Season's Over

by Coast

My annual "Season's Over" post has become a pre-Thanksgiving November tradition over the past, I don't know, 9 years?

The Steelers absolutely embarrassed the Bills today. This game was an absolute debacle. I have defended this team all season. I have defended Marrone. I have defended Manuel. I think I even defended Hackett last week. This game was no better than any bills road performance under the past 4 head coaches. It was just disgusting to watch.

I will start with Manuel. He was obviously atrocious today. His accuracy was horrible. His threw a horrendous interception. He really made no good plays the entire game. That being said, I am not giving up on Manuel yet. Rookie quarterbacks have awful games all the time. He showed me enough through the first 4 games that he has potential and now that the season is over the rest of the season will be an opportunity to evaluate Manuel.

Now on to Marrone. I have really liked Marrone through the first 9 games despite the record. I cannot defend Doug Marrone after today's game. Punting on 4th down and 5 inside the Steelers 40 down 14 in the 4th quarter is an embarrassingly gutless decision. It made me sick watching. All I have done in defending Marrone all season has gone out the window. I no longer will defend him. He is on watch the rest of the season as much as anyone else in the organization. Punting in that situation is conceding a loss and doing it once is all it takes for me to completely lose respect for you. I am completely sick about it.

Nate Hackett had another terrible game. The game plan was so vanilla. The Bills scored 3 real points against a defense that has been terrible all year. Where was CJ Spiller? Was he not involved in the game plan? He should be the focal point of the game plan. The play calling inside the 10 was suspect again. Spiller coming out of the game inside the red zone every time the team gets there is questionable. I really felt like I was watching the 2012 Bills wondering where CJ was half the game. It wasn't like Jackson was out there ripping off big runs.

Some other quick thoughts from the game:

• The Bills should not keep Steve Johnson on the team. How many times has he left games early because of injury? Take a real potential #1 WR in the first round. Good riddance.
• I thought the defense played pretty well. The Steelers only had 300 yards of offense. The defense did not quit on the Steelers' last 2 drives when the Bills offense turned it over deep.
• The punting and punt coverage was atrocious. Brown killed them. This is obviously a trend and a problem that needs addressing. 
• When it was 17-3 Steelers, Ben threw a swing pass to Brown...it was a lateral but no one seemed to even pay attention (except Pettine).

I don't know...there will be more later this week, but that is all I got for now. Maybe next year.