Bart Scott: Rodgers and OC Smith can take Steelers’ offense to the Super Bowl
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all right we are back on Get Up and our next feature is called Talk to Me it’s football and it begins in Green Bay we got Coach Lafleur we got Jordan Love they got a lot to say talk to me i think there’s like a narrative out there that for whatever reason that he wasn’t as productive as the year before well I mean he missed significant time he missed the better of three games and then also that like there was let’s be honest i mean we talked about this we did have a lot of drops last year i mean what is a step back is what I’d ask you know what I mean uh it’s all about the the goals of the team at the end of the day um you know I’d say we won more games than we did the year before so uh that’s why I asked you what is a step back all right so that’s Jordan Love and he has a supporter and our buddy Dan Olowski who yesterday tweeted “Anyone who says Jordan Love regressed last year doesn’t look at quarterback play properly thanks have an awesome day.” I’m dying to get Danny on here to talk about that because here’s what I thought I saw we have Jeff Darlington Dominique Foxworth and Tim my quarterback today i’ll start with you um and I will admit I I I picked Jordan Love to be the MVP of the league before the season began that was my predictions i was expecting him to elevate to a level where he was at the very very top of the league so maybe my expectations were too high and in fairness he got hurt right at the beginning of the year and maybe that was an impact all season long but the one thing he continues to have in his game at least him based upon what I see is the occasional headcratcher that is so startling like decisions that he makes every now and again that are so bad that they genuinely give you pause like they they they make you concerned that this is stuff that does not get coached out of his game because he’s not a rookie anymore you tell me Tim I defer to your expertise am I seeing that incorrectly cuz it sounds like Dan says I am no I mean listen I I think that like the two plays that we just showed they’re the plays where you’re like man like that that’s awful like and if he were to sit you know on the show he’d be like “Yeah those were bad and I know better you know almost you know like we’ve seen young quarterbacks make and you say “Well you just got to get them out of your system.” So we definitely saw some of those and I think it’s fair to say when that happens to say like “Okay well I I don’t feel like we see Josh Allen do that or I don’t feel like we see uh you know Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson do that.” And green to your point look you’re picking him as a as a you know an MVP candidate and based on how he finished the year prior I think a lot of people felt that way i forget what the tear was it was like 17 touchdowns and one pick in the back half of the season i mean it was it was an incredible run and so uh you know expectations changed do I think he is a worse quarterback in 2025 than he was in in 2020 you know four or three no I don’t i think he’s better um you know does he will he have to you know show that he doesn’t make the bonehead plays sure he absolutely will but I think he’ll play better i think some of the stuff that Mattafleur talked about in terms of um you know injury he was injured and when he came back he wasn’t fully healthy and the fact that they did have drops and injured receivers like those things are true so I think you know it’s never just one thing and it’s never just you know one play that defines a quarterback but look I I think you put it all together i think he’s an ascending and better player well and and they did finally take a wide receiver in the first round for the first time in what felt like forever dominique Jordan Love go yeah i mean I think it’s in the wording like he didn’t regress he said you you said that he hasn’t removed these plays from his game like yeah those plays are in his game he still has room to get better but he has he gotten worse no as much as I’d like to disagree with Dan Orloski he’s right i think that Jordan Love is as good last year as he was the year before and I mean controlling for the injury and all that but I do think you nailed it Greeny when you pointed out that all of our expectations I think he was not as good as we expected him to be but he’s just as good as he was i think we expected him to take another leap and to get into conversation with some of those names that that we that we like to hear around the MVP conversation he’s not there yet so he hasn’t regressed but he hasn’t taken that leap and and and Jeff maybe another piece of this which is completely unfair to him because it has nothing to do with him is the lineage that he is following in because he is on the team that had Brett Favre and then after Favre had Aaron Rogers and so now it is so easy for us to say “Oh my goodness look they’ve got the next one in this line of guys who are going to be that good.” And maybe again this may be more about what I and some others were expecting from him than it is about what he actually did expectations certainly are a big part of this by the way his passer rating was slightly higher this last season than the previous one not to put that much into statistics but I will also add this we’re talking about a player who really doesn’t have that big of a body of work you know we look at CJ Strad his rookie year and then his quote unquote regression the year after that he played historically well his rookie year when we talk about Jordan Love we have to remember he got paid essentially after what was his rookie year as the face of the franchise and that does in fact heighten expectations jordan Love is very different when we evaluate him than any other quarterback across the league for that very reason it is so rare for us to basically take a quarterback put him on the field as a starter and then at the end of that year give him that monster extension it changes everything for him i think that we all need to kind of step back and say allow him to create a body of work that is more uh in fairness uh something that we can evaluate as that full sample size tim final word yeah I mean I look I you just look at the division and you look at the quarterbacks in the division is he the best in the division i think some people could sit there and argue that he is some people may take Jared Goff but the reality is look he is a a to Jeff’s point too a young and inexperienced quarterback that is an ascending player like that that is absolutely what he still is so will there be mistakes yeah there will be look Josh Allen had a run of of red zone interceptions patrick Mahomes had games where he was turning the football over it happens to even the best so look I I to me this feels like a a kind of a panic about you know probably nothing okay i and I and I hope that you are right because I’m going to pick them to do a lot of great things again this season and this time I’d like to be right let’s get to the next one let’s talk about a quarterback about whom there are no questions joe Burrow and the Bengals another team looking to take a step forward they missed the postseason last year and you need to hear how Burrow addressed that yesterday joe talk to me there’s always more you can do you know if I played even better then we wouldn’t have been in that spot that that we were in so I’m just focused on trying to get better myself and you know I know everybody in the locker room feels the same way so if I go out there and play better than I did last year then uh it doesn’t matter what goes on everywhere else oh my goodness for Joe Burrow to even passively suggest that he was part of the reason the Bengals didn’t reach their goals last season is actually three things all at once it is him being a great teammate it is a fascinating insight into the drive that makes him what he is and it is as patently ridiculous an assessment of football as you will ever hear let me remind you of what happened cincinnati went 9 and 8 last year despite allowing 434 points there only three teams in the AFC that allowed more than that last year cleveland Jacksonville and Tennessee two of them allowed 435 so that’s only one more point all those teams were terrible the Browns and Titans combined to win six games and they finished with the first and second picks in the draft burrow had the Bengals in contention on the season’s final day here are the big picture individual stats burrow had a QBR of 74.7 very simply that means his team was supposed to go 13-4 he led the league in passing yards he threw 43 touchdowns and nine interceptions and he did that playing behind what was statistically the worst pass blocking offensive line in the NFL so those are the big numbers let’s drill deeper nfl teams that scored 33 or more points in a game last year aside from the Bengals went 79 and seven the
