FanHouse Travis Kirschke

When the Steelers lost defensive end Aaron Smith for the season, it wasn't too much of a shock that the Steelers turned to veteran Travis Kirschke instead of first-round pick Ziggy Hood.

But now that Kirschke is also likely to be sidelined for next Sunday's Broncos game, it looks like the Steelers would turn to Nick Eason next week as the starter instead of Hood. Essentially the Steelers are saying that Eason, who battled Sunny Harris for a spot on the roster during training camp, is a better bet as a starter than the Steelers first-round pick this year.

That would normally be a sign that the first-round pick is on the path to being a big-time bust--first-round picks should be contributors, not the No. 5 defensive end on a team that normally carries five defensive ends.

If the Steelers have any plans to extend the contracts of any veterans, they won't have to worry that chief negotiator Omar Kahn will be distracted by signing draft picks.

Nearly a week before training camp opens on July 31, the Steelers have already signed every one of their draft picks. First-round pick Evander Hood became the final draft pick to sign when he agreed to a five-year deal with the Steelers on Sunday.

Every time you rewatch the Steelers-Ravens games from earlier this year, it's hard to not get even more excited about Act III.

You have the league's two best defenses facing off, and two offenses that will be trying to prove that they aren't over their head. You'll watch James Harrison try to terrorize Joe Flacco again, while Ed Reed will try to once again turn a game around with an interception.

And after charting every Ravens' offensive play from both games, it's clear that Baltimore is facing an uphill battle. For all the talk about Flacco's amazing success as a rookie, the Ravens finished 28th in the NFL in passing yardage this season, and while most teams have two or three significant receiving threats, Baltimore had only one receiver with more than 700 yards receiving.

But in rewatching the first two Steelers-Ravens games, there are some things Baltimore can take advantage of.

The Steelers have made a move to shore up their horrendous defensive line depth by signing a backup defensive end, but for some reason I don't think Steelers fans are going to be real thrilled by this move.

Pittsburgh re-signed Travis Kirschke to a two-year, $2.28 million deal. Kirschke, 33, has battled back issues for the past several years, but he proved to be the best of the Steelers fill-ins when Aaron Smith went down with a season-ending injury midway through last season.

I know a lot of fans will probably complain about signing Kirschke again--I mean he is a 33-year-old guy who wasn't very good in his prime, but at just over $1.1 million a year, he's actually a pretty good bargain. If his back holds up, he's still a guy who can give you a decent five to 10 snaps a game--he's just not capable of doing more than that. And at that price, the Steelers can (and should) still go out and find a No. 3 defensive end--Kirschke's contract would be acceptable for a No. 4 defensive end. What they can't do is try to find a No. 4 defensive end with the thought of making Kirschke the primary backup.

So as a fill-in guy, Kirschke's fine. Let's just hope the Steelers don't expect too much from him come September.

I've been going back through the Steelers win to analyze the offensive line as usual, but also to try to figure out what's going wrong with the Steelers defense, and then before I'm even halfway through the game, Michael David Smith already did the work for me.

In his newest Every Play Counts over at Football Outsiders, MDS spells out the Steelers problems. They're pretty simple, but pretty important.

1) Travis Kirschke is a very poor substitute for Aaron Smith at defensive end. He too often gets driven out of his gap, which causes the a big hole in what usually is a very gap-conscious defense.

2) The Steelers' defensive scheme leaves them vulnerable to short slants. This is a frequent problem of the Steelers. Steelers cornerbacks are asked to play run support as well. You can't play run support when you're lined up at the line in bump-and-run coverage--with bump and run you have to focus on the wide receiver in front of you to the complete exclusion of the running game. It's a deliberate decision on Dick LeBeau's part, but it also means that slants and other short routes are often wide open.

When the snow started falling just before the game started, Steelers fans at Heinz Field started cheering. And they should have. There are plenty of great memories of Steelers teams dominating opponents during snowy home games.

Who would have thought that the snow would be great news for a team from Jacksonville? Pittsburgh seemed to struggle with the white stuff, while Jacksonville used it as an excuse to bludgeon Pittsburgh. To see a team from Florida come in and dominate the Steelers physically (for the second time in two years) was hard to take.

In going back and rewatching the game, nearly everyone on the Steelers defense deserved some blame for the run defense debacle. Even the cornerbacks had plays where they screwed up--if Ike Taylor hadn't gotten sucked inside on a fourth and one play in the third quarter, the Jaguars 20-play touchdown drive would have been stopped.

Even at their best, Steelers fans are prone to the extremes. When our team is good, we celebrate, and worry, too much. And when our team is playing poorly we are ready to believe the sun will never shine again.

Right now, we're looking at a blizzard that shows no signs of clearing up. After getting manhandled by the Jaguars, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin announced on Monday that the Steelers may be missing three starters on Thursday against the Rams, to go with the two (Aaron Smith and Ryan Clark) that were already sidelined.

Defensive end Travis Kirschke (Smith's fill-in), outside linebacker Clark Haggans and left tackle Marvel Smith are all good bets to miss Thursday's game. Kirschke is batting a rib injury, Haggans has a knee sprain and Smith's aching back has flared up.

Kirschke's nothing special at defensive end, but with Smith already out, it does mean the Steelers will be extremely thin on the defensive line. The Steelers wore down against the Jaguars with Kirschke, without him they'll have to rely on Ryan McBean, a call-up from the practice squad last week, and hope that he can do more than he did in the preseason, when he failed to make any kind of an impact.

LaMarr Woodley will fill in for Haggans while Max Starks will step in for Smith. Starks has done a solid job of replacing Smith in recent weeks, but he'll get his toughest test when he moves inside to a turf field after getting chances to use his bulk on sloppy fields in recent weeks.