USA Today Sports, Charles LeClaire photo
The start of this game was not promising. Nor the middle, for that matter. You could excuse the Steelers not moving the ball as efficiently with Joshua Dobbs at quarterback as the Falcons did with Matt Ryan at quarterback.
But it got more and more difficult to excuse the Steelers not moving the ball at all as the first teamers for the Falcons stayed on the sideline.
Another fine name already on the roster—Jordan Dangerfield (photo from USA Today Sports)
The excitement is mounting as stuff having to do with actual football is happening, like last night’s announcement of the league schedule for the coming season. Shockingly, given that the word on the street was that Pittsburgh was due to start the season with a home game, given that they haven’t had one for a few years now, they are once again starting on the road. Since the opponent is the Browns, this is perhaps less important that it might be if it were, say, the Chiefs. But then again, maybe it is now Cleveland’s time. Let us hope not.
The Chiefs, oddly, start out the season at Foxborough, and one wonders why the Chiefs drew the short straw. You would have thought it would be a rematch with the Falcons. As Michael North, the guy in charge of the scheduling, told NFL.com’s Judy Battista:
It’s rare that you get to disappoint 32 billionaires and five television networks on the same day.
Seems like an odd thing to aspire to. Anyhow, as Mike Tomlin (or just about any of his players by this point) would say, “It is what it is.” A true tautology if there ever was one.
So let’s move on to the next major excitement, the draft, and wrap up my draft using the Best Name Available metric. We will move right into BLA (Best Looking Available) next week. Luckily for you all, I don’t have time to do an “All-Cooper” draft, but I easily could have, as there are a large number of players to choose from with either this first or last name. But there’s only so much intensive research I can do…
via Whirl Magazine
As I write this it is 10:25 Thursday evening. By the time you read this I will be 63 years old. I’ve been celebrating early today by using up old paint on the walls of the workshop. I then was able to hang up the hand saws, which I have been wanting to do for ages. I was amazed to discover that we actually have about seven hacksaws, in addition to a full panoply of wood cutting devices, so you might not want to annoy me. I also finally got around to cutting up my husband’s old underwear for rags. The glamor never stops.
I decided to see whether any of the current Steelers share a birthday with me. Unfortunately none of them do, although there are a goodly number of December birthdays later in the month, including a few of my favorite players—Tyler Matakevich, Eli Rogers, Vince Williams, Anthony Chickillo, and Jordan Dangerfield.
Steelers.com
by Ivan Cole
Ivan sent me his game commentary very late Sunday night, as did Homer J. Homer’s comments and report card are in yesterday’s Second Thoughts. Since Ivan phrased his commentary as a Q & A, it appears today, as Hombre de Acero is still unavailable.
Ivan made a few preliminary notes: Read more
Tom Puskar photo
Homer J and Ivan both had plenty to say about Sunday’s game. Not a surprise. We all have plenty to say because it was so very satisfying. For one thing, perhaps the Steelers won’t make us all look like fools for our confident predictions of a great season. But there were a lot of interesting facets to the game beyond the “old-fashioned beat-down” aspects.
First was the score in the first quarter. The Steelers have never put up 22 points in the first quarter. Adrian (eldest son) and I were extrapolating an 88-0 win, but perhaps it was overambitious. Even the 58-0 win we projected at half time was, in the event, a non-starter. But both of us were perfectly happy to take a win by 29 points, with the other team’s points all coming in the last 11 minutes.
Charles LeClaire/USA Today Sports
In Part 1 I named four pairs of “either-or” guys for my final roster prediction. Today I’m going to address what may be the most difficult pair, that of Tyler Matakevich or Steven Johnson. Honestly, I don’t want to see either of them go.
Matakevich is one of the guys I think would either not make it to the practice squad or would be poached from it.
Steven Johnson brings a lot to the table in terms of experience. Both of them seem to be fine human beings.
But for them both to make the 53-man roster there would almost certainly have to be a serious injury to someone the defense can ill afford to lose. So let’s look at what they did in Game Three, at New Orleans.
