Tim Benz and Mark Madden return for this week’s edition of “Unfiltered” on TribLive’s Facebook page to talk about the Pittsburgh Steelers’ loss to the Buffalo Bills.
Benz and Madden discuss, or rather react, to the Steelers latest loss — this time 25-16 to the Buffalo Bills on Sunday night. This is the second loss in a row and drops them to 11-2 on the season.
Madden says the Steelers have gone from 11-0 to hopeless. He says that it had been building up in recent games, including the narrow wins over the Dallas Cowboys and Baltimore Ravens.
Madden thinks the team has hit rock bottom, or very close to that anyway. He says they have nothing going on offense, and thinks what they are doing on offense is based on all Ben Roethlisberger can do.
“It’s a flag-football offense. It has no running game. No physicality,” says Madden. ”They’ve taken out all the Matt Canada deception stuff. There’s no play-action. It’s a flag-football offense. And not even a good flag-football offense. And Ben can’t even throw, anymore.”
Madden says Roethlisberger can’t throw the deep ball and even his intermediary throws don’t have zip on them.
Madden says the interception at the end of the first half totally deflated the defense, who had fought hard to control the Bills.
Benz says that the Steelers have not been able to play complimentary football. The offense let the defense down, then the defense can’t make a stop to help the offense.
After starting the season so strongly, where does Roethlisberger’s comeback stand now? Benz feels that opposing teams in the beginning of the season didn’t believe what they were seeing, but now teams have figured out that the Steelers are not throwing deep or trying stretch the field, because they can’t.
The guys also talk about all the other woes on the offense and they’re not all Randy Fichtner’s fault.
Madden also slams Juju Smith-Schuster calling him a slightly about-average slot guy.
They also take some readers comments.
Watch the show here:
