SB Nation - Arnold Harrison

Browns place TE Steve Heiden and P Dave Zastudil on IR; Claim two players off waivers.

Ryan Kelsey — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:06:21 -0000

Cleveland Browns Punter Dave Zastudil will miss the rest of the season. He may have been the MVP of the Buffalo win. And the injury might have cost Dave a trip to the Pro Bowl. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)

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The Plain Dealer is reporting that TE Steve Heiden and P Dave Zastudil have been placed on the IR.

Heiden hurt his ankle in Monday Night's game against the Ravens. Zastudil has been battling an injury for several weeks and had to sit out Monday Night's game. Reggie Hodges assumed the punting duties and probably will keep the very demanding position for the rest of the season.

Heiden had 10 catches for 73 yards and a rare Browns' TD. Pride of Ohio University, Zastudil already had 25 punts downed inside the 20 (out of just 49 punts!) and was averaging 44.7 yards per punt.

Replacing them on the roster are two players claimed off waivers:

- Pittsburgh LB Arnold Harrison. Has 7 tackles this year for the Steelers and 30 tackles in his 3 seasons, all with the Browns' Rival. He was undrafted out of Georgia.

- Green Bay WR Jake Allen. I can't find much about him, except it appears he was on the Packers practice squad all of 2008 and 2009 until being signed and active for 1 or 2 games. He had no catches or stats in those games. He was undrafted out of Division III Mississipi College (where he was a D-III All American). He is 6'4" 198 lbs.

BTSC Mid-Week News and Notes

Blitzburgh — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:16:09 -0000

More photos » by Gene J. Puskar - AP

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Happy Wednesday all. Sorry for my absence - been dealing with the same frustrating computer problems. Not good. I'm up and running though so let's get to some news and notes about the Pittsburgh Steelers as we loom closer to Sunday's important game with the lowly Kansas City Chiefs.

* First things first - the first action by Coach Tomlin to try to fix the team's special teams. Longtime reserve linebacker and special teams mainstay Arnold Harrison was released on Monday. Taking his place will be 2008 undrafted rookie linebacker Donovan Woods, who was brought up from the practice squad. Our own datruth4life was on this one following the Steelers defeat on Sunday. He mentioned that Woods willingness to go head hunting on special teams will hopefully rub off on Patrick Bailey - an undrafted free agent from last year as well that's not been nearly as good in year two as he was last season.

* The Kansas City Chiefs got a break out performance of sorts on Sunday from their second year speed merchant running back, Jamal Charles. The former Texas Longhorns star and collegiate sprint champion rushed for 100+ yards and 1 TD in KC's 16-10 victory over the Raiders. I thought that the Redskins would be better off without Clinton Portis for the time being; I think the same could be said of the Chiefs, who I think are now more explosive offensively with Charles than they were with Larry Johnson. Here's an article about Charles and how he will be a marked man by the Steelers defense on Sunday (scroll down to where it says BullsEye).

* Here's one more reason Jamal Charles will need to have a big game if the Chiefs hope to win at home against the defending champs: their top WR Dwayne Bowe has been suspended by the NFL for four games for testing positive for a performance enhancing substance. Arrowhead Pride, SBN's outstanding Chiefs blog, has the story.

* Safety Troy Polamlau is officially listed as questionable for Suday's game. Hmmm. I suppose that's great news - for a moment there I was convinced he was going to be out for quite some time, potentially even the whole year. I guess not. Whew. Polamalu has a mild PCL strain. The good news is that this is not related to the MCL injury he suffered earlier in the year. Thought he's listed as 'questionable', I sure hope he doesn't play this weekend and instead rests up for the following weekend when Pittsburgh travels to Baltimore. Frankly I don't think there's much of a chance he will play.

* I sure hope there aren't too many parallels between this season and the 2006 campaign, but remember the last time we played the Chiefs? We were in a much bigger hole than we are now, that's for sure. But the Steelers could stand to have a performance like the one they turned in that day three years ago.

* Football Outsiders has the Steelers ranked 31st in aggregate special teams play through 10 weeks. The worst of the four components? Obviously kick return coverage, where the Steelers rank dead last by quite a bit.

* Dale Lolley notes that Mike Tomlin has said that Travis Kirschke and Carey Davis will both practice today. Both have missed the past two games with injuries.

* And finally, Jim Wexell notes that the defense played pretty darn well in defeat on Sunday. In fact, as his article states to begin:

The last time the Steelers lost to a team that had fewer than 14 first downs, 218 total yards and didn’t score an offensive touchdown was in Oakland during the 2006 season

Steelers Defeat Titans 13-10 in Overtime, Begin Title Defense With Opening Victory

Blitzburgh — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:00:58 -0000

Ok, whew. 1-0. As Mike Tomlin said last year, people get too preoccupied with style points. Tonight's 13-10 victory by the Pittsburgh Steelers over the Tennessee Titans left plenty to be desired if you were looking for perfection, but at the end of the day, just about everything imperative that we needed to see did in fact unfold. To my notes from the game.

* Hmm, where to start? Well, I guess as good a place as any is to state that the 2009 Steelers really aren't going to be much different than the 2008 Steelers. By that I mean we can all forget about some sort of revamped running game against the league's better rush defenses. The Steelers proved again tonight that picking up tough yardage in the running game against a stout defense is going to be tough this coming season. The Steelers finished with just 36 yards on 23 carries and were a mediocre 4/14 on 3rd down partly because of their inability to again move the chains on 3rd and short situations with the ground game.

* If the running game was a disappointment, Big Ben's performance had to be considered an outstanding development. The 2-time Super Bowl winning quarterback completed 12 straight passes at one point late in the game and finished with 363 yards passing on 33 of 43 attempts. He was picked off twice but one of those came at the end of the half on a Hail Mary. His other interception was an early season miscalculation, but all in all I thought Roethlisberger looked exquisitely sharp and more ready than ever to lead his team to great things. Bottom line is this team has a top 3 quarterback in this league and that's going to take you pretty far. Couple that with an elite defense and look out...

* Would this be the year that Santonio Holmes broke through and emerged as a true star at the wide receiver position? And if he did - and actually, if he didn't as well - would he handle the situation with the class of a Steelers player and continue to work within the team framework? For a night, Holmes proved he was both ready to establish himself as a Pro Bowl caliber play maker as well as to wait his turn and wait for the game to come to him patiently. Holmes finished with 9 catches for 131 yards and 1 touchdown.

* Obviously his fumble at the end of regulation was a huge mistake, but I was also pleased to see Hines Ward play good football tonight against a pretty solid Titans secondary. Ward also finished with 100+ yards. He caught 8 balls for 103 and again proved that he's capable of getting the offense going with one of his patented big plays. His 29 yard catch and run near the end of the first half led to the game's first score just several plays later.

* Changing gears here...is Tennesee the Ohio State of the NFL? Jeff Fisher is a pretty good football coach, don't get me wrong. He's never really going to 'lose' a football team like you'll see a Romeo Crennel or an Eric Mangini do. But I don't know if I'd ever truly like my chances under Jeff Fisher with just a solid quarterback like Kerry Collins (as compared to a very, very good one like Steve McNair in his prime).

* Justin Gage more or less had his way with William Gay I felt. Gage finished with 7 catches for 78 yards and 1 touchdown. Not sure just how many of those catches came against Gay, but it felt like a fair number of them were against him. There was also at least one big gain from Gage against Gay that was negated by penalty. Gay, to his credit, also made some nice plays against the Titans, but as I've been since the minute we let Bryant McFadden walk, I'm still concerned about Gay playing a full season in a huge role opposite Ike Taylor. Particularly if...

* Troy Polamlu is seriously injured. Polamalu was absolutely dominating the game before his left knee was tweaked on a blocked FG attempt that he tried to pick up and run. 280 pound Alge Crumpler landed on his knee, extending it awkwardly. These notes are being written just a bit after the conclusion of the game, so no news yet has surfaced about the severity of Polamalu's injury. Expect the worse though. It looked ugly on television. Fingers crossed.

If Polamalu is lost for a significant amount of time, all bets are off really with this defense. I think it could still be good. Very good, in fact. But the bottom line is the offense will have to be significantly more consistent and be better controlling the clock if Polamalu were not back there on defense being a game-changer. Let's just wait and see for now.

* Staying on the defensive side of the ball, a quick kudos to Keyaron Fox for his nice game filling in for Lawrence Timmons at inside linebacker. Fox finished with 5 tackles and really did a noticeably good job against both the pass and the run. The Steelers will benefit from Timmons's return, particularly if Polamalu is lost for a number of games, but it's really, really good to know that the Steelers seem to have a player in Fox who's just about as solid and complete a player as Larry Foote was for the past several years in Pittsburgh.

* In my brief preview to the game, I wondered who would fill the void left by Anthony Madison being cut. Well, for a night it was two mainstay veterans of special teams - Andre Frazier and Arnold Harrison. Both were outstanding headhunters on special teams against the Titans. Well done.