Todd Haley lost us this game.

[Mojouw]

At that stage, if the Steelers are up by three possessions, it's a different game and that would have been a pretty tall order for McCarron to step up to...not sure he would have been able to do it there. I didn't have a problem with Tomlin going for it in this instance.

Exactly. Say what you want about Tomlin, but there is one aspect he has improved on. He aggressively attempts to put teams away. He goes for 2, 4th down calls, deep balls, etc. Tomlin's calls do NOT always pay off, but he does try to bury teams as soon as he can in a g.ame. Rather that than "play it safe" and let teams hang around

[SteelerFanInStl]

I thought Ben called about 50% of the plays himself. Does his plays always work and Haley's plays always fail?

They're both known to do stupid things at times.

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The thing I don't get is why bother establishing the run if you're not going to mix things up? They rarely threw on first down out of run personnel nor threatened with play-action. I didn't mind the short passing game and check downs etc. But the whole point to running an O, besides scoring points, is to keep the D honest and off-balance. They struggled mightily with that. Too often I see the Steelers put themselves in a position to get Ben hurt. It's run, run, pass. And on that 3rd down the D pins their ears back to maul Ben. To protect Ben more they need more throws on first down, then set up run/pass on 2nd down.

Yes, this is a continual problem with the play calling. It's way too damn predictable. I kept saying in the game day thread that we were killing ourselves with the 2nd down play calls. The first down run would get good yardage and then we'd turn around and run up the middle every time out of shotgun and get nailed in the backfield for a loss.

[Mojouw]

I think the weather had a ton to do with the weird play calling on both sides last night. Overall, I'm wiling to give both teams a pass due to conditions on some head scratching calls.