This has fans FIRED up... | Pittsburgh Steelers News

After a demoralizing loss to the New England Patriots yesterday, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy got out in front of the stand today and said some interesting things, to say the least. They have a lot of Steelers fans, myself included, really, really fired up. Hopefully you guys are having a good day today. Like I mentioned, Mike McCarthy had a lot of quotes today that came out. Some of them not making a lot of sense. Some of them that do make sense, kind of hitting the nail on the head a little too much. I'll explain what I mean by that here really, really quick. But before we hop into all of that, subscribe to Steelers Digest. Get all of your Steelers news with Joey Porter Jr., with anything Mike McCarthy says. If this team can right the ship and get it going in the right direction again. I know it's just week two, but yesterday was rough. But yeah, make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell as well. Mike McCarthy did have a quote about Joey Porter Jr. You can read it here, regarding a back flare up. But honestly, all that Joey Porter stuff, at least for today, go check out Nick's video. Came out yesterday. He kind of dives more into some of the things that Mike McCarthy said about Joey Porter Jr. on Monday. And that entire video kind of surrounds I'll let Nick do all the speaking there for me when it comes to that. But this is the first quote that I'm kind of talking about here from Mike McCarthy about some of the things. I just don't know what some of these quotes really are trying to get at. But Mike McCarthy says the Steelers have to clean up our own house with some of the mental mistakes that the team made this week. McCarthy says that he feels they made strides defensively and on special teams. Offensively, McCarthy says pass protection was the biggest issue he saw on tape. Mike, if you watched my video yesterday, I thought the offensive line was the worst part about the offense. And that's saying a whole lot. Mike McCarthy here agrees. So we're kind of in line with that. But clean up our own house with all the mental mistakes. There was a lot of mental mistakes, Mike. Hopefully you can figure a lot of those out. But yeah, there's hopefully this kind of going in the right direction here if McCarthy can really get that going there. He also continued on. He was talking about kind of the talent around the team. He doesn't believe the Steelers have a talent issue. I happen to agree. How talented is this team? Defensively, that speaks for itself. Highest paid defense for a reason. Offensively, the pieces are there for it to be better than it actually is. The offensive line is talented, at least when they were coming into the league because a lot of them are young. Trifatanu, Mason McCormick, Zach Frazier. Those guys are talented. The offensive line is not working. D.K. Metcalf, one of the most physically talented wide receivers I argue we've ever seen in the entire history of the league. He can't do a thing right now, at least for two weeks. Bring in Michael Pittman Jr., bring in Enrico Dado, it's not working. So the talent part of it is not the problem there. It's what I'm trying to get at, but obviously it's not working out. He said, if I believed that, we would be doing things differently. Again, Mike McCarthy also talking about practice, their struggles in practice last week and improving from that. Less volume, more creativity, the temperatures were up, it wasn't a clean Wednesday and Thursday. You love to hear that. So obviously, Mike McCarthy probably had a decent idea of what the team was going to look like yesterday off that. It's a first year program, first year staff, the veteran players have been exceptional. We're still trying to pull the young guys along too. I think this in a way is, I understand, obviously, again, this is week two with new head coach, new offensive coordinator, new defensive coordinator, so many new players. Is it a major surprise that they look this bad? I still think yes, because I think week one is one different thing, but then that practice from week one to week two, that's a really important practice because you really got to start figuring stuff out here. And they had a really bad week of practice, at least according to Mike McCarthy. Again, week two, you think you have time. They got the Cincinnati Bengals. They are this upcoming week and they are dogs in that game. They're underdogs in that game. You mess around and you're going to the Browns. The Browns aren't great, but neither are you. All that to say, this team's got to get going here. We got to start rolling the ball, get that snowball going of momentum of anything. And that wasn't there between week one and week two. Hopefully it is between week two and week three, but we'll have to see. I don't know what Mike McCarthy can say to really get this team going. It's early, but it's also not early, is really what I'm trying to say. And he did have a lot of quotes on the offensive line. Again, he mentioned it at the first quote I had there about how the offensive line was kind of the biggest issue with the offense, with the team. Mike McCarthy summed up a lot of the lines issues to a lack of chemistry since they've tried so many different combinations together in the summer. This frustrates me to no end. The different combinations, I know you have a lot of young guys, younger guys. Let me backtrack. I'm getting frustrated here. Troy Fatanu, you've moved him all over the offensive line, both sides, right? Both tackles. And now he has a home and left tackle, left tackle. Mason Cormick, he's playing the same position. Zach Fraser is playing in the same position. You're starting Spencer Anderson, who has very limited starting time. And the same thing with Dylan Cook. And I understand trying different combinations because you don't know where these players are going to fit best. That's not how you create this chemistry that he's talking about here with an offensive line. That's just not how you do that. So no wonder that it looked as poor as it did yesterday. He also said that he doesn't see any rust on Troy Fatanu and Mason Cormick moving from the right to the left. He doesn't think that move is why they've struggled. I wonder why they've struggled then, Mike, if it's not that. But again, just the whole offensive line is just no cohesion right now at all. And then this quote kind of highlights what I just said. Mike McCarthy says the offensive line hasn't had a lot of continuity this summer. Kind of going on from earlier, a lot of different switching over, a lot of, I mean, you lost Isaac Siamalu, you're right, one of your best offensive linemen just in general. But a lot of those guys were on the team last year. I know Troy Fatanu has dealt with his injuries, but more, and then even Spencer Anderson, who wasn't a starter, same with Dylan Cook, they were on the team last year. But not a lot of continuity. And we saw that on tape. We have to take a hard look at this. We're concept driven as to what we scheme and install. We'll take a harder look at that. And then kind of the last thing here, again, it's just a barrage of quotes from Mike McCarthy. It's kind of really the only news we have for today is from what he said, minus the Joey Porter stuff. Again, go check out the next video on that. But Mike McCarthy says he's built the offense and to play to his strengths. Interesting quote. Obviously, the basis of this is not surprising. You have a 42, 43-year-old quarterback. He's above 40, at least, whatever the exact number is. Obviously, you're going to want to play to his experience. He has the most experience, nearly out of any player in the entire league right now, if not the most experience. And you want to play to his strengths. If his strengths are still airing the ball out, which I know he can't do it as consistently as he was able to when he was younger, he still can do it. Even in week one, yes, they were completed, but he was making throws that were kind of vintage Aaron Rodgers in a lot of ways, that kind of came out of the blue almost in a way. It's like, oh my gosh, he can make that throw, and he can. But that wasn't really tried this past game at all. They barely tried to move the ball downfield. I know there's other issues hampering that, but this is the key to the offense here, Aaron Rodgers, and you have to build around him. Obviously, he's the quarterback, and try to keep him healthy and try to keep him upright and give him good receivers that are dependable. None of that that I've said has Aaron Rodgers really had two weeks through the season. So a lot's really going to have to change here for Rodgers and McCarthy and just the entire Steelers offense. But we'll end here. Kind of a comment on the Michael Pittman injury. We didn't see Michael Pittman Jr. week two. Saul Roman Wilson, Saul Jeremy Menard. I think those two had a combined nine catches between both of them. So that was nice to see that we tried to spread the ball around, I suppose. A lot of the Roman Wilson catches came later in the game. Jeremy Menard's catches only came in one drive, but nonetheless. Michael McCarthy says, Michael Pittman Jr.'s foot injury is not the same injury that he suffered during train camp. That's not great. So he sounds like he re-aggravated it. McCarthy says, Pittman has taken some positive steps forwards on that, but he's still unsure if he'll be able to suit up against the Bengals. Not great. Not really great at all. Especially bringing Michael Pittman Jr. to be a veteran alongside DK Metcalf to bring another element to kind of like a big slot receiver. That's how I viewed him as. It's hard to see what the Steelers are going to use him as because we've barely seen him. I thought they were going to play him more as a slot receiver, and I think that would play well to Aaron Rodgers and his strengths, talking about that quote that we just had. But I don't know if we'll see him against the Bengals. And speaking of that Bengals game, that's going to be an interesting one for sure. Because the Bengals are playing like one of the best teams in the entire league. So all of these quotes together, the Steelers, they can see that at least Michael McCarthy sees the problem. Will he be able to fix it? That we will have to learn next week. But that's going to do it for everything that I have today, this barrage of quotes. I know not the most fun, but this is really kind of the news that we got today. So hopefully you guys have a great rest of your day. See you guys very, very soon with more Steelers news.