.png)
All night long the Titans defense was getting to Ben Roethlisberger with ease, sacking him four times. They did this with efficient blitzing and effective stunts. However, when they tried to rush only the front four, Roethlisberger could have laid down, taken a nap, woken up, had a sandwich, a cup of coffee, visited a few female hotel employees, and thrown a touchdown before anyone could get close enough to "fix his TV."
So, as an insane man would do, when does Cecil decide to exclusively bring only the front four? Well overtime, of course! The most pivotal part of the game, and he decides to go with the only thing that hadn't worked against that, let's be honest, bad offensive line.
Which of course brings us back to the first question of what in the hell was Chuck Cecil thinking?
I can't tell you exactly what he was thinking, but I can tell you what he was doing, and that's panicking. He completely broke down and became afraid of the Steelers passing game. He knew that they were going to drop back and pass, so instead of blitzing and trying to disrupt Roethlisberger's rhythm, he instead opted to try and cover all of his targets.
Actually, that part worked. Everyone was covered for a reasonable amount of time and even a good bit after what would be considered a reasonable time to stick with your man. Unfortunately, the front four simply could not get any pressure, so it wasn't difficult for Roethilisberger to spend five or six seconds in the pocket looking for a man to break open.
Hopefully Cecil can use this as a learning experience. Losing to the defending champions in overtime isn't the worst way to start the year, but a loss is a loss and in a difficult division and overall conference, every game matters. If he does this even one or two more times (by "this" I mean panic) he could wind up shouldering the blame for a short Titans' season.
