Sure, the draft has just finished but I am excited over what I perceive as some fundamental differences between Arians and Haley.

Would Arians ever have a player like Rainey involved in the offense? Or an H-Back like Paulson? I don't think so, that just has Haley's influence written all over those two picks.

Last season we had 13 players at the skill positions (WR, RB and TE) to start the season:

6 WR - Ward, Wallace, Brown, Sanders, Cotchery and Battle
3 TE - Miller, DJ Johnson and Saunders
4 RB - Mendenhal, Redman, Dwyer and Moore

This season coming up I see less position flexibility nonsense that favored a Johnson, and more tailor the offense to scheme players like a Rainey and Paulson to make an impact.

I see the 13 players as:

5 WR - Wallace, Brown, Sanders, Cotchery, and Clemons
4 RB - Redman, Dwyer, Batch and Rainey
1 FB - Will Johnson
1 H-B - David Paulson
2 TE - Miller and Saunders

Instead of having a DJ Johnson be a FB/TE/H-B and not really be any good at anything, it seems to me that the Steelers have learned their lesson and have brought on Will Johnson who can be a multi-dimensional FB and Paulson who can be an H-B while Wes Saunders has the talent to replace Miller in a year or two as the starting TE. Have the right tool for the job at hand.

Batch can and probably will see some time as a 3rd down back and Rainey will be a weapon in space and they will scheme him for big plays and mismatches both as a 3rd down back, and as a slot WR.

With Arians he was all about 3 WRs and 2 TEs yet he never really got his 2nd TE involved significantly in the passing game and Miller was often ignored at times or not as involved as he should have been. There was no Darren Sproles type of weapon out of the backfield and he wouldn't get Mendy involved fully into the passing game either. There were no H-Backs to speak of, DJ or Carey Davis masquerading as an H-Back is not getting it done.

With this first draft and off-season you can see things are not the status quo. Ben is going to have more weapons and more options than he has ever had before. In some cases, ever. When has Ben ever had a weapon like Rainey at RB? Or an H-back like Paulson?

I like what I am seeing from our new offense so far and our new offensive coordinator.

I think Rainey and Haley can combine to be real x-factors this year. Not to mention, Ben's also going to benefit from better pass pro.

It was a HUGE handicap to the offense that defenses didn't have to account for the RB out of the backfield. I understand the personnel argument, but any OC worth his salt would have had a competent enough screen game that defenses couldn't just totally ignore it.

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Sorry my life is so much more bitchin' than yours. I planned it that way.

I think I'll actually wait until I see who makes the team and how they actually perform before I get super-excited.

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I know this, your ability to think concisely, your ability to make good judgments is much easier on Thursday night than during the heat of the game. -Bill Walsh

I think we need to wait and at least see 1 play from his offense before we crown it better. We had Willie Parker a few years back that was a similar player, although he could not catch. Still instead of using him situationally we pushed him into the starter role and tried to run him up the middle. If they use these small fast guys the way they should be using him, in a Sproles role, then I am all over it. If we use our TE's they way they should be I'm all over it. I'm not holding my breath though until I see this happening. Once I see Ben dumping off more passes to RB's and TE's and even seeing us running two back on a consistent basis mixing it up depending on the game, ala the Saints. Then I will be happy. The ONLY problem I see is that Ben is no Drew Brees, at least he doesn't appear to be. So we could end up finding ourselves in that kind of system with a QB that can't keep up, which leads to our next big Draft decision. I am very interested to see how this year plays out, not only on the Steelers but across the league. A lot of interesting changes.

We have no idea if Rainey or Paulson will even make the 53 let alone get utilised or factored into the game plan. If Rainey can't pick up the blitz is Haley going to let him get in the backfield anyway? Is Paulson going to be a better blocker than DJ? At one point this board was very optimistic about DJ's blocking skills.
And we really have no idea if Haley's offense is going to be any better than Arians. I hope it is and it's great you're getting excited about the draft picks but I'll have to get back to you about your thread title in 9 months time.

Who the hell is Will Johnson?

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Six callers ahead of us, Jimmy!

See, that is the difference right there, "we have to wait and see if they can block first, if Rainey can blitz pickup." That is the old offense, the Arians way of justifying things.

Rainey and Paulson are never going to be very good or probably even adequate blockers, but they did show the ability to be very good options in space, in catching the ball and making big plays. The Steelers prior to the 2012 draft would never have drafted Rainey or Paulson with Arians' offense in mind. There is a fundamental change happening here and people need to get their heads around it.

Just by looking at the past 4 years with Haley, the past 2 with KC and before that his last 2 with Arizona, I noticed that he does get the RBs involved in the passing game.

Dexter McCluster had 46 catches in 2011.
Jaamal Charles had 45 catches in 2010.
Tim Hightower had 63 catches in 2009.
Hightower had 34 catches, Arrington had 29 in 2008.

With Arians you had Mendenhal's catches decrease from a high of 25 in 2009 to 23 in 2010 to 18 last season. Redman had 18 catches last season. That just isn't getting it done in today's NFL. It is rare to find a team that doesn't have at least one RB with at least 35 catches. Don't believe me? Let us go down the list from last season's RBs shall we?


Bal - Ray Rice 76
Ten - Chris Johnson 57
SD - Mike Tolbert 54
Hou - Arians Foster 53
Chi - Matt Forte 52
SD - Ryan Matthews 50
NO - Pierre Thomas 50
Was - Roy Helu 49
Phi - LeSean McCoy 48
Car - Jonathan Stewart 47
KC - Dexter McCluster 46
Mia - Reggie Bush 43
Jax - Jones-Drew 43
StL - Steven Jackson 42
NYJ - Tomlinson 42
TB - Lumpkin 41
Buf - Fred Jackson 39 (in just 10 games)
Buf - CJ Spiller 39
Oak - Michael Bush 37...

...then you get towards the bottom and you get:
Pit - Mendenhal 18
Pit - Redman 18

Some teams like SD had 2 RB go over 50 and Buffalo had two RBs with 39 catches. Every team, except for the Steelers, seems to have found a way to get their RBs involved in the passing game. That was totally on Arians. He had no plan and made no effort to really involve the RBs. It made defenses that much more capable of stopping us in the Red zone, stopping us from converting first downs, and keeping the points scored lower.

If a defense is able to just dismiss the RBs and the 2nd TE as viable threats in the passing game then so much the better and Arians made it so easy for them. I think Tomlin was getting sick of that and had to know that a change was needed.

No offense scrunge, but Haley hasn't called a single play yet. It's not realistic to expect him to solve every problem on offense, nor is it fair to blame them all on Arians. I'm excited too, but our offense might not turn into the greatest show on turf overnight.

Arians absolutely would have taken a guy like Paulson. Hell, if you let him he'd probably have 3 H-backs on the roster. Rainey is a Todd Haley type of player, but Arians got TY Hilton, a Bruce Arians type of player just like Mike Wallace was.

You forgot about L. Pope. He's the #2 TE.