As the Steelers go through the offseason, the biggest concern of every Steelers fan in the country is the offensive line. Short of Ben Roethlisberger riding helmet-less on a motorcycle again, there's nothing that worries Steelers fans more than the idea of the Steelers offensive line getting blown off the ball again in 2008.To get a better understanding of what went wrong in 2007, when Roethlisberger was sacked 53 times in 17 games, I went back and rewatched each and every sack of the 2007 season. It wasn't particularly fun, but it was pretty informative. We'll end up breaking down the sacks in countless different ways, but to start out this series, it's worth just spelling out who gave up the sacks.
But before we get to who's to blame, it's worth mentioning how the blame was metered out. Determining the man at fault for a sack is somewhat of an art more than a science. For each sack, I rewatched the play several times to note the amount of pass rushers, the type of pass rush (straight four-man rush vs. a safety blitz for example), where the pressure came from, and how long it took before Roethlisberger was hit initially. If one man was beaten initially to come in and hit or pressure Roethlisberger but another defender finished off the sack, I generally tried to credit the sack to the first man beaten, unless the initial rush had nothing to do with the sack (for example if an outside blitzer forced Roethlisberger to step up in the pocket, but he did and the rusher flew on by, but the center was then beaten for a sack, blame the center). And if two rushers shared a sack, or if a rusher flew between two uncovered offensive linemen, 1/2 sacks were awarded. If you have more questions about how I credited sacks, feel free to comment and I'll give more details.
So without further delay, here's the chart of who gave up the Steelers 2007 sacks.
