Ask Mike Tomlin and the Pittsburgh defense.. They played a 8 and 9 man boxes on run downs with Zeke in the game a lot of the time.. and sorta laid back and said "prove it" when Pollard was in. That's why there were too many defenders for us to block on so many of Zeke's runs. Most of which he still managed to turn into positive yards. If you honestly can't understand the value of a guy who gets positive yards on 90% of his carries and does the heavy lifting as opposed to a guy who gets a couple of big plays but loses yards on 30-40% of his carries then we will simply have to agree to disagree. Take the second drive of the game when Pollard had his first big run.. He goes for 20 ... then goes for -1 then whiffs on blitz pickup and allows a sack.. After his 20 yarder in the 3rd quarter we go pass pass pass then kick the FG. How you manage to blame Zeke for that is the real mystery here. The next drive he goes 5,12 then -2. Then we sub Zeke in and he goes 16 on the pass.. NG, pass pass, Zeke for 1 , Zeke for 8, FG. We should have gone for it on 4th down there.. McCarthy punked out there.. Then the next drive after the long KO return Zeke goes 5, 10, 2 then we decide to become Air Coryell again and throw the pick.. After Zeke gets us first and goal at the 7. Bad coaching on those two drives cost us 11 points.. Both should have ended in TDs instead of a FG and an INT.
And yeah.. 2nd and 7 is better than 2nd and 11 or 12. Whether you like it or not.. You have more of your playbook at your disposal on 2nd and 6 or 7. You lose a lot of it on 2nd and 10+.
