Rooney In The Corner Of Haley After One Season As OC

It doesn’t sound in the end like Todd Haley is going to leave the Steelers for Arizona – or anywhere else for that matter.

Art Rooney II spoke about Haley to the Steelers official website, and seemed to defend the play-caller who down the stretch couldn’t help the Steelers score many points to end the year.

“If we look at it in terms of nine games into the season, our offense was functioning at a pretty high level,” said Rooney. “Ben was on track to have his best season of all time, and he was taking fewer sacks. So a lot of the things we were hoping for were happening. After he got hurt, our offense seemed to lose its rhythm, and even after Ben came back we never really regained that momentum.

“You have to look at it as: OK, when our quarterback was healthy what did we have? And what we had I thought was pretty good. Not that there aren’t things we don’t want to improve, but you would think the second year of a new offense would be better than the first. Hopefully those kinds of things will evolve in our favor.”

If you go back in recent history, Bruce Arians’ first season as OC for the Steelers saw the team go 10-6 and win the AFC North in Mike Tomlin’s first season and lose in the Wild Card game to the Jaguars.

Ken Whisenhunt’s first season as OC was 2004, a season in which the team went 15-1, and lost to the Patriots in the AFC Title game in Ben Roethlisberger’s first season.

In defense of Haley, Roethlisberger wasn’t very good at all in the teams last three games when he came back from injury.

The team should have won games early in the year in Oakland, in Tennessee, and then 8 turnovers killed them in Cleveland November 25th.

If they win even two of those three games, the team may still be playing today.