to kind of wrap things up for the day. And again, almost everything’s positive. Mentioned earlier, Bruner made a nice special teams play, but him and Castro both showed up with special teams tackles. Great. Here are my two negatives. And I think you guys know well enough that they’re actually coincidentally or not, two of the things I’ve really been harping on that needs to get better and should get better. They didn’t get a lot from the running game. 25 carries for 66 yards. And I didn’t think the second team O line did a particularly good job of opening holes. Um but all in all, the running game was pretty lackluster. And you know, I’ve been on this kick about getting the yards per carry up. Well, that that didn’t happen in this one. Now, they only allowed 66 rushing yards, which is what they produced. So, that part was good, but that’s not where we’re going with this. Um, the other thing that bugged me was no sacks by the Steelers and only two quarterback hits. So, those have been my two big things. You got to get your sack numbers up. You got to get your yards per carry up. And that’s really the only negatives I can come up with with this game. But those are still what I’ve been talking about. Um, on third downs, Steelers end up being eight out of 13 where the Jags are just three out of 10. Just can’t say it enough. Just very few mistakes overall from the team top to bottom. And I thought the depth really shined on this team. I mean, considering the Jags played a higher level of people on their depth chart than the Steelers, that the Steelers depth, which I think is a real strength right now, was really, really good and showed through. Uh, Rudolph orchestrated two scoring drives, Thompson orchestrated three. I also thought it was a really good Arthur Smith game. And we often talk about like rookies taking a step up in their second year of and by no means is Smith a rookie, but still in your second year as a coordinator play caller with a team. I do think there’s a different level of comfort. He used play action really well. I thought his play sequencing was really strong. I didn’t see them going into a lot of bad plays. I think Rudolph checked out of some stuff as well. So, I thought it was a really good Arthur Smith game, especially considering what he had to work with. Um, Max Starks mentioned in right after the game that 18 players, Steeler players, sat in this game that weren’t injured. 18 like basically your 18 most valuable players didn’t even participate in this game. And that doesn’t even include like Highmith and McCullum who are fighting injuries. So 18 dudes that they chose to rest and they still had a really good showing and actually it was a small sample size but when the Jags had their ones out there both sides of the ball the Steelers did quite well against them without their 18 most important players. As important if not more than anything. No injuries of note either. Like nothing bad happened out of this game pretty much. Um, crazy thing that happened was the postgame press conference. There must not have been like anyone in attendance yet. Tomlin comes up, talks about, “Ah, we don’t really have any injuries or any questions.” Nobody answered. He just walked away. Zero postgame questions. That was nuts to me, too. But ends up being a 31-25 victory. And frankly, just a really good start to real NFL football against, you know, true opponents. And I know it’s only preseason. I’m not getting overly I’m not booking reservations for the Super Bowl, don’t get me wrong. But this is exactly what you wanted. I mean, if I told you beforehand that the things would go this smoothly, this well in pretty much all facets, I don’t know that you’d believe me. You know what I mean? So, highly successful day and a fun one. All right, everyone. I will talk to you later. [Music]

Steelers kick off preseason with a win, defeating Jaguars 31-25.

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