DK’s Live Shot: Postgame Steelers vs. Bengals

DK’s Live Shot: Postgame Steelers vs. Bengals

[Applause] Hey guys, don’t come here looking for excuses. We’ve got none. And for that matter, the gentleman downstairs had none really either. I’m Dan Kvachovic. He’s Chris Hack. We’re from DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is live shot of Steelers presented by FanDuel. Geez. Bengals 33, Steelers 31. All I said all week that I wanted was 30 points out of the offense. You got it. I got one plus and it just didn’t matter because that defense was just I I brutal, abysmal. I I don’t know. Dispassionate. I I don’t know what that was, Chris. I don’t either. Uh 470 yards that defense gave up. Uh and it wasn’t just through the air. Yes, they they let Jamar Chase go absolutely bananas. I think he had 16 catches, had a touchdown, but it was just it was just Chinese water torture all night long. Just the end breakers over and over and over again. And when it wasn’t Jamar Chase, it was T. Higgins. And then there was the really big bomb to um I can I can never say his last name. Uh number 80. I I know who you are, guy. I I promise. And then Chase Brown. Like they just let let they just they couldn’t stop the run. Like I see Chase Brown is where I draw the line. Yeah. And and here’s what I mean. But when I say that, I’ll give Jamar Chase and T. Higgins every bit of credit, not only for their performance out here tonight. Yeah. But also for who they are in general. It’s the best receiving tandem in the NFL. We’re not saying that now. We’ve said it all week long. Chase might be the best wide receiver in the NFL. We’re not saying that now. We’ve said it all week long. This is who they are. When you have a reliable, dependable, super intelligent guy at quarterback like Joe Flacco, you can make this work provided. What could the Steelers have done? Let’s get real here because you know and I know that all of this everything is going to be Terrell Austin this, Mike Tomlin that. And maybe it should be, but what could have been done? Well, what could have been done was number one, they could have Okay, I I go back to when they played Justin Jefferson and played Minnesota. Yes, Justin Jefferson, you look at what he did statistically, yes, he had a great game, but did he take over the game? No. Nope. They put a lid on his impact in the game. It wasn’t just pervasive and over and over and over again. That’s what happened with Jamar. They Jamar took over that game and they had a quarterback in Joe Flacco who can get him the ball. I I do think the scheme and the game plan was a big part of it and this is why I stressed the whole Thursday night thing leading up to this game is because Mike Tomlin has his way of doing things. We know that he’s been stubborn about that for years. I also think that he needs at least a week to prepare for an opponent because when you look at his record, when he plays on a regular week or when he has a buy, he’s phenomenal. But whenever you take it and you have to put an abbreviated version of it, he doesn’t win football games on the road against the AFC North. He just does it. And so the game plan was exposed. Joe Flacco was getting rid of the ball left and right as soon as he got it. There was no room. There was no time for the Blitz to get back there. No, there was there was no impact that on anything that anybody was doing. The only way in in my view at the risk of oversimplifying things that you could have done anything about Chase is if you had just gimmicked him. Yeah. You know, if you had just said, you know what, we’re going to let T. Higgins beat us. We’re going to let number 80, whoever he is, beat us. Uh we’re not letting Shiovat I I can never say his name. Whatever. We won’t need to know it again for another month. What you couldn’t do is just let the same same individual beat you. And as it became apparently and more painfully obvious over the course of the game, you also saw that it was a lot of the same routes and the same plays after slant and there was nothing anybody could do about it. The edge rushers for the Steelers were ineffective. But you know and I know that if they had done this thing that I just described that they would have just done the same thing with Higgins. In fact, they would have just eaten with Higgins all day. I asked Joey Porter after the game, uh, in part based on, you know, what you just heard from Chris here about Justin Jefferson. Every time they faced an opponent this year, they had one, you know, really, really good or elite receiver. That wasn’t the case here. I asked Joey if that’s, you know, a problem. different challenge for you guys when you’re facing, you know, two guys of that caliber as opposed to just one which has been faced most of the year. No, not really. I mean, we got the guys to do it. They just got to let us play. What do you mean by that? The I mean, I I wasn’t a big fan of the calls today with the with the officiating, but it is what it is. It’s football. Now, he said, Chris, as you just heard, we have the people, do they? I mean, that’s what they brought Jaylen Ramsay and Darius Slay in for. That is exactly what they did. That was the whole plan. And it wasn’t the people. Yes. It the coverage people. Yeah. Because it’s not like listen, it’s very very clear that Mike Tomlin likes to build his team with the intention of not just playing the AFC North, but it impacts a lot of who they add to the roster of having to play the Ravens twice, having to play the Bengals twice. It should. Yes, it should. When they got this group together in the secondary, this is the team that they were thinking of. This was the team so that they could just say, “We can line up manto man and we can just cover them all night long.” That’s what happened. And I was with Jaylen Ramsay after the game and I mean he he he acknowledges he’s like listen this like he’s presented with this like is this frustrating to be like one of these guys who’s brought in to try to shut these guys down and his response was uh yeah extremely extremely just I I keep repeating myself but same day have to play better when the opportunity is there. Joey said he wasn’t getting much explanation on the calls on the flags that you have calls. Don’t worry about that. We have to play better starting with myself when the opportunity presents itself. That’s part of the game. You have receivers that are superstars in the league. You know that they get away with like that. It is what it is. Next play. Got to play the game. You got to execute when you get the opportunity to execute. You know, one thing about mentioning officiating is you can do that and still acknowledge that you weren’t good enough. You can do both of those things. Saying something bad about the refs doesn’t mean you’re blaming your performance on them. It’s just, you know, and I know that’s the way a lot of conversation goes right now. Everything is either all the way black or all the way white. Yeah. Uh these guys I heard you heard uh you know Joey didn’t like the calls he was he was flagged twice. I really didn’t like one of them. Oh the one over the middle. One over the middle. He he was apoplelectic over that one. He just basically got a little piece of the guy. Even the other one he got his head around. So like I didn’t like either call. He got his head around and then the referee who was right there with him thought it was fine. The one who was 30 yards away down by the line of scrimmage was the one who threw the flag. And as Joey pointed out to me, only after he heard the crowd go. So I that’s not that’s not great officiating. That’s also not why the secondary was bad. The secondary was bad because it was bad. The defense was bad. Yeah. Because it was bad. Uh we’ve we’ve talked about schematics. We’ve talked about coaching. We’ve talked about the short week. Make some plays, man. What was that? Yeah. Who were those people? The the the Bengals had, let’s get real here, okay? The Bengals had the lowest ranked rushing offense in the National Football League. Chase Brown had, I think, 202 yards total on the season entering this game. He was averaging 2.7 something in that range. Ridiculously bad. Yeah. And and and then he does that. Yeah. And and this is why I know there were a couple of interceptions and they didn’t look good. And by the way, DK Metaf stopped running on the one. Stop. Don’t don’t go blaming Aaron Rogers for that. Just because they didn’t show it on TV doesn’t mean a thing. Yeah. No. No. Neither neither interception. And nobody’s going to want to hear that. I don’t care. Uh but neither 31 points. You should win the game. Yeah. And neither interception was on was it on Aaron Rogers. But the fact of the matter is they turn the ball over twice. It doesn’t matter who’s responsible for it. The offense turned the ball over twice. And that defense hasn’t taken the ball away since TJ Watt picked off Carson Wentz in Dublin. So they didn’t come close, Chris. This wasn’t even like against the Browns where they had all those near picks. They weren’t even in the solar system of of making a splash play. None of them. And you know to I know people don’t want to hear Mike Tomlin make sense right now, but he made a lot of sense in saying when you’re minus two in turnover in the turnover game on the road, you’re not going to win a lot of football games. And give me a break. That’s him protecting his defense. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Trust me, trust me. Okay, that there’s merit to that, but it does not make an excuse for that defense’s performance cuz it was bad from the players perspective. It was bad from the coach’s perspective. I actually am more on the coaching side of this than the players side of this. We We saw this against the Seahawks. The Seahawks, they ran inbreakers with nobody over the middle. What did we just watch tonight? Yeah, it was the same. It was inbreakers. Yeah, except with the Bengals. The Bengals had two guys and the Seahawks just had Jackson Smith and the Jigma. Yeah. No, but that that’s the problem. And that that makes me think, okay, well, first off, now teams know how to attack you. And until you do something different. This is how they’re going to attack you. This is how when the when the Bengals come to Pittsburgh in a month, expect that same game plan. That’s exactly what they’re going to try to do. And understand that when we’re talking about plans and schemes, I’m going to keep doing this. I’m going to keep boomeranging through this entire episode back to the fact that the players also were really lousy. This was a universally poor defensive performance by the coaches and by the players. And if you don’t buy that, go watch some of those runs that Chase Brown had. Watch how easily he got through the line. Watch how easily he was able to break tackles, spin out of tackles. This guy’s a total I mean I’m just gonna say it total nobody. He’s he’s like nobody in this league. Okay. When you’re when you when you’re dead last in the league, you’re dead last for a reason. And he hasn’t been able to do anything like that. Yeah. Against anybody else. That’s on your players. Okay. And those players, I’m going to hear going to tell you right now, took responsibility for that. Patrick Queen just said, “We’ve got we’ve got no excuses for how that went.” Uh, Alex, Alex Heismith, I asked him afterward, just what what has to happen to get your run defense, this was a regression. What has to happen to get your run defense back to where it was even just last week? What does it take to stop the run? I mean, you guys got to that point obviously in Ireland, you know, in last week. Yeah. I mean, you just got to I mean, specifically, I mean, like you said, this this looked like something just got to be more physical. um get off blocks and so um you know that’s that’s where it starts. You just got to play physical and uh get off blocks and make tackles. So yeah, what do you do with it? What do you do with it? Do you do you like do you get caught up in the outcome? I don’t know that the outcome is super crazy significant. The fact of the matter is and we talked about this this week as well. Everybody loses one of these. I mean it’s just true. I mean, shoot. Last week, I mean, okay, talk about the short week thing. This happened last week on on Thursday Night Football, too. The Giants panced the Eagles 34 to 17. You brought that up yesterday. I mean, this this kind of stuff can happen on a short week. And I think maybe that’s why Tomlin doesn’t deviate from the whole like what he does just to try to win a Thursday night game. I think he’s fine just being like, if we lose this one, it’s okay because it’s just one of 17. I’m not saying he’s fine with losing games. Tomlin, of all the people in the world that want to win, he’s right up there with the guys who want to win the most. But there’s obviously something about the way this team approaches it. But either way, that’s still a game you should have won. Regardless of the situation, regardless of what day you’re playing this game, it’s a game you should have won. You almost did. I’ll keep sticking to the defense here. Uh the defense has to find a way back onto the same ladder that it had been to be fair here climbing for three weeks. They were the best defense in the league. You saw something and you heard uh you know people who who have been a lifetime in football analysts and so forth around the sport beginning to say, “Whoa, what is that? What’s going on in Pittsburgh? Whoa.” Okay, it wasn’t just us. Okay. Uh, a lot of people lost a lot of money here, you know. Yeah. It’s that time of year, you know. And it’s it’s really really interesting to see where the team goes from here because now they’re going to have a mini buy. They typically do well. Again, we talked about the preparation thing. They typically do pretty well coming out of coming out of a mini buy, but the schedule gets pretty tough from here on out. They got the Packers at home. They got the Colts at home. And I think right after that they have to go to LA and play the Chargers on Sunday Night Football. So these next three games we’re talking about a 4-2 team that could be 7-2. Mhm. Or four and five. Yeah. I It’s It’s a really important stretch here. Exactly. We’ll be right back after this quick message. At DK Pittsburgh Sports, we take pride in coverage that connects our city’s fans to their favorite teams. Now that connection’s stronger than ever. Introducing our all-new state-of-the-art app. Find expert inside reporting and original podcasts. Check live box scores. Track the latest stats. Chat it up with our community of thousands of fans all in one place. The new app from DK Pittsburgh Sports. Coverage that connects. Guys, football season is here and it is time to check on the latest odds, futures, and win totals on the FanDuel sports book. As I mentioned, this this was one of those pivotal moments in I’m sure FanDuel history. Think the Steelers are headed to the Super Bowl still after this defensive myasma here. Lock in your bets today. Whatever your game, the FanDuel sports book delivers the latest lines, futures, and specials so that you can join in on all the action. Chris, the Steelers get three days off now because of the the NFL’s bylaws and so forth. I’m sure Tomlin would love to have them right back in the lab, so to speak, but that’s not going to happen. They’re not going to congregate again until Monday and then get ready for a home game against the Packers, who are so much better than these Bengals. That is I don’t even know how to I’m not even going to know what to do with that game. Well, the thing is that like I I I officially did pick the Steelers to win this game, but I had so much within me to pick the Bengals and I went against my better judgment, but because of the Thursday thing. Yes. Okay. I I’m telling what the numbers don’t lie when you talk about the different ways they’ve lost these games. I hear you. different. I mean, it’s it’s either Jameus Winston in a snowstorm or it’s weird CO stuff or it’s or it’s stuff like this where Jamar Chase catches 16 balls and goes off on you or it’s just it’s always something in these games. The Bengals head. This is what I’ve been looking for here. 470 yards. Oh, yeah. I could have told you that. Yeah. Of total. Oh, you’ve already committed that to memory. 47 470 of which Joe Flacco counted for 344 I believe it is. What are you watching this for? What What do you think we’re going to share with you that’s going to say, “Oh, yeah. Now that explains it.” No, man. This was This was just dumb. This was dumb. Every team has one. It’s how you bounce back from it, I believe, that defines you. Well, and and the good thing for the Steelers, I’m not trying to, you know, be all sunshine and rainbows after a game like this, but they are typically good coming out of coming out of a mini mini buy. Not quite as good as the 15 and four out of a real by week, but they typically play these games pretty well. It’s a good team, but it’s at home. It’s in prime time. this. It’s a great opportunity to bounce back and get a muchneeded win to get rolling back in the right direction. We will be back with you on um Monday. Monday. That’s right. Because we’re not doing a double shot Friday because we’re going to be commuting back home behind all these sad people that are driving across uh I7 to get back to Pittsburgh. There weren’t many Pittsburgh fans here. No, there were not. It was It was a They really protected their house here. It was a good night to be the Cincinnati Bengals. It really was. No, seriously, it was because now they’re I mean, they’re three and four. Oh, yeah. They’re a game and a half behind the Steelers now. They’re they’re Their their season wasn’t just saved. It was totally resuscitated. Yeah. So, anyway, bye. [Applause]

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