Tuesday, October 19, 2004

That darn turf

It's official...Casey Hampton is out for the year with torn ligaments in his knee.

It's likely that the conventional wisdom will say that this is going to have a tremendous impact on the Steelers' defense. I disagree.

It will definitely have some impact on their run defense. However, the Steelers already have a more easily exploitable weakness: their pass coverage. Defending against the run is not as susceptible to individual breakdowns as is defending against the pass. If one man gets blocked, the man next to him or behind him can still make the play. However, when passing, the offense can be successful by winning a single man on man battle. Therefore, teams aren't suddenly going to change their game plans against the Steelers. They will continue to pass first and run second until the Steelers prove that strategy to be ineffective.

The real damage is that it is now more dangerous for the Steelers to fall behind late in games, because it's more likely that teams will be able to run out the clock. But as I said, defending the run is a team oriented skill, so the Steelers should be able to compensate somewhat.

posted by bkopec @ 5:04 PM   0 comments