During his talk with the media on Wednesday, Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker LaMarr Woodley said that it wasn’t his responsibility to contain Oakland Raiders quarterback Terrelle Pryor on the 93-yard touchdown run to start the game. According to him, he was responsible for the dive back.
With the blame off Woodley, that leaves inside linebacker Lawrence Timmons as the player responsible for Pryor in a scrape exchange and you can read about it here in a post by Chris Brown on Smart Football. Timmons falls for the play fake to running back Darren McFadden as it looks like a power run to the left behind the pulling right guard. Timmons should have instead scraped over the top on the backside to defend against Pryor and thus the lane is vacated.
Veteran linebacker Larry Foote refused to place the blame on Timmons during a Tuesday morning interview on 93.7 The Fan, but he did say that Woodley carried out his assignment properly.
“That was a great play for that call,” said Foote. “LaMarr Woodley was doing his job. He’s supposed to go down with the running back off that option. The little wrinkle in there that got some guys fooled is when they pulled the guard. We hadn’t quite yet seen that play. They pulled the guard and they just beat the defense. Some guys were just distracted by that guard and he kept it and 92 yards later he’s in the end zone.”
Safety Ryan Clark of course could have prevented the run from going for a touchdown had he stayed in the middle of the field, but he didn’t.
