D Squared

The 2008-2009 NFL season isn't over yet, and already I'm gameplanning for next season. While the actual Steelers coaching staff is conjuring up ways to defeat Pittsburgh West, I'm figuring out ways to get Dennis Dixon on the field next year.

"No, I'm not busy. Yes, I'll pick Ben up at the hospital again."

When the Steelers took Dixon with their fifth round pick, two words popped into my head...Omar Jacobs. "Omar who?" some of you may say. Oh yeah, that guy, the former Bowling Green QB taken by Bill Cowher who barely lasted five minutes in his first training camp. But Dennis Dixon is different. Dixon was lighting up the PAC-10 last season before tearing up his knee. The guy was so badass that he tried to play through all the ligament damage, but to no avail. As fate would have it, because of the injury Dixon slipped late in the draft to the Steelers.
Dixon is a freak, a phenomenal athlete who threw for almost 3000 yards and 20 TD's in only 9 games in his Heisman-worthy 2007 campaign. He's got good size, and a cannon for an arm (he was drafted as an outfielder for the Braves.) He ran the spread at Oregon, and sometimes that doesn't translate to NFL success (ask Vince Young.)

This feels like it happened forty years ago.

The Steelers need to find a way to circumvent those crazy third QB rules in the NFL and get Dixon on the field. With the great success Miami had running the Wildcat offense this past season and the Steelers' history of embracing gimmicky offenses, it seems like a natural fit.

"Wild. Cat."

The question is whether or not Dixon would accept a "Slash"-type role, or be stubborn and refuse to play anything but QB. The Steelers have nothing to lose, already set at QB for the foreseeable future, unless Little Ben decides to take up helmetless motorcycling again (sorry, couldn't resist.) I cannot understand why a guy who has an opportunity to contribute and actually get on the field would hold out just so he can be the next Brian St. Pierre.

The patron saint of third-string quarterbacks.

So somebody contact Bruce Arians, I know he isn't busy because if he was, he would have long come up with a short passing game to best utilize Ben's skills and counteract the o-line's poor pass-blocking skills (somebody introduce him to the three-step drop, please...and someone please tell him that Heath Miller could be one of the top three tight ends in the NFL, if they'd look to him more than twice a game.)