Steelers winners & losers from preseason week 2
Two weeks in, we are starting to see some players trending up and others trending down. No one will be perfect week-in and week-out, of course. But the haves are separating themselves from the have-nots. Here are the Steelers' best and worst performances from week two.
Winners
Diontae Johnson. Contrary to that scam the NFL is running this year, in which they claim they will allow pass interference to be reviewable but have let some pretty obvious mistakes stand anyway, Johnson caught two touchdowns in week two. One of them won't show up on the scoreboard, but it shows up in game film, and what it showed was exactly what was advertised when Johnson was drafted: one of the most polished route runners to come out of college football in recent memory. He makes his adjustments look effortless, and that was on full display on both of his big catches.
Diontae Spencer. Not to be outdone by the other Deontae, Spencer had a fantastic punt return for the second week in a row, Offensively, he added a 19-yard run on an end-around. Given his versatility, he's going to make it hard to cut him in favor of a one-dimensional player like Eli Rogers.
Mason Rudolph. Go ahead and write him in for QB2 -- in pen. He was already slightly ahead of incumbent number-two Joshua Dobbs, at least by my measure, after week one. Rudolph was efficient if not spectacular in week 2, but Dobbs made some questionable throws, including one that ended up intercepted in the end zone. Simply by being efficient, Rudolph probably sealed his role for 2019.
James Washington. Again. Whatever Washington did over the off-season, it worked. He's playing with confidence, the game is slowing down for him, and he's making big play after big play. Tonight, he had catches of 11, 22 and 40 yards. He's pretty much locked down the WR2 spot, especially after his only real competitor for the spot, Donte Moncrief, fumbled his lone catch on the night.
Secondary depth. A week after giving up 330 yards to a third-string quarterback in a single half, the Steelers' secondary held the Chiefs to 22-of-43 for 223 yards and one touchdown. That includes last year's NFL MVP, Patrick Mahomes, who was just 2-of-5 for 11 yards on his lone drive.
Losers
Joshua Dobbs. This wasn't his finest outing. That interception was just bad, because he had time to set his feet and drive the throw, but he didn't. Those are mistakes you can't make, especially when you are a) playing for your life, and b) being outplayed by a UDFA who has spent his snaps in two preseason games scrambling for his life on almost every single play.
Donte Moncrief. One catch for one yard -- and he fumbled it away, too. At least he has nowhere to go but up. I hope.
Ian Berryman. When your longest punt of the day goes 37 yards, that's bad. He had a chance to really shine and give incumbent punter Jordan Berry a run for his money. Instead, he probably just sealed his fate. Berry isn't so much winning this battle as Berryman is losing it.
Tight ends not named Vance McDonald or Zach Gentry. This tweet pretty much sums it up:
Xavier Grimble had one catch and one absolutely horrible drop. Kevin Rader had drops. Nothing about the collective play of the tight ends so far this preseason has been at all encouraging. Heck, even McDonald, who is as secure as anyone on the roster, fumbled.
The "credibility" of NFL officiating. Credibility is in quotes because it was already a figment of Commissioner Roger Goodell's imagination, but whatever shreds of it actually existed died when they upheld the Offensive Pass Interference call that negated Diontae Johnson's first touchdown. At worst, Johnson's fingers brushed the defender, and that's painfully obvious from the replays. But it apparently wasn't enough to overturn the call on the field. I guess they assumed the absence of evidence of OPI was also an absence of evidence that it didn't happen. Add to that the same bad call and inexplicable result in the Redskins game in week two and what we are left with is a mounting pile of proof that the league actually only implemented the rule to appease Saints fans still angered by the terrible call in the playoffs, and never actually intended to use the challenges to overturn a single call.
First-quarter offense. The Steelers and Chiefs combined to produce the following results on their first-quarter drives: punt, punt, punt, fumble, fumble, punt, punt, punt. Oy vey.