Saturday, September 12, 2015

Are you ready for some football? Check!

I'm a huge Pittsburgh Steelers fan (for those first time readers) and I LOVE NFL football. Each Sunday I blog my picks for the upcoming week. Each Monday I write a wrap up of the previous games. A lot of my readers skip it because they aren't fans. A lot of non fans read it anyway because I'm witty? A lot of people read it because they like football. I'm just thrilled people are reading!

This post didn't post when it should have so I'm adding to it with my reviews of Thursday's game. Sigh.


This year before the Pittsburgh Steelers (my fav team for all new readers) even played I had my decorations out and put up. Flags out? Check. All four of them. Except I didn't like the positioning of the two flags. So I went inside and ordered another flag from Amazon. Because it's football season. And I can. It isn't here yet so these two will have to fly to the win.


Decorate garage door with my Steelers magnets? Check. I have all six magnets from our Super Bowl wins, but they are faded from the sun and I wasn't going to put them up. But then I happened to be carrying around a Sharpie in my pocket and so I went over them with that and OH, YEAH, just like new.


Front door decorated? Check. The sign I've had for several years and in the off season it hangs on the door to my Steelers room. The other two decals are new and so I put them here to show my pride. And because I had nowhere else to put them.


Decorated my body with Steelers merchandise? Check. You can't see from this picture (I'm hiding my triple chins) but I also was wearing Steelers earrings. Everyone at the dentist office kept calling me Ms. Bling.

Tonight is the start of the NFL football season and the Steelers are leading it off. Well, probably, the stupid, cheating Super Bowl champions are really leading it off, but whatever. Are you ready for some football? Damn skippy I am.

Steelers Recap:

This season I am turning over a new football so to speak. I am not going to follow my routine of wearing a certain shirt on Monday if we win. I am not going to wear the same outfit on game day if we won the last time I wore it. I am not going to allow myself to fall into that superstition any more. I am taking charge! I expect the team to win on its own merit, dammit, and I will not cave. At least I thought all of that before we lost....

Opening Night - I started watching from the moment NBC went live from New England. I loved the interview that Hines Ward did with Antonio Brown. It made me chuckle. I was happy to see my good buddy Chris Collinsworth. I was not happy to see that angry-cut-off-Dungy Rodney Harrison back. I was rolling my eyes at the the Patriots self congratulatory Super Bowl ceremony. I was cheering when the game finally started.

Roger Goodell - He didn't attend opening night. He thought the focus should be on football. Okay, we have a problem if the head of the organization doesn't attend the season opener of said organization. He needs to go. Fire him already.

Rodney Harrison - When asked if he ever "wondered about things" while playing for the Patriots he said absolutely not. Then he got defensive. Which made me wonder. But really, it was a silly question because what else is he going to say?

Headset Issue - Pretty much as soon as the game started the Steelers coach to coach headsets stopped working and the coaches heard instead the Patriots radio broadcast of the game. Immediately NBC made it an issue. For the next two hours we heard about this fiasco and we are still hearing about this issue on Saturday. Frankly, it is pitiful. In this day and age of electronics the NFL really has no excuse (rain? please) for this type of thing happening. It is stupid and embarrassing. The fact that it happened on the visitors side only. Well...sorry New England but this kind of crap is going to follow you now since you've been caught with your hands inside the cookie jar one too many times.

Tom Brady - I go back and forth with this guy, but pretty much I don't care for him. Do I think he pulled a fast one with the deflating of balls nonsense? Absolutely. Do I feel he would cheat to win? Absolutely. Do I think he is a hell of a quarterback? Absolutely. Thursday night he showed why coming out of the tunnel fired up to play and fired up to win. And he did. Period.

Steelers Defense - Last year fans complained about all of the "old guys". Now this year they will complain about all of the "young guys". This is why I say we need to keep a few old guys. Old guys need to settle down and lead the young guys. The problem is that the Steelers kept the wrong old guys in my opinion. What I wouldn't have given for Troy Polamalu Thursday night. Mistakes left and right by the defense made me realize it is going to be a long season for a team that is known for its defense. I think getting rid of Defensive Coordinator Dick LeBeau was the wrong thing to do when starting off with a a slew of young'ins as molding them into first rate players was his specialty. But he's gone and the team has got to move forward and boy, do they have a lot of work cut out for them. Missed tackles aplenty. Missed communication signals. Penalties. Illegal formations. I hope they don't have the weekend off.


Antonio Brown - I follow this guy on every social media outlet there is almost. I like him. I didn't like that he was going to hold out, but he claims that wasn't the case so I haven't unfollowed him. He is too charismatic. He also follows up what his mouth says. He thinks he is the greatest wide receiver. He showed last night that he is certainly one of the top three with 9 receptions, 133 yards, and one touchdown. It was his 33rd consecutive game with 5+ receptions and 50+ yards. He made a couple of crazy, amazing catches last night. If you are going to play without modesty, at least back it up. He does.

Josh Scobee - The Steelers second choice for replacing Shaun Suisham was this kicker from the Jacksonville Jaguars. He missed the first two kicks for Pittsburgh from 44 and 46 yards and then made two, but those missing six points sure hurt. I knew when I got the news about Suisham while sitting outside a dressing room in a teen store in the mall that it would hurt more than people thought.

Big Ben - I hate when the media gets hyped on him because I feel he can't ignore that. Setting a Steelers record for consecutive starts with 159 under his belt, he wasn't Tom Brady. He ended with 351 yards, but he has got to control the field his offense better and lackluster missed tosses he missed grated on me because by now that shouldn't happen in this kind of game. Not when you are making the big bucks buddy.

4th quarter penalty - The Patriots defense did a little shifting on the goal line at third and goal in the 4th quarter that drew a false start from Steelers Kelvin Beachum. Ben Roethlisberger felt it was an unwritten rule. "I thought that there was a rule against that," Roethlisberger said. "Maybe there's not. Maybe it's just an written rule. We saw it on film, that the Patriots do that." Okay, well here again is what I'm talking about. Remind your offensive of that shit in the huddle, Ben. Take charge. And for god's sake, when you're angry about something turn that into a touchdown, would you? That's what Peyton Manning and Tom Brady do. They get even. We have got to find that mentality in this team.

DeAngelo Williams - Le'Veon Bell who? Mess up and you just might find you are out of a job. Williams ran for 127 yards in his first game as a Steelers and kept some of the heat off of Ben. Granted he had some nice holes, but by golly he found them and took advantage.

Belichick not happy - Well, when is he? During a conference call yesterday, he whined about how the rest of the world is focusing more on cheating than on footbal. "Your know this organization has won a lot of games, but particularly in reference to the great teams from '01, '03, '04, back in there, and all the great players that played on those teams -- " he said. He then went on to name them including Rodney Harrison, Ty Law, Tedy Bruschi, and Tom Brady. "--to take away from what those guys accomplished, what those teams accomplished, how good they were, how many great players we had, how well they played in big games, how they consistently showed up and made big plays and game-winning plays. It's not right." No, Bill, what isn't right is that the Patriots maybe won those games with a little more than good players. That's what isn't right.

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