FanHouse Brett Keisel

For some reason, head coach Brad Childress thought letting Brett Favre and his 40-year-old arm sling the ball all over the yard gave the Vikings the best chance to win against the Steelers Sunday. He was so sure of this, in fact, that the Ole Gunslinger ended up doing it 51 times.

On two occasions in the fourth quarter that decision led directly to Steelers points. Defensive end Brett Keisel stripped Favre as he dropped back and linebacker LaMarr Woodley took the fumble to the house. And with just over a minute to play and Minnesota trailing by three, a Favre screen pass skipped off the hands of Chester Taylor, into the lap of linebacker Keyaron Fox, and 82 yards later, ball game.

Here's a question: why not give the ball to Adrian Peterson more than 18 times? Since, you know, he came into the game leading the league in rushing, and fresh off hanging 143 rushing yards on the Ravens. Didn't happen, and instead of seeing Purple Jesus tread defenders all afternoon, we only got to see it once.

Video hit-and-run after the jump.

The old days of Pittsburgh being known as a team unwilling to spend the big bucks need to buried and forgotten. Pittsburgh capped off an extremely busy offseason of signings by re-signing defensive end Brett Keisel to a four-year contract extension.

By re-signing Keisel, Pittsburgh now has re-upped James Harrison, Max Starks, Heath Miller, Chris Kemoeatu, Trai Essex and Hines Ward during this offseason. While that still leaves a significant number of Steelers heading into the final year of their contracts (Casey Hampton, Willie Parker, Ryan Clark, Willie Colon and Jeff Reed are the most notable) it is a clear sign that Pittsburgh is willing to spend the money to keep the bulk of the Super Bowl champs together.

Another NFL draft has come and gone, and it's possible that you spent much of your weekend glued to a television set laughing at the Raiders and screaming for your team to find the next Tom Brady at the bottom of the sixth-round. If you're like me, you live in an area of the country where your only option for draft day coverage is ESPN's wire-to-wire mayhem.

If you happened to miss the draft, or watched it on the NFL Network, here's what you missed.

The Steelers have $19 million in cap room with only a talented cornerback and a slew of mediocre or injury-prone linemen heading to free agency. So everything's great, right?

Well, take a look at this list of Steelers who are getting ready to head into the final year of their current contracts (thanks to davaughnci for pulling a list together over at Football's Future Forum): RB Willie Parker, LB James Harrison, WR Hines Ward, TE Heath Miller, C Justin Hartwig, S Ryan Clark, CB Deshea Townsend, DE Brett Keisel, NG Casey Hampton, K Jeff Reed.

TAMPA, Fla. -- The best Super Bowl pregame show on TV comes on at the ungodly hour of 6:30 AM ET on Super Bowl Sunday, but it's worth getting up early (or setting the DVR) to see ESPN's NFL Matchup, the show that goes beyond highlights and analyzes the game with the same tape that coaches use. Today I watched the taping of the Matchup show that will air Sunday, and it was an Xs and Os education.

Want to get a cheat sheet for the Super Bowl, here are a couple of plays to watch for on Sunday.

Blocking Steelers outside linebackers James Harrison or LaMarr Woodley is a tough job for any offensive tackle, but thanks to a new blitz that Dick LeBeau has dreamed up, sometimes a tackle has to worry about both of them at the same time.

LeBeau is a defensive genius who is always drawing up new looks in an attempt to spread confusion among offensive linemen. And nothing is more confusing than trying to figure out the Steelers outside linebacker overload as the play clock runs down.

If you were wondering how the Steelers pulled off their goal-line stand early in their loss to the Giants, they got a little help from Eli Manning.

As they got ready for the fourth and goal play from the one, Brett Keisel read Manning's lips as he said "32." So he told the rest of his teammates that they could expect the play to be a run through the two-gap.

"I was watching Eli's lips the whole time and I saw him say, '32,' so I went over and tried to tell everyone, 'It's right here,' and we stopped it," Keisel said. "That was a big play in the game."

Keisel and the defense still had trouble keeping tailback Brandon Jacobs out of the end zone--the 270-pounder is a tough one to stop, but the Steelers did get the stop, although it proved to not be enough in the end. But it is a fascinating sign of how a little slip-up like a quarterback not shielding his mouth from the defense can be the difference on a key play.

It was already known that Steelers defensive tackle Casey Hampton suffered a groin injury in Sunday's loss at Philadelphia, and we knew there was a good chance it would keep him out of Monday night's game against division rival Baltimore. So, it wasn't much of a surprise when Head Coach Mike Tomlin ruled Hampton, a 4-time Pro Bowl selection, out for this weeks game.

It was, however, a gigantic surprise, and a pretty heavy punch to the gut, when Tomlin told the media that Starting running back Willie Parker has also been ruled out. Tomlin described Parker's injury as a "knee sprain," and that he suffered it late in the game on Sunday. A reporter asked Tomlin if it was an MCL sprain, and Tomlin responded by simply saying it was "a knee sprain" and that he'll be "week-to-week."

This is a huge loss for the Steelers' offense, but it's also a gigantic opportunity for first-round pick Rashard Mendenhall, who will be getting the bulk of the carries against an always tough Ravens defense. Mendenhall has been used sparingly over the first three weeks, and hasn't had a carry since the season opener against Houston.

This isn't an easy video for Steelers fans to watch, but it's worth watching. If you're trying to find who to blame for David Garrard's long run on the key fourth and two late in Saturday's game, this gives you the chance to see. From my viewpoint, there were several problems, but the player who deserves the most blame is Brett Keisel. The draw was run through Keisel's gap, while he was driven two yards off the ball and taken to the ground. Obviously both inside linebackers inability to shed their blocks didn't help either.

To try to get a feeling for what's going wrong with the Steelers run defense, I went back and looked at several of the plays where the Ravens second and third-string tailbacks gashed Pittsburgh for big gains. Here's what I saw.

It's first and 10 for the Ravens at the Steelers 32-yard line. The Ravens line up in a standard I-formation, with a tight end lined up on the left side of the line. The Steelers are in their usual 3-4, but safety Tyrone Carter walks up to give the team an eighth man in the box. If the Ravens run the ball, the Steelers should be ready.

At the snap, the Ravens don't worry about deception. It's a standard off-tackle run to the left side of the Ravens line. It's just a matter of who wins the individual battles that will determine whether it's stuffed or turns into a big gain.