Morning Links (and Daily Thread)…

drobviousso,

Thanks much for the question. Just in case people are interested, I’ll be talking to Jerome next Tuesday along with some other Stillerz bloggers. I hope to take a bunch of photos, too.

Oh: also for next Tuesday: a LOOOONG interview I did with … Chad Ochocinco. That was for FanHouse but I’ll just say this: i came away liking him more than I did going into the interview. We were talking mostly about newest off-field endeavor but I got him to talk about Polamalu for a sec. Good stuff. Obviously, I’ll bombard you with links when that post is live.

Eph. What the hell is Tomlin doing with starting Ben and having the slowest QB since Bernie Kosar playing behind a 2nd team line? I’ve been giving Tomlin a pass since I thought he did a great job in the Super Bowl year, but he’s starting to pile up the mistakes.

At least Dennis Dixon will make the game exciting in good and, more likely, bad ways.

Dwyer looked good, I’m betting he’s on the team over Summers now. Sylvester also looked fantastic.

FW,

Fantastic question.

Cols,

Bernie Kosar is offended by your remarks.

That was fun: Ben got a four-game suspension.

If true, that sucks about Urbik. I mean, I suppose it’s good to have such tough personnel decisions to make. Although, if the argument is too little, too late for Urbik, I’d like to think it means the same for Dwyer. Put differently: if given the choice between Urbik or Dwyer, I’d lean Urbik.

I am a big Tomlin guy too..but the handling of the QB situation has bordered on bizarre this preseason. He did a similiar thing with Ben when he had him playing nearly the whole first half in a meaningless late season game against the Browns in 08 (http://tinyurl.com/9wfhtq). That’s just poor judgement, I cringed when he made with the “run FWP till the wheels fall off” thing. But overall, I think he’s the best young coach in the NFL. He’s still learning but he’d better get smarter with handling QB’s if he wants to last. We are now in a very precarious position and its partly his fault.If Byron is the starter, he should have done one or two series with the starters and then been ushered off and issued a clipboard for the rest of the night. I think our odds of making the playoffs just took a big hit. We’d all better hope Batch can hold the reigns for 4 games.

I hope Urbik makes the team as well. JJ’s breakdowns indicate a marked improvement and he’s also apparently one of the smarter linemen we have. I like Dwyer but he didn’t come prepared to compete from the start of training camp. That shouldn’t be rewarded, IMO. I like Redman a lot more than Dwyer anyway. He’s competed hard for 2 training camps now and improved his blocking.

Summers…I have never been so taken in by a nickname..lol. I guess he;s been making his point on ST’s so he may stick. But he looks stiff as a board when blocking. I’d rather have Dwyer if it came to that.

Ziggy..wherefore art thou? Perhaps saving it for the regular season but he’s not been the beast I expected. He’ll be fine I’m sure.

So long Hartwig…you weren’t great but you were manna from heaven after the Mahan fiasco. Seems like a solid citizen and I liked when he got the line together at his house to get them to pull together. I can’t hate a guy who isn’t teh most talented but seemed to get everything he had from his abilities. Not his fault he wasn’t Jeff Hartings.

Watching the game from the Carolina broadcast, I learned two interesting things about the Steelers from the announcers’ early game discussions.

1) The Steelers have an excellent offensive line.
2) Byron Leftwich has good “intangibles,” such as being tall.