The Steelers recently fired offensive coordinator Bruce Arians, who many Steelers fans disliked due to his reliance on the pass rather than the run as the Steelers’ top offensive option. Proponents of Pittsburgh’s earlier style of smash-mouth football have been pleased with the decision, and that includes former star Joe Greene, who’s back in the public eye this week due to a remake of an iconic commercial. Here’s what Greene has to say:
“If it doesn’t feel good, you have to change it and, basically, it wasn’t feeling good,” Greene said Friday. “It wasn’t feeling good in ‘09, and it wasn’t feeling good in 2011” …
“When New England played the [Baltimore] Ravens [in the AFC championship game], had they continued trying to throw the football, they would have lost it. They decided they had to run it, but they couldn’t line up and show you they were going to run it, they had to look like they were going to throw the pass, and that’s when they ran the ball on them.”
Greene goes on to compare the current Steelers to the Steelers of the 1970s, which isn’t surprising. I’m not sure how useful such comparisons are, though, and to suggest there’s an equivalency between the Steelers then and now (and especially between quarterbacks Terry Bradshaw and Ben Roethlisberger) seems off-base. The Steelers need to be careful not to base their offensive game plan around nostalgia.
The Steelers have yet to replace Arians, but former Kansas City Chiefs coach Todd Haley appears to be in the lead for the position.
For more on the Steelers, check out Behind The Steel Curtain.