Tim Benz: Steelers' same old song about fixing the run game is going over like a 'Led Zeppelin'

I wonder if Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger likes Led Zeppelin. What about offensive coordinator Matt Canada?

If they do, then they may know that Led Zeppelin’s epic hit “Stairway to Heaven” turned 50 years old last week.

Note, I said “Stairway to Heaven.” Not “Stairway to Seven.”

No, that mothballed old T-shirt you bought in the Strip District on a drunken impulse after the Super Bowl XLIII parade is only 12 years old. However, based on how the Steelers have finished their seasons the last decade or so, it probably feels like 50.

Unfortunately, “Stairway to Heaven” is very difficult to appreciate as one should anymore. The song has been parodied, covered and lampooned so many times, it’s almost impossible to take it at face value.

Thanks a lot, “Wayne’s World.”

It’s still a great song if you can pretend that you’re hearing it for the first time. Try it. You may physically feel the light bulb go on over your head as Jimmy Page tears into the guitar while Robert Plant is belting out, “And as we wind on down the road.”

But it’s been so replayed so frequently, hearing it again almost falls on deaf ears. It becomes redundant. White noise.

Kind of like when the Steelers talk about establishing a run game.

But after a year in which the franchise finished dead last in the NFL in rushing offense at 84.4 yards per game, the team is spinning the hits like an hour of “Get the Led Out” on your favorite classic rock station.

Take it away, Art Rooney II!

“It has to start with a commitment to the running game. I don’t know that we’ve always had that,” the owner said after the season ended.

Last month, general manager Kevin Colbert jumped behind the microphone like Sean McDowell in afternoon drive, “To put out the kind of running game we did, no one was good enough. And again, that is a collective effort. We need to be better.”

Dear god, I can practically feel the pulse of John Bonham’s drum set pounding in my chest!

Now this week, Roethlisberger and Canada added some back up vocals.

“All of us realize we didn’t get done everything we wanted to (accomplish) in the run game,” Canada told Steelers.com. “All of us who are here are a part of that. We have to improve upon it in a multitude of ways. We are focused on it. We are studying who is running the ball well. We have always believed in running the ball well.

“You win up front. You have to be able to run the football when they know you are going to run it. And you have to be able to throw when they know you are going to throw it.”

And this is what a “good friend” of Ben Roethlisberger told Peter King of “Football Morning in America” about his view of running the ball more after he led the league in pass attempts each of his last two full seasons at quarterback.

“He’s very much on-board with the team’s sole off-season focus (even at the expense of losing productive wideout JuJu Smith-Schuster) of revamping the run game after a putrid 3.62-yard average carry last year,” King wrote. “He understands that’s going to be the emphasis in low-cost free-agency and the draft and with new offensive coordinator Matt Canada’s playbook.”

You guys can’t see this right now. But as I’m typing, I’m literally holding an open Zippo lighter like I’m in the last row of Three River Stadium in July 1973.

Again, though, like “Stairway,” that’s me pretending I’m hearing this spiel for the first time. Like I haven’t heard it weekly, or annually, for much of the last three seasons when they have been 32nd, 28th and 31st in rush yards per game.

Come to think of it, this tune feels even more familiar than that. Like I’ve heard it for large chunks of the last 10 seasons aside from Le’Veon Bell’s prime years of 2014-17.

Sometimes, even then.

Sorry, guys. I gotta see this song played live before I believe the music is real.

I have to see you convert a third-and-goal from a jumbo set, instead of going shotgun, five wide. Get Ben Roethlisberger under center occasionally. Use a conventional handoff. Start Kevin Dotson at guard full time. And if you keep Matt Feiler, put him at tackle.

Find a second tight end who is willing — and able — to run block better than Eric Ebron. Draft or sign a running back better than Benny Snell to replace James Conner once he leaves via free agency.

I have to see a fullback used on offense and not just a special teams prop, as Roosevelt Nix and Derek Watt were the last few years. I need to witness the run occasionally setting up the pass instead of the other way around. You have to go a full month before spinning a mealy-mouthed explanation that the short pass game “replaces” the run.

Really? It does? Well, not well enough. Buffalo, Cincinnati, Washington, and Cleveland proved that.

And when a run play is sent in from the booth, Roethlisberger needs to be told he can’t check out of it unless the defensive alignment gives him a reason to do so. Not just because he feels like it.

Then, and only then, will I allow myself to listen to those kinds of lyrics from the Steelers about their run game and let it be music to my ears.

Because as a wise man once sang, “sometimes words have two meanings.” One meaning for the Steelers is what they want to tell you about their offensive plan. The other is what they actually end up doing.

And I really don’t want an encore of the last three years.