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12 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Really, I thought he was pretty unfairly maligned and the league used him as a whipping boy because they had to look like they were doing something to combat CTS.

It was easier to pick out a few physical players than do something meaningful for safety like ban the concrete turf that these guys are still getting slammed into weekly.

Fuck Goodell.

Referring to him going to Bengals and Patriots. The hits were awesome. 

There's been a number of Pittsburgh athletes I've done an about face on over the years. Marian Hossa, AB, James Harrison, Matt Niskanen, and others. Once glorified in the black and gold, only to be hated. I'm now putting Ken (ny) Pickett at the top of that list. His moxy was something to admire for a while but eventually you have to throw for 300 yards, or have a 3TD passing game, regardless of how incompetent and unqualified your OC is. We had guys last year like Jake Browning, Nick Mullens and Dinosaur Flacco put up numbers that Ken hasn't come close to sniffing. 

If Ken refused to dress as an emergency QB in the Seahawks game last year then that's an issue. I don't care how annoyed you are with the coaching staff, you have to put the team before yourself. He apparently didn't do that. Fast forward to this offseason and he wants out when we sign Wilson, and says today at his press conference (for a backup QB) that it was time for him to move on from Pittsburgh and go somewhere he could grow his career. I wonder if he felt stupid at all saying that in public knowing that Jalen Hurts is the Eagles QB. The idiot had a chance to compete and start in Pittsburgh and throws a tantrum so he gets dealt to a team that has a QB that almost won a SB and MVP the other year. 

I agree that the franchise let him down with not only hiring Matt Canada, but keeping him around for the next season. There's no argument there. His growth and development took a hit from that. But it's clear that he took everything a little too personally. To the point that once we signed Wilson he used that as a chasm to get out of Pittsburgh and go somewhere else. Like a place that has a franchise QB. Where he'll sit on the bench with a Microsoft Surface glued to his gloved hands. 

The Pitt aroma wore off for me at some point this past season when I came to terms that Pickett should've had an even accidental great game by now. Like a fluke, but he couldn't even accomplish that. Pencil him in for a 17-24, 201 yards, 1 Td and 1 INT. It's not good enough, and he's had enough games, despite the shit OC, to show something. He hasn't done that at all and that's what annoys me the most. Hasn't accomplished shit but makes demands while on his rookie deal. Fuck off, Ken. I'd drive you across the turnpike to Philly if given the opportunity. 

As for Fields, like Wilson, how do you not like it for the price? I hope it works out. 

Patrick Queen to the Steelers for 3 years $41M. I love this. First off great for the drama, secondly, and most importantly, we suffered a wild amount of injuries to ILB last year. 

15 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It's especially good because presumably Wilson signed a minimum deal - because any money Pittsburgh pays him goes against what Denver owes him. Getting him on a vet minimum salary + potential bonuses is probably pretty awesome. 

Yep exactly. They must think they can get something out of him which Denver thought too, but without paying him the money Denver did. We didn't have a contingency plan with Pickett this year so it was necessary. He's injury prone and hasn't proven he's the guy. There's a solid team on both sides of the ball so they had to do something. 

Schefter just confirmed Wilson is signing a one year deal with the Steelers.

I don't really know what to say. Since Khan and Weidl took over the Steelers have made moves that the Colbert regime would've never done. Risky and aggressive more or less. So far I think it's worked out so I'll trust them on this. I guess it's a no risk situation so why not. Pickett hasn't done anything to outright win him the job so I'm okay with it and don't care if this move is going to hurt feelings.

 Steelers Country.... Let's Ride!

Making my way through The Shield again. For some reason I stopped watching it like ten years ago when I first started it. Made it through like five seasons. In season 3 now. It's hold up pretty well. 

You know things are bad in Philly when the tush push doesn’t work.

Welp season over! Tomlin got his winning season. And nothing else matterrrrrrssss

Credit to the Bills. I think they’ve won 6 straight, despite injury after injury. They were dominant on offense with Allen going to video game mode throughout the game. No turnovers. No Watt gave us little hope. The offense was due to return to our sub-20 point nature in this one. 

Pulling for a Lions/Bills Owl at this point. 

43 minutes ago, Rhom said:

As soon as they said it was the second longest by a QB in post season history, I automatically knew that Kaepernick vs GB was the longest.

Allen turned on a boost of speed after contact that was impressive for a bigger guy.

My brain went to Vick at Lambeau like 2002-2003 for some reason. 

That Allen run was dominant. 

I smell an ass whooping, with the Steelers as the recipient. 

Way late on this but I'm indifferent on Dever as Abby. Pointing out the physical differences between her and her character are fair, though. I think Abby's build is a big part of her character, and her motivations to train are for a reason. Her physical feats are more believable as well. I've only seen her in Unbelievable, which was very good. 

Game spoiler stuff - 
 

9 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Huh?

Hes getting moved out?

 

NFL OFFICIATING CREW IN CONTROVERSIAL LIONS-COWBOYS GAME MAY BE DOWNGRADED AHEAD OF PLAYOFFS: REPORT

idk what you mean

If Tomlin was smart he’d have that Eucerin sponsorship signed and dated cause he’s about to get stroked to Pluto for going 9-8 or 10-7 this year. Romo and Nantz already got wind of it. 

Should’ve put up 40 at this point. Not stepping on throats. Should be fine though. 

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

They hung 70 on a potential playoff team. It's just a really weird year.

That was a long time ago, and not impressive in hindsight. Nothing special about emasculating a potential afc 7 seed. 

Kenneth Walker is destroying us 

Pounded the ball the whole way down the field. Nice start for the Steelers. No need to tempt fate by allowing Rudolph to throw a lot if unnecessary. 
 

Dolphins have shown poser energy all season and officially confirmed today not serious. McDaniel is gonna need to roll his pant legs down and shed some of the gold accessories. Needs to earn that. 

7 hours ago, Jace, Extat said:

I would trade every player on the Colts for Mike Tomlin. You can build talent, coaches are rarer than gold.

You're nuts.  I feel like the local shop tech in a horror movie trying to tell the college kids to turn around before it's too late. 

I'll accept this trade if it's official. 

I really just can't understand why everyone on here thinks he's a great coach. 2009 was a long time ago. The shortcomings and failures since then are higher than Mt. Doom. 

9 hours ago, Wilbur said:

One of Tomlin's strengths is absolutely man-management.

During his time with the Steelers, he mostly kept some real problem characters in line and focused on playing the game.  And he did so without letting the issues with those characters get into the media, unless those characters leaked it themselves.

He generally kept Big Ben, who is a self-absorbed anti-leader, generally playing well and smoothed out BB's many conflicts with his teammates that BB generated himself by running his mouth on places like his radio show.

He kept a lid on Antonio Brown's bizarro behavior for years, and dealt with him in such a way that allowed Brown to experience success on the field to an enormous extent.  Only Brown's own broadcasting of his own insanity (filming the lacker room, etc.) at the end, after years, finally let the cat out of the bag about what kind of stuff he was up to.

He got James Harrison and his crew to play (mostly) within the lines, and he gave them a focus point for their nutso aggression.  They would come down here to Scottsdale and train at a local sport medicine place in the summer, and I would sit and watch them play a sort of beach volleyball with 50-lb. medicine balls on some days at our local park.  They were always talking trash to each other about what "T" would want and what his expectations were.

He kept Lamar Woodley on task for almost his entire Steelers career, but as soon as Woodley overtly indicated that he would rather eat than perform, he shipped him off to the NFL Old Folks' Home in Phoenix.

I could go on, but Tomlin is the coach that can probably get the most out of a talented but personally undisciplined player.  Since player salaries are Expense No. 1, and failure to extract talent is Risk No. 1 for an NFL team, he is an incredibly valuable coach.

I loved Cowher, and he had his own gifts and talents, but he lacked this particular vision for flawed players.

Man management? He has people quitting on the team and making it a known issue for the past 6-7years. Bell, Blount, Brown, Harrison, Melvin Ingram, Morgan Burnett, Martavis Bryant, and Juju constantly being a distraction. He now has two clowns in Johnson and Pickens that can't stay focused or give full effort and it happens more than once so clearly Tomlin doesn't rectify the problem.

I don't understand why people slap him on the back for keeping AB's behavior under wraps for so long. AB's craziness escalated over time, it wasn't there from the start, not like how we saw it at the end. To say that year 1-4 AB was the same as 2017-18 era AB is wrong. 

Cool anecdote on Harrison and the training sessions. Wonder if he was leading that jamboree when he was sleeping in meetings cause he wasn't getting playing time towards the end. 

Tomlin saw success early on cause he didn't have to man manage anyone. He had Heath Miller, Kiesel, Polamalu, Hines Ward, Willie Colon, Farrior, and a less disgruntled Harrison, etc taking care of that. It's after those guys leave where you see the issues popping up. 

Keep drinking his cool aid and you'll keep seeing these recycled issues pop up every year. 

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

All the same, what teams wouldn't fire their coach to hire him? I can only think of a few not including a few of the young promising coaches that got hired in the last two years or someone like Payton who the team owes too much money to. 

He'd get a job immediately, no doubt. And I wish him the best, just think things have grown stale. At this point I'd like to invest in a younger offensive-minded coach. That's the way the game has shifted. Tomlin has full-blown, blue ribbon nincompoops at OC all the time. And he has a say-so in that stuff, like heavily. When you see guys like McVay who've had a coaching tree since he was 35, and even Sirianni has had an OC get a promotion to HC already, you wonder why Tomlin keeps signing off on these idiots. It's not just coaching with him, it's his stubborn hiring ways. He hires older people that are in-house. He doesn't consider hiring outside talent. That's shallow thinking and it puts the team behind. 

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Idk about that. The NFL is so random. Having that kind of consistency is pretty impressive, especially when the team hasn't had very good QB play over the last several years. Under MT they've done a good job at developing players all across the board. It's just that they couldn't do much with the corpse of Rapeburger and the QBs they've brought in since have not been good. We know Mitch sucked in Chicago, no one thinks much of Rudolph and Pickett is clearly just a good back up taken way too high. If you just put Cousins or Carr on this team they would be contenders.  

Impressive, sure, but he gets stroked with that stat like 100 times a season. He has a lot of stupid moments, fails to bring in good coordinators, loses against teams he has no business losing to, etc. If this was the Browns or Bengals, sure, hang the banner. The Steelers have set a higher bar than that historically and it's annoying for fans of the team to constantly see the back patting from national media and neutral watchers cause they only chime in when they want to advance this point. They don't see the dumb shit he does week in week out. 

Here comes the vanguard

13 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Yep Rudolph not too shabby out there........and he just perfectly hits a streaking Pickens......again!!!!

Its amazing that in 17 yrs Tomlin is yet to have a losing season. Thats some sneaky consistent right there.

I hate that stat. Everyone talks about it all the time. Cool for a bit but that's all he's been for many years now. A guy that is a little better than average, or has a disappointing playoff exit. No playoff wins in going on 7 years and 3 in 13 years. Also horrible at managing players. There's a blowup and off field distraction every year. 

I gotta say I'm surprised. Rudolph showing large nuts on that first down run. Najee running well. D playing well. All for nothing as we either won't make the playoffs or if we do, will lose in the first round, but nice to see this team playing with some life. 

Our answer was third on the depth chart the whole time. Who would've guessed.