Thursday Night Disaster Should Spell End for Scobee
Mike Vick stepped in as the starter and did just about everything expected of him last night at home against the Baltimore Ravens.
Le’Veon Bell had a monster game in just his second outing after serving his suspension. The Pittsburgh defense went above and beyond in its quest to end the Ravens’ season. But none of it was enough, proving exactly how valuable a good kicker is to an NFL team.
Let it be said that Josh Scobee was not the only reason the Steelers lost their crucial divisional match, but of all the players who failed to do their job, he is the most replaceable.
Scobee was a putrid 2/4 last night, and even the pair of field goals he did make never looked certain until the last moment. He missed a makeable pair of 49- and 41-yard attempts in the fourth quarter. A conversion on one of those misses – a shank in the Steelers’ last possession of regulation time – would have forced Joe Flacco’s hand, making him drive 80 yards in one minute with no timeouts.
Instead, the Ravens’ began in fair field position and needed only to get in range for the automatic Justin Tucker, who proved true and sent the game into overtime.
By the time the game was operating under sudden death rules, the narrative became less about the kicking, and more about the coaching miscues. On two separate occasions, Mike Tomlin opted to go for it on fourth down instead of settling for a 50-yard kick.
Most Steelers fans can live with the decision to keep the offense on the field, even if the play calling left a little to be desired. What they can’t live with is the fact that Scobee is so terrible that he forced Tomlin to make a decision of that magnitude in the first place.
In Pittsburgh’s two losses so far this season, Scobee is a combined 3/7, with every miss being of a not unreasonable distance. Still without Ben Roethlisberger for the foreseeable future, the Steelers need all the help they can get to stay afloat in the division, and Scobee has been the ultimate hindrance so far in 2015.
