One Fan’s Frustration With the Pittsburgh Steelers

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Another NFL season, another crushing dénouement. A severe disappointment by the Steelers and another Lombardi for Brady and the Evil Mastermind.  After the game, Brady said he intends to play 3-5 more years. What does that mean?  It means this Steelers’ organization will watch the Patriots stock their stadium with more trophies than ours. It means that we have succumbed to just being good and thinking that is enough. It will be sad to say, that when we look back in say a decade to see that Ben, Brown and Bell never played in a Super Bowl together.   Let’s take a look at some examples of just how off track this organization has gone from its roots.

We have become the ‘TO Cowboys.’ The Chad “Ochocinco” Bengals. The Randy Moss (many teams)… Where the media and news stories are about the outlandish player tidings, and not the team raising trophies. We have accumulated a team of diva’s.  Social media darlings who secretly wish to be the Kardashian’s.  They haven’t learned that you need to WIN first. WIN first, then your proclivities are a subtitle. What has this team won? When you win, you can make albums, videos and if you choose embarrass yourself all over the internet. Take the ’85 Bears, the Super Bowl Shuffle. In today’s world its mere child’s play, but they WON so no one cared.  We have a team that acts as if they have won like the Patriots, but you don’t see FB live videos coming from their locker room.  You don’t hear about their WR running wrong routes because they didn’t get the ball…and when a player does become selfish? Well, ask Jamie Collins how it felt watching them win another title while he was on the Browns. The selfishness that permeates throughout this team is dreadful. The behavior that is tolerated is atrocious.

The Patriots AFCCG is a microcosm of everything wrong with this team.

There is a SERIOUS lack of accountability on this team. From top to bottom.  How there hasn’t been a coach terminated to this point is amazing. Haley has been a train wreck.  He got the job through nepotism, and it certainly wasn’t earned or warranted. How many playoff games has this team not scored 20 points? How many horrific critical play calls do we have to withstand?  I am still trying to understand the 3rd and 1 play vs the Pats in the AFCCG.  Let’s see. Guy has 2 broken fingers. Can’t catch the ball to begin with. Hasn’t played a meaningful down in 2 months. YES! Its critical we counter-punch here, so let me throw a 30-yard pass play to “Stonehands” when we need a yard and have been running well. The genius of Todd Haley. Tis’ apparent Ben is not fond of him (to be kind). He has done nothing to further this team except allow fantasy stats to be improved.  

LeVeon Bell continues to be the under-performing enigma. Sure, he had a great regular season, put up great stats… When the team needed him most he crumpled like a house of cards.  We are blessed DWill is the backup, a very capable one, but instead of dropping a rap about making $15 mil or about Skip Bayless, perhaps he should rap about being a better teammate, actually being around all season and growing up. BTW, now LaGarette Blount has 2 rings, Bell ZERO.

Antonio Brown. Running wrong routes and purposely sabotaging team? If that isn’t the worst type of subterfuge, I don’t know what more someone can do to a team.  Nearing 30 years old you’d think winning would mean everything to him, not self-serving videos.  He has shown himself to be quite selfish this season, albeit still performing at a high level…not unlike many non-winning diva WR’s in history.

Ben had an average season. Not great, not terrible. Whether some of that was attributable to his #1 WR running wrong routes, who knows but his home v road splits are not a pleasant sight.  I am STILL without explanation why a 6’5 Ben can’t run a QB sneak from the 3-inch line v New England.  Don’t tell me about his fragility.  He could stick out his arm and score from that distance.

The coaching staff…. A completely pathetic performance, from preparation to execution.  We won’t even get into special teams which has been a disaster all season. How Mr. Smith still is employed can only be explained by the optional lifetime coaching contracts the Steelers give everyone.  TOO MANY times this team didn’t show up and prepared to play a football game, and that, falls on coach Tomlin.

One of the biggest issues was the defense. The game plan was something out of a pee wee game. How many times did I have to sit in Gillette watching Bud Dupree and Harrison drop into coverage? Brady could have refinanced his palatial estate with all the time he had to observe the field. Brady has absolutely annihilated this defense every single time we played them with that zone coverage schemata. DESTROYED US. So, you know what, lets trot that old system garbage back out there and maybe we’ll trick him this time? They spread us out and made Hogan look like the next coming of Steve Largent. But don’t worry, here come the second half adjustments………………………..just wait……………………..they’re coming………………………………………………………hold on…………………………

Coach Tomlin was supposed to be a defensive minded coach. If that’s so, this game plan (if we can call it that) was an appalling representation of his skillset. The team came out lethargic and it continued throughout the game. The Pats came out flat in the Super Bowl and I wonder how their second half looked?  There is something missing either in the message the head coach is delivering or the current personnel on the roster are deaf to it.  

I have been a season ticket holder for almost 2 decades, never having sold a single seat to anyone in that time. My season tickets for 2017 are already listed for sale. This team has now become a “show me” team.  With the amount of capital, I expend both financially and human with time and energy, to attend every home game, this team needs to show me more.  In the 80’s and 90’s I could accept it, we didn’t have the franchise QB we needed. Bubby, Kordell, Malone… even O’Donnell.  Cowher didn’t win until he had Ben.  The Patriots have less talent and twice the success. What’s become clear is that ownership down to the staff has become complacent with finishing runner up.   The sentiments expressed by Mean Joe said it perfectly….

Coach T is right. The standard is the standard… and sadly for SteelersNation, that standard now rests in Foxboro.

Craig