PITTSBURGH _ Randy Fichtner was absolutely crippled by the fact that the Steelers' quarterback play was well below average this season. He absolutely should get some consideration when he is judged this season that he didn't have Ben Roethlisberger for pretty much the entire season.
Those things are factors in the way the Steelers offense performed. There is no question that there needs to be some weight placed on the fact that Fichtner wasn't able to run the offense the Steelers had envisioned all summer.
That being said, the bad quarterback play doesn't give Ficthner a total pass _ at least it shouldn't. For one thing, remind me again who the quarterbacks coach is and has been? It's Fichtner, and if Rudolph wasn't ready to play after being under his watch for the last year, then that is on him.
But let's dig a little deeper into this offense. I saw the Steelers running the same stuff at the end of the year that they were trying to run at the start. I saw an offensive staff that did nothing to adjust to the quarterback play or become more creative with the run game.
Devlin Hodges should have been rolling out more, running quarterback draws, and throwing screen passes and quick hitters that don't require a big arm. He should have been running bootlegs and moving around in the pocket. He very rarely did any of that.
It was as if Fichtner and company were determined to bang their heads against the wall and ask him to do things he isn't physically gifted enough to do. I'm not saying the offense was destined to be a juggernaut, but they scored 30 points in their final three games for goodness sakes. That's 10 points a game, which is a joke by any standard in the NFL.
And please spare me this nonsense about how it is impossible to have a good running game without the threat of a passing game. That is the height of excuse making it doesn't even pass the sniff test.
Many teams over the years have figured out how to run the football without a good quarterback. Many offensive lines have figured out how to block well without a good quarterback. And many running backs have had success without a good quarterback to provide them help.
I'll even take this to an extreme _ triple option teams have run wild over defenses for decades with no threat of a passing game. They did it despite teams knowing it is coming and despite the fact that teams don't have to respect the pass.
And do you know why they have success? Because they execute great blocking schemes that are fundamentally sound. And that was a big problem with the Steelers.
I also keep hearing that it isn't fair to Fichtner to expect him to change the offense and change the schemes in the middle of the season, that all this stuff is installed throughout the offseason.
That's laughable, too. I watched John Harbaugh last season go from one of the least mobile quarterbacks in the history of the NFL to Lamar Jackson midseason and change the entire way his team played offense. They changed their entire scheme and built an offense around the quarterback's talents midseason and ended up winning a division.
It can be done, but only if someone has the foresight and creativity to do it. Fichtner may or may not be a good offensive coordinator, but he definitely didn't have a good year. He was like a deer in headlights when it came time to give the Steelers the best chance to succeed on offense.
I know there were injuries, but the offensive line was mostly healthy the entire year. I know there was a myriad of running backs and receivers in and out of the lineup, but that's on Fichtner and company, too, because he needed to pick the best players and stick with them.
He didn't help himself at all with all the lineup juggling and ridiculous personnel packages. He needed to simplify some things, play to the strengths of what he had, and he didn't do any of it. The Steelers were 8-5 and staring at a playoff spot, and they fell flat on their faces in their final three games.
And they did so because their offense was terrible and lacked vision, leadership and imagination. And that falls squarely on the shoulders of Ficthner.
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