By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Against the grain of reason, against the grain of evidence, and entirely against the flow of ready excuses, Willie Parker executed another cutback in the minutes after the Steelers sidestepped the Browns Sunday, shifting the discussion with the same fluid flash that has made him famous.
DD Grassmaster, which is the name of the playing surface at Heinz Field rather than, as I suspected, the opening act for Jay Z, had little or nothing to do with Parker's intermittent pratfalls on the margins of another 100-yard performance. If, as Willie said, he left a lot of rushing yards unclaimed in various sectors of the North Side lawn, it was primarily his fault for, as he put it, "not getting my feet under me."
It's pretty hard to lead the conference in rushing without your feet under you, but everyone has a kind of inner gyroscope that triggers some confidence alarm when it leans away from total control. You don't think much of the implications of your inner gyroscope when you're taking out the trash, but when you're streaking toward eight in the box trying to identify the exact strands of DD Grassmaster that will support an instantaneous cut, it can get complicated. When you're doing this with the kind of speed Willie Parker has, the variables are more volatile still.
Lonnie Smith, a brilliant prospect in the Philadelphia Phillies' minor-league system in the late 1970s, was so fast he had trouble going from first base to third at full speed without falling down. Dwight Stone, a former Steelers scatback and special teams burner, veered out of bounds on his way to an uncontested touchdown once by failing to command the old inner gyroscope.
Even someone as accomplished as Parker can wind up on the ground without being touched, without knowing how he got there.
"It's all about not getting carried too far into the moment," Parker said after sitting out practice in sweats yesterday, the result of some hip discomfort. "The thing is to be patient, which is how I got here, and not throw away everything I've learned. I threw it away in that game."
Parker knifed into defenses for 100 yards or more six times this season and nine times in this team's past 13 games, but neither that nor the fact that the Steelers have ascended to their customary slot atop the AFC's rushing stats has quelled the suspicion that this particular ground attack is still evolving.
"You don't want to be hitting on all cylinders at the halfway point," Hines Ward shrugged before practice yesterday. "Sometimes you're not going to be at your best in the running game. We did a good job in the passing game the last two weeks and it won us a couple of games, but Willie Parker starts this offense. Willie Parker's gonna have a 200-yard game again pretty soon. So we don't want to get frustrated and steer off course."
No one's advocating any kind of course correction for a 7-2 team that's 4-0 in the AFC North (unless it involves the possibility of tackling a kick returner), but most serious observers still regard Bruce Arians' rushing protocols as in some ways incomplete, most notably the boss.
Not Springsteen, Mike Tomlin.
"We have to get better in that regard," the head coach said the other day. "We have to get better at sustaining blocks for [Parker]. We are running the ball effectively. He did run for 100 yards. I am excited that he feels like he left some yards out there, because I believe he did."
While Willie reunites with his gyroscope, parallel development must continue all along an offensive line that ought to be a little more cohesive than it has been considering that the same five fellas have started every game.
"We can get a lot better in the run game, blocking it up," said Willie Colon, in his first season as the starting right tackle. "We had a chance Sunday to put that game away a lot sooner than we did. We didn't start off very well, but I think our rapport is getting stronger."
Parker needs 111 yards Sunday in beauteous East Rutherford to pass Rocky Bleier for seventh place on the club's all-time list of glorious ground gainers. He needs 127 for a third-consecutive 1,000-yard season, at which time he'll join Messrs. Harris and Bettis in that club. If he gets even 100, it says here, the Steelers will be 8-2 and 19-1 in Parker's 100-yard games. So if you're miffed that Parker has only two touchdowns a year after scoring 16, know that Willie will still beat you in the hypercritical Olympics.
"He's very self-critical," running backs coach Kirby Wilson said yesterday. "We want perfection and so does he. He understands what he's missing. He loves the feedback from his coaches and his teammates. He's just got to be a little more patient, and still be in attack mode.
"It's pretty hard to argue with what he's done."
You'd think.
Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com.
First published on November 15, 2007 at 12:00 am
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