Scout’s Eye with Matt Williamson: Previewing the opener

0:00Football is back and this is believed. You're home for NFL and college football news and analysis all season long. Now let's start the show. Well hello everyone. Matt William's here. How's it going? Matt William's not a foul. Give me a follow all that good stuff. I want to give you my game preview now so you have it for the weekend. This will probably be my last podcast and less porter signs or something crazy like that. Which is possible. Most likely. But until after the game and I always for you new folks I will get you one Sunday night. I usually record when the Steelers play at one I usually record that gap after the late games but before the night game of a Steeler recap show.

1:04Anyway so today is going to be my Steeler preview prediction all that good stuff. But speaking of porter it sounds as though he practiced today and is very much in the mix. Who knows what will happen on game day. But there's a little bit of other injury news. Chua Taiba Loa was injured today in practice. Again I'm recording this Thursday evening. Some sort of back issue and or before practice or early in practice and their back up Cooper Rush. Pretty much did everything with the ones. Now it's hard to talk a lot about injuries. But the Las Vegas line on the game drastically changed with that news. Not the two is some kind of pro bowl or all star type guy. But Vegas apparently thinks Cooper Rush is going to start this game. Who's to say but I'm going to kind of operate under somewhat of that assumption.

2:05And then the other news. This is more for next week. First the game last night Patriots. Seahawks. AJ Brown was injured in that game. It's a high ankle sprain. He's going to miss over a month. He will not be in the game for the Steelers 99% chance. So Steelers should face the Patriots without a star receiver. So some things falling into place for Pittsburgh here. Let's talk about when the Steelers have the ball though. I have great respect for the Falcon Secondary. I have very little respect for their front seven. We talked about this a lot yesterday. Will a heavy blitz defensive coordinator. Half the blitz or choose to blitz a team. An offense that is rarely blitzed because the ball comes out so quick. He might have to because of his past rush. Is that lacking? I'm not going to just sit on your heels and just let Rogers

3:08you know, pat the ball in the pocket and find stuff developing downfield. It's not that the front seven's pretty terrible. It really is. There's not a lot of different makers there. I'm kind of lumping all those players together. But if I'm all brick no matter how I call the game, I'm going to rely heavily on my secondary winning those battles in the past game. I might have to put my good corners and excellent safety in compromised positions. But I can't trust my front seven. And I have to bring safety into the box. I would expect the Steelers despite their line being unproven and young to have pretty good success running the football. I would think that the past rush is not going to be major detriment to success through the air. But again, they're a good group of cover guys without question.

4:10Might we see a little more 12 personnel? I think that's possible, especially with your offensive tackles. Still learning the ropes. And I'm going to operate as Odill and Cook is the starter at least for this game. But I don't know that as a fact. I don't have a lot more to add to this side of the ball to be honest with you when you're talking about schematics and what to look for. You would hope that no one out of that front seven causes a great deal of problems. And again, that's a good way to live. I don't see a lot of massive weaknesses with the Steelers starting group on offense. I do think you'll see some fullback. I think you'll see plenty of double tights. I think Bernard and Wilson will kind of split duty. I think Rico and Warren will kind of split duty. One theme I think for this game and for every game across the league that I think definitely favors the Steelers is I think you really want to keep your players fresh this early in the year.

5:13And I think they'll see a lot of rotations and substitutions by all 32 teams. But the Steelers just have better depth than the Falcons. The Falcons back ups and bottom of the roster players on both sides of the ball aren't as good as the Steelers. They just aren't at any real capacity. So I think that favors the Steelers quite a bit. I do expect the Steelers to move the ball pretty regularly. Now I do urge you to realize that early in the season defenses are ahead of offenses. We saw that in the Patriot Seahawk game. So I don't think the Steelers offense will be a fine-tune machine. I'll be really shocked if it is. But I think they can play it a lot of different waves on offense and still have success and put points up. So as I laid out the Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Albrick he's probably going to have to have his secondary go the extra step in order for this defense to really hang around.

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7:18And he still should have some success rushing the passer. If it's Rush who I expected to be at this stage at least. He's basically a okay backup across the board. Like I think Mason Rudolph is a better player than Cooper Rush. He doesn't have any traits that are, whoa that's really great. Or wow that's really terrible. He's kind of a four out of ten in all facets of quarterback play give or take. So I don't think you have to play a certain way with him. He does have some experience though. I should have double checked this but it just dawned on me. I'm almost certain that coach McCarthy and Rush they definitely did. Overlapped quite a bit with the Cowboys. So he's going to know his strength and weaknesses really really well. Which makes it even better to getting Rush because his weaknesses outweigh his strengths as a quarterback.

8:21That's why he's a lifetime backup and kind of a low end backup. So McCarthy's going to know exactly how to attack him. And that's obviously the massive weakness of this Falcons offense. Because the rest of the groups pretty good. I mean the London Pits B-Jon trio is very formidable. I don't know if they would travel quarter with London or not. New coaching staff I'm kind of guessing here. I do think Ramsey would match up with Pits a ton. The other wide receivers not named London really are not formidable. They really aren't. I would think you'll see multiple tight ends on the field quite a bit. And Pits basically act as the wide receiver three.

9:24You'll see guys like Johan Dotson opposite London. The O-line is quite good. It's above average. It's experienced. Jake Matthews has played a million games in a row. Their guard, Lindstrom is definitely one of the top five or six guards in the league. The rest of the group is experienced pretty mobile. Not a masher face type of group. I would expect the Steelers to rotate their defensive front a ton without question. I think the Steelers will heavily bleed in their nickel package. Probably with Jenkins as the safety Ramsey has mentioned as your big slot. Tight end guy. Assume porters in there quite a bit. Maybe he'd be on some sort of pitch count. And Assante Samuel gets some reps for porter. He hasn't done a ton. But I think you're just see a heavy rotation with the defensive line. Now the elephant, the scary thing in the room is B. John Robinson.

10:29He's phenomenal and terrifying. Unless it's a crazy game where you know, the Bazaul can't make a kick or there's a lot of injuries or there's an abnormal amount of turnovers. The clear path to the Falcons winning this football game is B. John's an unstoppable force. And I hate to say it. He absolutely can do that. Even with the Dax stacked against them. Even against heavy boxes. Run or pass. He's that good because you still have to honor pitch. You still have to honor London. But because the quarterback situation clearly isn't going to be great. I would imagine that the Steelers, no matter who the Falcons potential quarterbacks have been, including PENIX, for the entire due of the offseason have done everything possible to gear their game plan towards B. John can't go insane.

11:33He'll get his, like you B. John Robinson and Fantasy, I'm not saying Benchham. Obviously. But if he goes insane, the Steelers could absolutely lose this game. In fact, I think they probably will. If they keep them to a seven out of ten or a six out of ten production, I think you got this offense pretty much where you want them. And that's what I expect to happen. We might get together some day night and be like, holy cow. It was B. John Robinson, Jim Brown out there. And Ladinian Tom Ones enrolled into one. Unstoppable force. I don't expect that to be the case, especially with the status of their quarterback. I have the Steelers win this game at home 24 to 10. Be pretty shocked if they end up losing this game to the Falcons, who I think are really good first of all.