It's the Chargers yet again...

This season and the Steelers' recent schedule for that matter makes me feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog's Day. There are a few teams it just seems like we play every year. New England, Indy and San Diego. This season feels like Groundhog's day because key people get injured, yet every week we come out and play competitive football regardless of who is in there. Depth was our biggest worry coming into the season, especially on O-line and D-line. Both of these areas have suffered key losses. Hampton and Keisel on teh D-line and Simmons and Smith on the O-line. Neither unit dropped off considerably when their backups came in. We have lost starters at every position and their backups have performed extremely well, especially at Mewelde Moore at RB.

Ben has been playing through his shoulder injury with mixed results at best. This week we face a Chargers team that despite their 4-5 reord, features playmakers at almost every position. The Chargers are like a chamelion, they play like whatever team they area facing that week. Their D seemed to improve when they fired D-Coordinator Ted Cotrell and replaced him with ex-Chicago bear D coordinator and one time Steeler head coaching candidate Ron Rivera.

Chargers On Offense- LDT just has not seemed to be himself this year. Count that as a posive for us. Our D is super run stingy. You never can discount LDT but I'm just saying, he is not having the kind of year we have come to expect from him. Our secondary, like the rest of the team is banged up, but SD's receiving core does not scare me that much. Gates is the only position that worries me. If we can pressure Rivers like we have been pressuring other teams lately, I think we will be in good shape. With Woodley coming back, I don't predict much time for Rivers to get the ball out. One thing that worries me is with all the injuries to the secondary, the coaches may not have sufficient confidence to run alot of the zone blitz schemes they normally would.

Our Offense needs to get its act together. Blame can be thrown alot of places, but it would be nice to see our offense come together in all areas and play a solid complete game. SD's D is good but not so good they should shut us down completely. We need to start using all our weapons in a variety of ways. In almost all of our losses this season we have lost because of turnovers. If Ben keeps it in his pants, then we win this game. I see another close, hard fought game. Whoever wins the turnover battle, wins this game. I see that being the Steelers.

Steelers 24-20