The Steelers Are Old, Disagreeable, and WINNING

Brown Steelers, Steelers 27, Brown 6. You talk to Patrick Queen in the locker room, Albert, about the vibe here. It just seems immaculate. And this just goes to show how poorly I can be or anyone else can be at projecting this. In my mind, it's Mike McCarthy taking over a veteran roster of guys who loved Mike Tomlin. Aaron Rodgers coming in and maybe being fully immobile. at 43. And, you know, TJ Watt entering, I think, is age 34 season. Cam Hayward entering, I think, is age 37 or 38 season. You know, this is an old team. What if it breaks down and combusts? None of that's happened. And they delivered an absolute whooping on Cleveland. And I watched this game from start to finish, Albert. And the Steelers left a lot of points on the board. I mean, this should have been this should have been like a 42-7 game for the Steelers. Yeah. And, and I think like, again, like the Steelers are probably going to be walking the health tightrope the rest of the year. And we've talked about that because of their age. Right. Like, but I love like, so I, this is why, and this is why I want to talk to Patrick Queen after the game, because I've noticed this, like, again, like I think I used the Clint Eastwood reference last week, right? Like the Clint Eastwood and now Camino vibe to the team, to the entire team. Right. Um, and I've, I've said that with, I've, I'm, I'm overusing that now. Cause I used it on Todd Monken too. So there's gotta be a statute of limitations on me using that. But there is like that feeling to the locker room where it's like, they just, they're too old to care what anyone thinks. And so like, you remember like Aaron Rogers and Mike McCarthy had the on-field confrontation. Then I think Rogers like question play calling. And then Jalen Ramsey came out the next week and he said that there was like a disconnect between the locker room and the coaching staff. And with probably 31 to 32 teams, it would be like, holy crap, what's going on there? And it doesn't exist with the Steelers. And I think the reason why, and this is from my own wisdom, getting older is when you get older, you stop like with the pleasantries and you start like becoming more direct with people and you start becoming like, you know what? The fastest way for me to deal with this problem is to confront it. Yeah. And if I, if I dance around it for the next three weeks, it's not getting solved. It's like, let's just talk about it. And then you start to do that enough. And then maybe publicly you're okay talking about things that way. And I think that's where all these guys are. And this, this quote from a queen, um, I, I said it like really seems like it, like no one cares about hurt feelings there and it's working for you guys. And he answered, yeah, it definitely is. I think it's because everybody has the same end goal and has to hold the trophy up. And once you go through things so many times, you're not trying to go into this insanity. You're just trying to find a new way to do things. And we understand with all the alphas in here, nobody's selfish. So that's the biggest thing. Even with all the alphas we got, We got no. no one's selfish. Everybody wants to win and everybody understands how we got to win. And so like it was that. And then he said like on Friday, Patrick Graham, their defensive coordinator, basically said to them, we ain't changing anything. These are your roles. This is the way we're doing it. It's like, we're good. And it's just like this direct. And I think it's permeated by the McCarthy-Rogers relationship, right? Now, follow me with my logic here. I think that permeates it, right? It's like, okay, these two guys are like a married couple. They've been together for so long, and they have so much background with each other that they drop everything as far as any sort of manners or whatever, and they just talk directly to each other. And I, I actually think like. It's working for them in a very big way. They're six and two. They're all alone in first. It's funny. I don't think any of us would have guessed that that would be the case. It's funny because I have a dear friend and. The communication between him and his wife is hysterical. I love being around them. Yeah. And, you know, he'll say something like, you know, we'll all be FaceTiming one another like all of our buddies from high school. And, you know, the wife will walk by and she'll say, like, you see how dumb my husband's new glasses are? And then he'll say, like, oh, you know, my wife's just mad because she thinks she looks fat in that dress, you know? And then, but it's just. And they love each other like no tomorrow. You know what I mean? And they've gotten each other through these incredible life situations together. And, you know, when you first you hear it and you're like, oh, my God. But then behind it is like a freedom to be just totally direct. And Mike McCarthy and Aaron are the same thing. How many how many play callers and established Super Bowl winning head coaches would bench a guy? Who was MFing him on the headset because he didn't get a play call in. And, you know, he did that. McCarthy did that to Rodgers. And then the camera goes back to McCarthy and he calls him a ******* asshole. Like on the sidelines. You saw it. He's like, ******* asshole. You know, and but maybe maybe it's OK. Like, it's just like. It's totally okay. Marrying into an Italian family has led me to believe that this is possible. I remember when the Richie Incognito thing happened, right? Which I thought was like the Richie Incognito Jonathan Martin thing, I thought was largely garbage. I think it was like, did they go overboard? Maybe. But I thought in actuality, it's something that probably should have been handled just in the locker room, you know? And it became a big thing. And I remember thinking to myself, oh, my God, if anybody saw my text messages with my friends or got into like the fantasy football draft chat, like with my college friends, or like saw what me and my high school friends said to each other or what our high school coach used to say to us, like we'd all be in huge trouble. But there's a way like if you've got good relationships with people. There's a trust that you have that you can talk to them a certain way that you wouldn't talk to other people, right? Like, it's just, it's a directness and it's a, and I think I'm starting, like you start to see with the Steelers, with so many veteran guys in that locker room. You know, T.J. Watt, Cam Hayward, go down the list. Alex Highsmith's now a vet. Patrick Wayne, Jalen Ramsey, D.K. Metcalf, Aaron Rodgers, Rico Dowdle, Jalen Warren, Pat Friermuth is getting older now. All of these guys that have been in the league for so long, and there's no need to coddle anyone. And yeah, I think it's a cool thing. And I can't wait for their next game. They got to buy. And then they go to Cincinnati to play on Sunday night after the Bengals get back from Spain, which is kind of an interesting schedule in Cork. One team's coming off a buy. Another team's coming back from Madrid. Yeah. I mean, that sets up for the Steelers to be relevant for some time and maybe deliver back to back signature wins on the Brown side of this. I'm just going to pound my chest a little bit in my dream trades column. I just said, go get Spencer Rattler as a backup, as a backup. Um, because Deshaun's going to start turning the ball over because he has a high rate of turnover worthy plays. He's going to start turning the ball over. He takes a lot of sacks. He's probably going to get hurt because he's been hurt for most of the last decade. Everyone's, oh my God, you're just trying to rain on our parade. We're five and two. Finally, we fixed everything. Fine. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Deshaun Watson has taken eight sacks twice this season. He's the only quarterback to get sacked eight times in a season, and he's done it twice already this year. The other was the bad weather game against the Jets, but this one was just, you know, he was seeing ghosts downfield. I think pretty early on you could see Munkin just convert and say let's put the top up on the convertible and just go straight into our run, basically our zone read, our run stuff. Let's kind of take the ball out of Deshaun's hands right now because he can't handle it. But like, this is why I was pushing them so hard to get a quarterback because the Browns believe that this season was about setting up this young core, Schlesinger and Boston and Concepcion and Mason Graham. Like they have undoubtedly great players. So go show them that they're great. You know what I mean? Go get, go get a serviceable. Joe Flacco type player and at least get that guy in there because when Deshaun, when the, when the floor falls out on this thing, all you have is Shadur Sanders. And he was so bad that you didn't want to entertain the idea of starting him in the first place. Am I, am I crazy about this? I know I keep bringing it up. I think it's hard to integrate. I think it's hard to integrate a quarterback on the fly like that. I could see if it was maybe Flacco. I don't know that you're going to get a higher level of play than you've got out of Deshaun. And I understand what you're saying. It hasn't been perfect, but he's played well down the stretch of a lot of these games. He's had good two minutes, but he's still like the 28th best quarterback in the NFL. Don't you also think like... I don't know. I mean, you were talking about noise with Lamar. If you do that, you're inviting like the whole Pandora's box opening back up again, where this thing seems to finally be settled to some degree. And like they can go and have like a relatively normal football season now the rest of the way. And if you do that now, you're sort of opening the conversation back up, you know, I, I don't know. I mean, but like, I mean, I don't know. I, I, I, I, at this point I think like, I'm not against adding depth, like the Spencer Rattler thing is not a horrible idea. I, I, I also think like the, you know, the, the makeup of your team and where you're at, like I, and he took eight sacks yesterday. So like, there's no defending that his numbers look better than he played. No question. Right. Like his numbers actually look okay. Um, But you got the Saints next, you got the Texans, then you got your bye. The schedule is relatively manageable the rest of the way. It's not horrible. I mean, you got the Giants at the end of the year. We'll see where they're at. The Ravens potentially without Lamar. The Colts are on there. The Raiders. I think you're okay staying the course here. Now, if we're going to have a bigger picture conversation about where they are at quarterback going forward, that's different. And obviously all these things are part of that equation. So since week five, there's been 15 quarterbacks who have played at least 130 snaps. Okay. Deshaun Watson is... Wait, that's Ed? Let's see here. There are only 15 quarterbacks who played 130 snaps this win? Since week five. Okay. So there's bi-weeks involved. There's injuries involved. Oh, all right. Okay. I got you. I got you. You know, all that kind of stuff. But I'm just trying to zero in on the last three weeks of like regular established starters. I'll even bump it down to, let's say, 75. I need to get your analytics tool there, whatever you're using. What's that? I need to get your analytics tool, whatever you're using there, to boil that down. You got good filters there. I have great filters. Okay. So, all right. I bumped it up to 75 snaps, and then we have 32. So, we have a full sample size of quarterbacks over the last five weeks. Okay. Sean Watson is 28. In EPA per play, the only quarterbacks who were worse, Tanner McKee, Daniel Jones, Justin Herbert, and Bryce Young's had a bad couple of weeks. Justin Herbert. Yeah, we'll get to that. He is, let's see, 24th in success rate. Again, it's Tanner McKee. It's Jalen Daniels. It's Justin Herbert. You know, completion percentage over expectation. Thank He's middle of the road. Okay. This is, you know, I don't know, because on one hand, it was, if the Browns are really into this, the idea of this season, don't waste it. You were in first place, you know, I don't know. I don't know who's available. I think that's part of the conversation too. you.