Posts tagged BrettKeisel at FanHouse

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.

Before the season there were two big concerns for most Steelers fans: could the offensive line keep Ben Roethlisberger alive and would the team's lack of depth on the defensive line come back to haunt it?

Well, we're three weeks into the season and Roethlisberger has had knee, shoulder and hand injuries thanks to 12 sacks and there's a pretty good chance the Steelers will take the field on Sunday with two of the three starting defensive linemen in street clothes.

There was no update on Monday, but when Casey Hampton limped off the field with a groin injury on Sunday, it led the coaching staff to speculate that he'll miss at least a few weeks. Brett Keisel is already out for a month or more with a calf injury which means Aaron Smith is all of a sudden the only healthy defensive line starter.

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.

It's hard to be a star as a defensive end in the Steelers' 3-4 defense, but Brett Keisel sure is doing a lot to get noticed.

The 285-pounder almost picked off a pass against Arizona in pass coverage, is solid against the run and has proven to be a much bigger version of Troy Polamalu in the Steelers' dime defense. He doesn't have any sacks, but as Ed Bouchette explains, Keisel is still getting plenty of pressure--he leads the team with 15 hurries this season, a pace that's way ahead of his team-leading total of 23 last season.

What makes Keisel so important for Pittsburgh is the fact that he's one man who doesn't need deception to get pressure. James Harrison and Clark Haggans have done a pretty solid job of getting pressure off the corner, but most of their success comes when the scheme helps get them lined up on a tight end or back in a passing situation. Keisel's success comes almost entirely at beating offensive tackles and guards. He's shown enough strength to overwhelm linemen with power rushes, but he's even better at using his speed and mobility to beat a lineman to a spot, then flush the quarterback.

Today we got another story about Brett Keisel's versatility and how the Steelers plan to use him as a jack-of-all-trades who can give a jump-start to the Steelers pass rush.

All of that is well and good, but there's one thing about these stories that bug me. Both today's Tribune-Review story and the Post-Gazette story from last week compare Keisel to Adalius Thomas. As good as Keisel may be, he in no way compares to Thomas and he will not be used like Thomas.

Thomas is a linebacker who can play on the defensive line with his hand down, at safety or even in certain situations at cornerback. Keisel is athletic enough that you can occasionally drop him into coverage, but he's not going to play safety, and putting him at cornerback would be a very unfortunate decision. He's not Thomas, at his absolute best he's a poor-man's Julius Peppers, a defensive end who is athletic enough that you can occasionally drop him into short pass coverage as a changeup.