Month: December 2018

Antonio Brown missed an important Week 17 game against the Bengals — and it may not have been because of an injury. Instead, the All-Pro wide receiver may have been held out of the game due to disciplinary issues that tie back to an increasingly volatile Steelers locker room.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writers Gerry Dulac and Ed Bouchette reported Monday Brown’s trip to the inactive list for what proved to be his team’s season finale wasn’t due to a balky knee like head coach Mike Tomlin told the press on Sunday. Instead, his absence was a disciplinary reaction that came after a week filled with missed team activities and an argument with an unnamed teammate.

While the Steelers were able to win without their star wideout, a sputtering offense made things much more difficult that expected against a spiraling Bengals team. While that gave Pittsburgh the victory it needed to stay alive in the playoff race, the Ravens’ nailbiting win over the Browns clinched the AFC North for Baltimore and all but eliminated the Steelers from playoff contention.

What did the reports say about Antonio Brown?

While Dulac and Bouchette don’t name who the confrontation was with, NFL Network scribe Aditi Kinkhabwala reported that multiple sources had told her Brown and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had “a little bit of a disagreement” during Wednesday’s practice. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler characterized the incident as Brown “going off” on a teammate, According to Mark Kaboly of The Athletic, Antonio Brown threw a ball towards Ben Roethlisberger before walking out of practice.

He did not attend practices the rest of the week, including Saturday’s walk-through practice, and skipped the Saturday night meeting at the team hotel. Brown never took the field for the start of the game against the Bengals and left Heinz Field at halftime, according to multiple sources.

From the Post-Gazette’s report:

Steelers receiver Antonio Brown did not play in the season-ending game against the Cincinnati Bengals because he elected to sit out practice last week after an unspecified heated dispute with a teammate, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has learned.

Several sources said the Steelers’ decision to not play Brown against the Bengals had nothing to do with any type of knee injury.

The disagreement occurred Wednesday morning during a routine walk-through practice that precedes their regular afternoon practice on the South Side. Brown became disgusted and threw a football in anger at one of his teammates, several sources said.

…

He did not attend Saturday’s walk-through practice and skipped the Saturday night meeting at the team hotel — the latest in missed meetings by the All-Pro receiver. Brown was never on the field for the start of the game against the Bengals and left Heinz Field at halftime, according to multiple sources.

Dulac and Bouchette’s report also suggested Brown showed up to the locker room on Sunday morning expecting to play, only to be shut down by Tomlin. This further annoyed teammates, who called Brown’s behavior “embarrassing” and “the worst I’ve seen.”

Offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner refused to discuss Brown’s absence after he missed Thursday’s team activities, an out-of-character response toward a player working through an injury, but a telling one for a healthy scratch from the mid-week practice. When Steelers officials were asked about potential discipline after Brown skipped Saturday’s walkthrough, they deflected those queries to Tomlin’s upcoming press conference.

This isn’t the first time discord leaked through the seams of the Steelers’ locker room in 2018

Pittsburgh has courted drama throughout the season, though much of it came as a function of Le’Veon Bell’s year-long holdout in hopes of a lucrative long term contract. Bell’s absence put a strain on the rest of one of the league’s most talented offenses. While second-year back James Conner was able to pick up much of the slack, the club still struggled early and then spun out late as a 9-6-1 season ended without a playoff berth.

But while Bell may have been the focus of Pittsburgh’s locker room drama, Brown also made his issues with the franchise known throughout the season. A slow start led the All-Pro wideout to vent his frustrations both on the field and off. He wasn’t shy about expressing his concerns about Fichtner’s playcalling to his face in a Week 2 loss to the Chiefs:

The following day, he’d take to Twitter to respond to a Steelers’ PR staffer’s praise of Ben Roethlisberger and his role in the team’s success. His since-deleted Tweet was succinct: “Trade me let’s find out”

Both Brown and his agent Drew Rosenhaus would deny Brown wanted to be traded out of Pittsburgh, but the wideout’s discontent was clear. He’d skip team meetings the following Monday, though those came with Tomlin’s blessing. He returned to practice the following Wednesday after dealing with private discipline from Tomlin and the rest of the Pittsburgh coaching staff.

What’s next for the Steelers and Brown?

When Brown was on the field, he was still an elite receiver. 2018 marked his sixth straight 1,200-yard season, and that kind of performance makes him difficult to trade away — especially for a team so reliant on a bludgeoning aerial attack. It also gives him a little more leeway when it comes to getting away with locker room shenanigans, like in 2017 when he gave the Patriots some bulletin board material by recording Tomlin talking about New England in the locker room after a Divisional Round victory over the Chiefs.

Despite these issues, Brown had a typically great season. He caught 104 passes for 1,297 yards and 15 touchdowns — the 15 touchdowns were a career high. The seven-time Pro Bowler also passed the 10,000 yard milestone for his career. Brown’s 168 targets on the season ranked third behind Julio Jones (170) and Davante Adams (169).

Brown’s concerns about not getting the ball may have been valid. While JuJu Smith-Schuster’s ascendance left him as the Steelers’ most productive receiver, Brown was still the No. 1 target who drew double teams and allowed his fellow receivers to thrive. That passing threat also created space for Conner to thrive in a breakout sophomore campaign; he ran for 973 yards and 12 touchdowns in 13 games while serving as the Pepsi to Bell’s Coke.

And Brown’s absence appeared to play a role in Pittsburgh’s sluggish start in Week 17. The Steelers faced the league’s worst defense in a deficient Bengals team, but managed to score just 16 points in the process. Without Brown on the field, Smith-Schuster was limited to just five catches and 37 yards — though he did score the game’s only offensive touchdown.

Was that a function of Cincinnati finding the extra space to double down on Pittsburgh’s playmakers without Brown on the field? Was it due to Brown’s behavior affecting the rest of the team’s desire to play, as one unnamed player suggested to the Post-Gazette? Or did the Bengals just play a little harder with the chance to derail a rival’s playoff hopes on the line?

No one’s quite sure. So far all we have are reports, and no one from the Steelers’ side of things — whether that’s players, coaches, or staffers — has come out to make an official statement on the matter. But what is clear is that Brown and the Steelers will likely have to work through some issues if they’re going to reconcile for a happy and prosperous 2019.

Stanford beat Pitt in the Sun Bowl on Monday. Even by Stanford standards, this was an exceptionally Stanford-like victory for these reasons:

• It occurred at the Sun Bowl. It’s not that Stanford’s synonymous with playing in this middling bowl game. The Cardinal hadn’t been here since 2009. But in four of the previous seven Sun Bowls, nobody had scored more than 30 points. The game’s also on CBS, which makes it hard to find on a bowl slate dominated by ESPN, and that’s perfect for a team that plays in the Pac-12 and thus almost never gets seen by millions on the East Coast. It was also the site of a 3-0 game involving this same Pitt program a decade ago. 3-0!
• The final score was 14-13.
• The game-winning touchdown was this picturesque beauty:

This thing went in the books as a 0-yard fumble recovery TD by Cameron Scarlett, the Stanford running back who played this game in place of the injured Bryce Love. That’s not wrong, but it does not quite do justice to what it really was: a Pitt tackle for loss (basically a sack, though it goes down as a rush for no gain) that magically morphed into a TD pass.

And that just goes to show why a running back should always carry out his fake on play-action, continuing toward the goal line even if he doesn’t have the ball: when you’re Stanford facing Pitt in the Sun Bowl, it’ll probably, randomly just bounce to you.

Most teams that play Oklahoma struggle at the outset, given how many weapons the Sooners have all open the field, the cleverness of their play designs, and the incomparable quickness of Kyler Murray. But in the Orange Bowl, OU was down 28-0 after 17 minutes. It turns out that’s plenty of cushion for a Nick Saban Bama team.

Alabama came into this contest with a carefully devised plan. Saban’s simplest solution to the spread offense is just to outscore it.

The Alabama defense was great early, but it ultimately couldn’t shut down the Heisman winner, who threw for 308 yards and ran for another 109, all of it efficiently, with three touchdowns. Even with star receiver Marquise “Hollywood” Brown hobbled and later yanked for ineffectiveness, the Sooners had plenty of places to spread the ball around, including Brown’s backup Charleston Rambo, who had three catches for 74 yards and a score.

Like most every other defense to face Oklahoma this year, even the vaunted Alabama DL eventually tired of battling Oklahoma’s massive, talented, and highly experienced offensive line only to come up empty trying to catch Murray in the backfield. Raekwon Davis was noticeably losing his composure late in the game, incurring a penalty after officials were slow to grant him a sack of Murray (which they ultimately did, questionably).

Oklahoma’s offense scored on all four of its second-half drives, with three TDs. That was OK, because Tua Tagovailoa was 24-of-27 with a passer rating of 237.

In recent years, Alabama’s shifted more and more toward spread offense. That transition was on full display against OU.

The big story of this season in Tuscaloosa was Alabama’s evolution towards a full-bore, RPO spread offense with Tagovailoa at the helm. The Tide had embraced RPOs during Lane Kiffin’s tenure as coordinator, and about midway through last year’s national title game, they started taking deep shot after deep shot with Tagovailoa.

The Tide have more and better talent to run the spread than most schools, but they’ve ultimately stayed ahead of the pack by beating teams like Oklahoma at their own game.

Take this Orange Bowl example:

This is the weak iso/glance RPO that spread teams across the country love. Alabama sniffed out a blitz before the snap. Tagovailoa punished single coverage with the quick skinny post, thrown directly behind two linebackers who got sucked in by run blocking. OU’s deep safety almost broke it up anyway, seeming to be well versed in Tagovailoa’s tendency to look at another pass option before coming back to his intended target. No dice this time.

Whenever Alabama needed yardage down the stretch, it went back to its RPO game against an OU defense fighting like mad to get Murray back on the field. But the Sooners only got two stops all night, not counting Alabama’s late kneel downs.

To put away the Sooners, Alabama did what Floyd Mayweather did to Conor McGregor in their 2017 boxing match.

After Mayweather built a secure scoring lead early in that bout, he simply wore down McGregor and evaded his punches until the MMA fighter’s energy was gone.

After Bama built a 28-0 lead in the second minute of the second quarter, the Tide worked in more double-tight end sets and overpowered the Sooners. From that fourth touchdown onward, Bama’s running backs carried 23 times for 156 yards, as Bama controlled the ball for about 22 and a half of the remaining minutes. Oklahoma only had the ball for about 21 and a half minutes after that — not much time to cut into a four-TD deficit.

The key with the double-TE personnel is that it negated a strategy that helped Oklahoma beat Texas in their rematch in the Big 12 title game. Against the Longhorns, the Sooners re-embraced a base 4-3 defense that brought former five-star linebacker Caleb Kelly back onto the field in favor of the various overmatched freshman DBs the Sooners had been asking to play nickel. OU they moved reliable CB Tre Norwood to strong safety to play behind Kelly, and used the LB to outnumber the run game. Meanwhile, free safety Robert Barnes played over the top on Texas’ most dangerous WR threat, Lil’Jordan Humphrey.

In that Big 12 game, Texas stayed in 11 personnel (one tight end, one back), which gave the Horns six blockers. But the Sooners were playing with seven defenders (four DL and all three LBs) in the box.

When Alabama played with two tight ends and a back, Oklahoma had to use a safety as an eighth box defender. The Sooners only had one reliable tackler left in their secondary. That would be Barnes, but Josh Jacobs knocked him out of the game while scoring Bama’s fourth TD:

Bama was three-wide on that play. But Barnes’ injury made it much harder to defend double-TE sets later on.

The Sooners didn’t have many answers to stop the Tide from controlling the clock with time-killing drives, and certainly not any answers that didn’t yield easy RPO slants for Tagovailoa to keep Alabama ahead on the scoreboard.

There’s little to do against an offense like Bama’s, but OU’s defensive struggles have probably cost the Sooners back-to-back championships.

Oklahoma’s had the country’s top offense by S&P+ the last two years, with two Heisman QBs leading it. But the Sooners were 101st on defense in 2017 and 89th this year. With even a top-50 defense, they’d have had a great chance to not lose two Playoff semifinals.

As long as Lincoln Riley is around, it’s reasonable to presume the Sooners will keep scoring. With Murray leaving, OU’s been loading up in recruiting. A five-star receiver and QB are on the way in 2019, along with several other blue-chips on both sides of the ball.

The problem is that they have a long ways to go in playing championship defense. The rest of college football is catching up to OU’s spread strategies on offense. OU could still stay far enough ahead on offense or make enough gains on defense to play in plenty more Playoffs. But it’s also plausible OU will look back on this stretch and wonder about a team that was only a decent — not even great — defense away from ending Saban’s dominion.