I decided to start a sports blog because I have a lot of complaints, but no one wants to pay me $10 million to air them on ESPN like certain people. Also, my grandfather has always said I should start a blog, and I believe that he is right. Hopefully this will be as entertaining for you as it is for me.

As a sports fan, there is nothing more frustrating than watching your favorite team fail to execute seemingly easy tasks. Don’t get me wrong–I know that these plays aren’t easy, or else we would all be professional athletes–but I have watched enough sporting events to know what is considered an “easy play” for someone making 8 figures a year and what is not. A one-handed circus catch is significantly more difficult than tackling a running back who is already wrapped up. Dumping the puck into the opponent’s zone from the red line is much easier than sniping a wrist shot top-shelf. And catching a pop-up with no sun is a less trying effort than making a diving stop on a 110 miles-per-hour liner at the hot corner.

With the preface that I am not a professional athlete (or even semi-professional), one thing that I can doubtlessly tell you is that the difference between a good team and a bad team is execution of the comparatively facile elements of the game. This was extremely apparent during yesterday’s Steelers-Niners game, during which the home team quite frankly embarrassed themselves for sixty minutes. There were moments where I wanted to yank out my hair watching Kenny Pickett miss open receivers, the offensive line fail to even get a body on the 49ers’ defensive linemen, and especially when the defense let Brandon Aiyuk run rampant in the secondary without contest. These were all surface-level issues, and Matt Canada should have been fired at the end of last season–it is an indictment of his coaching skills (or lack thereof) that the only time the Steelers moved the ball was in the form of a no-huddle offense, wherein Canada was not calling the plays–but there are deeper problems from which these more obvious frustrations arise: lack of execution of fundamentals, specifically discipline.

It is not just the Steelers that failed to execute yesterday. The New York Giants were absolutely embarrassed by the Dallas Cowboys during a primetime game. The Minnesota Vikings lost to Baker Mayfield, a quarterback on his 3rd team in two years. But since I am a Steelers fan, they will be the main focus of this entry. Their first offensive play went for six yards–a short pass completion from Pickett to George Pickens to set up a second down and short yardage…25 minutes later, they had one yard of total offense and zero first downs. Was that the worst offensive performance I have ever seen from them? Perhaps. But it wasn’t simply the offense that failed to show up to Acrisure Stadium. The defense was sliced up like deli meat. Christian McCaffrey couldn’t be tackled regardless of how many black-and-gold jerseys surrounded him. The secondary and linebackers completely vacated the middle of the field, allowing for Brock Purdy–a former Mr. Irrelevant returning from ulnar collateral ligament surgey–to hit open receivers on crossing routes. Chunk play after chunk play allowed on defense paired with the absolute inability to move the ball on offense made for a fatal combination for the 6-time Super Bowl champions. Were they ready to play? No. And that is inexcusable for the first game of the season against a team that was 60 minutes (and a healthy QB) away from making a run for their 6th Super Bowl last season. So why were they so bad? In my opinion, a lack of discipline.

Discipline means different things to different people. For college students, it is the field of study that they chose. For parents, it is punishment for their children behaving in an ill manner. For me, it is a [very good] King Crimson album. The discipline discussed here will be that which is often talked about in the realm of football. There are multiple forms of discipline in football: not taking needless penalties, staying in your rush lanes to prevent the quarterback from being able to escape the pocket or find a throwing lane, and even sticking to a game plan that was devised before kickoff. Frankly, the Steelers failed at all three of those yesterday.

Let’s get this out of the way first–the play calling was atrocious. “Let’s run a jet sweep on 2nd and 4 instead of running a play that goes north and south” said Matt Canada (probably). Despite that only being the second play of the game, it was a tone-setter after a promising first play (the 6 yard pass to George Pickens as discussed above). That was all the encouragement that a very talented and ferocious San Francisco defense needed to know they could trounce the Steelers. But that play was just a microcosm of the entire game. How else do you explain having 1 TOTAL YARD of offense late in the first half? Were the players at fault? Of course–Pickett was dreadful, the line was bad, and the receivers seemingly ran subpar routes. But it starts at the top. Predictability and over-complication are two hallmarks of Matt Canada’s offensive scheme, neither of which are things to which a coach should aspire.

Now to the bad penalties. The Steelers actually took fewer penalties for fewer yards than their opponents, but the nature and timing of the penalties was the distinguishing factor. Most of San Francisco’s penalties were defensive pass interference calls after they had already raced out to a 20-0 lead. Penalties during the play, especially when up by 3 scores, are significantly more explicable than pre-snap penalties and those committed after the play. There is never a need to hit a player after he has already gone out of bounds. False starts at home (despite having a large crowd of Niners’ faithful) are inexcusable. These are penalties that winning teams do not take, and that the Steelers have to avoid if they want to have any hope of beating Cleveland in a week on Monday Night Football.

Finally, the most important disciplinary component in football is positional. You cannot win a football game if your linebackers are getting drawn in by play-action fakes, thus vacating the middle of the field for receivers to exploit. You cannot win a football game if your offensive linemen do not follow through with their blocking assignments, as was evidenced by the constant duress under which Pickett found himself. You cannot win a football game when your QB and pass catchers are not on the same page. And you cannot win a football game as the Steelers when you only run the ball ten times. That is completely antithetical to the brand of football that the Steel City has prided itself on for 90 years. It was also quite apparent that using the run game more could have slowed down the Niners’ pass rush, thus allowing for more productivity through the air.

I am not sure whether to chalk up yesterday’s complete and utter embarrassment to “weird things happen during week 1”, to the 49ers being a very good team, the Steelers being disappointing following a very promising pre-season, or a combination of the three. One thing that I know for sure, however, is that this team is not going anywhere if they do not stay disciplined and execute the seemingly easy tasks that they get paid to complete.

Next week’s edition will have a Monday Night Football preview as well as a recap of the first Premier League action after the international break.

Thanks for reading!

Zach