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What Will The Steelers Try To Do?

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 1, 2009

The Steelers are a bit old-fashioned. When everyone is right physically, they want to run the ball and use a lot of play-action to set up their passing game, which can be quite explosive.

Hines Ward and Heath Miller between the numbers and Santonio Holmes on the outside give quarterback Ben Roethlisberger several capable options, and Roethlisberger can hit them all. He can make every throw in the book and the Steelers have been forced to lean on his arm before.

Their preference, though, is to lean on running back Willie Parker, who can pound the rock with the best of them. Against a Cardinals defense that has a tendency to give up big yards on rushes up the gut, he should get plenty of opportunities.

The objective is to pull an eighth and sometimes ninth defender into the box. That's when Roethlisberger will look to Ward, Miller or Holmes for a big-play strike.

The Steelers had the league's 22nd-ranked offense this year. They're not a team that's looking to get into a shootout with Arizona, so they'll look to run the ball and minimize the Cardinals' possessions.

Nate Washington

Want to win a bar bet with your buddies? Ask them who caught the longest touchdown pass for the Steelers this season. If they're real Iron City types they might know, but there aren't too many who would guess Washington. He's third on the depth chart, so he doesn't play too much. When he does, though, he usually makes an impact. He has four catches of 48 yards or more this season. If Hines Ward is limited in this game by his knee problem, Washington will be a factor.

Willie Parker

Parker doesn't really fit the mold of the legendary Steelers backs. He's not the big, bruising type that Jerome Bettis was and he'll never be the hero that Franco Harris was. His 4.5 yards-per-carry average in the playoffs is the best in franchise history, however, and he has three of the top eight rushing seasons in franchise history. Parker missed more than a month of games this season but has regained his health - and a healthy Parker is a dangerous Parker.

Ben Roethlisberger

Roethlisberger led all NFL quarterbacks in one category this season - fumbles. And now he faces the team that led the league in forcing fumbles. Keep in mind, though, that Roethlisberger is not a numbers kind of guy. He's never going to be the quarterback you pick first for your fantasy team because he doesn't produce eye-popping stats. He is a big-play guy, though, and with his mobility and arm strength he regularly produces the one stat that matters most - victories.

The Steelers are going to run the ball in this game. A lot. So what would former Bucs and Colts coach Tony Dungy focus on if he was putting together a game plan to beat them? How about the passing game?

"Willie Parker is still a big, important guy in their game plan, but the big plays in the passing game, that's where the Cardinals are going to have to place their focus," Dungy said. "I think they're going to have to put together a nice blitz package for this game because it's going to come down to: What kind of pressure can they put on Ben Roethlisberger? It comes down to: Can they do enough there?"

Simply pressuring Roethlisberger might not be enough. The Cardinals will have to get to Roethlisberger to hinder his effectiveness because he scrambles well and usually makes pretty good plays off the scramble.

The best way to do that is to attack off the edge. The Steelers' tackles have a tendency to give up big pressures, and the Cardinals will have to clog the middle a bit to keep Parker from running all over them.

"Willie Parker will make some runs," Dungy concluded. "But I don't think the Cardinals have to worry about that. They have to worry about getting to the passer and preventing the big plays, the scramble plays."

Bertrand Berry

There aren't too many players happier to be in the Super Bowl than Berry, the Cardinals' defensive end who was out of football eight years ago. He was sitting at home wondering if he'd ever play again when then-Broncos personnel executive Rick Smith called and asked him if he wanted a tryout. "I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for Rick Smith," Berry said. The Steelers might like it better that way. Though he produced only five sacks this season, Berry is arguably the Cardinals' best pass rusher. And he's on a roll right now, with two sacks in three playoff games.

Adrian Wilson

Wilson is a patient man. Even better - at least for the Cardinals - he's a loyal man. While legions of players have used their time with the Cardinals as something of a springboard to a better situation, Wilson has stuck with the team that drafted him in 2001. Now he's reaping the benefits. Long considered one of the best safeties in the league, Wilson says his reason for staying with a team that many have avoided is simple: "The job wasn't done," he said.

Karlos Dansby

If you peel away the layers that make up the Cardinals defense and get to the core, you'll find Dansby. Now in his fifth season with the team, the linebacker has become the team's unquestioned leader, not only in the locker room but on the field, where he led the defense this season with 128 tackles. That trend has continued through the playoffs; Dansby has a team-best 29 tackles, including four for a loss. That's only three fewer than he had in 16 regular-season games. It seems Dansby knows when to crank it up a notch, too.

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