Yahoo Sports Daily hosts Jason Fitz and Caroline Fenton discuss the Pittsburgh Steelers’ loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Thursday Night Football and why Mike Tomlin is to blame for not having his defense prepared. Watch the full episode of Yahoo Sports Daily on YouTube or YahooSports.TV.
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Video Transcript
Mike Tomlin was worried about the wrong things.
This game wasn’t about Joe Flacco.
Joe Flacco had a really good game.
That’s great.
We love quarterbacks.
He had a big game.
Fine.
Why did he have a big game?
Because the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defense sucks because the Pittsburgh Steelers defense was a liability.
In fact, I’ll credit Ross Tucker, who was on the radio broadcast as I was in the car at one point during the game.
And he said, as Jamar Chase was running wide open, he said, the problem here is the corners for the Steelers are too old and too slow to cover anybody man to man.
Jamar Chase’s open by 4 or 5 yards on every single route.
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How did they find Jamar?
They found Jamar because this Steelers defense was an abject disaster.
Maybe instead of worrying about Joe Flacco, they should have been worrying about what to do on their own defense to try and be able to better counter the best 1-2 or one of the best 1-2 wide for combinations in the league.
Joe Flacco had to take advantage of it.
I give all of the credit for that.
But the fact is, the problem with the Pittsburgh Steelers last night and the problem that is going to scare, should scare Steelers fans for the rest of the year has nothing to do with Joe Flacco and everything to do with the most expensive defense in the entire NFL laid that egg on Thursday night to that quarterback in that stadium.
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Like that is not the Pittsburgh Steelers, we’re used to.
If that’s the Steelers’ defense, we’re gonna try it out for the rest of the year, we finally got the definitive answer.
We’ve been asking on this show for two weeks.
Why does Vegas still believe in the Baltimore Ravens?
The real answer, maybe the real question should have been, why doesn’t Vegas believe in the Pittsburgh Steelers?
And as much as I’ve been saying it’s the schedule, what we learned last night is, it’s this defense.
If you bank on this Pittsburgh Steelers defense to win you a division, you’re gonna lose your money.