polamalubeast
08-29-2016, 11:20 AM
With a championship-caliber offense, the Steelers are working to rise to that high level on the other side of the ball.
Mike Tomlin, Kevin Colbert and the rest of them with their hands in the machinery have no way to judge the outcome yet, no idea if the whole thing will work.
Tearing down a great NFL defense and rebuilding it into another of championship form ranks among the most difficult tasks in football. The Steelers have done it twice since they first started winning Super Bowls. They find themselves in the midst of trying to do it a third time.
As Sid Thrift said not long after he was hired as general manager to turn around a 104-loss Pirates team, “It ain’t easy resurrecting the dead.”
You do it piece by piece, first removing the one time great players and replacing them with new ones. It can go by fits and starts, the way it did in the 1980s after they dismantled the Steel Curtain. That “transition” dragged into the 1990s before the Blitzburgh defense would carry the day.
When that defense faded, the wait did not take as long for a new and even better one to rule through a decade of the 21st century. And now here we are, following the painful removal of more great players — Troy Polamalu, Casey Hampton, Aaron Smith, Joey Porter, James Farrior, Ike Taylor, et al. The Steelers find themselves in the middle of a transition that has seen their defensive rankings tumble from No. 1 in the NFL in 2012 to No. 13, to No. 18 and then to last season’s No. 21.
read more
http://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/steelers/2016-preview/rebuilding-a-defense/
Mike Tomlin, Kevin Colbert and the rest of them with their hands in the machinery have no way to judge the outcome yet, no idea if the whole thing will work.
Tearing down a great NFL defense and rebuilding it into another of championship form ranks among the most difficult tasks in football. The Steelers have done it twice since they first started winning Super Bowls. They find themselves in the midst of trying to do it a third time.
As Sid Thrift said not long after he was hired as general manager to turn around a 104-loss Pirates team, “It ain’t easy resurrecting the dead.”
You do it piece by piece, first removing the one time great players and replacing them with new ones. It can go by fits and starts, the way it did in the 1980s after they dismantled the Steel Curtain. That “transition” dragged into the 1990s before the Blitzburgh defense would carry the day.
When that defense faded, the wait did not take as long for a new and even better one to rule through a decade of the 21st century. And now here we are, following the painful removal of more great players — Troy Polamalu, Casey Hampton, Aaron Smith, Joey Porter, James Farrior, Ike Taylor, et al. The Steelers find themselves in the middle of a transition that has seen their defensive rankings tumble from No. 1 in the NFL in 2012 to No. 13, to No. 18 and then to last season’s No. 21.
read more
http://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/steelers/2016-preview/rebuilding-a-defense/