Good day to Steeler Nation, it's good to be back, eventhough I am three weeks late I have been reading up on the site. Great posts by Micheal Bean and maryrose (as always). I hope you all enjoyed your summers, and I think we all feel good about the domination our D has been showing.

So this off season us sports fans had countless reports to read on Big Ben and LeBron James. Both have been 'labeled', both our talented. One couldn't handle the fame and stats championships gave him, while the other endured the brunt of a nation towards his behavior on seeking championships. The two aren't to be compared, morally LeBron didn't do anything bad, sinful, illegal (call it what you may), whereas been, even though not charged with anything, did raise a few eyebrows questioning his judgment and antics.

And again, the two situations aren't to be compared but the reactions are. But let's focus on our QB, Big Ben. I've read enough posts by people who wish this franchise loss after loss, a championship less future for Big Ben, that the sports God karmic power takes it toll on this "devil" of a figure. My question is does it matter? I mean sure, they are overpaid, millionaires, who live lavish lifestyles. But with that aside, do we watch sports for the athletes' characters? Or do we watch it for their abilities?

We started 3-0, and if we beat the Ravens that's 4-0 without BB, D's playing like a super-bowl caliber unit, and yet so much negativity on some guy's behavior. I may ruffle up a few feathers by saying this but honestly, the league has it's policies on judging and disciplining it's players, if we as fans focus so much of our attention on these athletes behaviors its just a sad waste of time. How do we know who's a nice guy or not? Would Hines Ward be your best friend if you knew the guy? Would it be fun to have beer with Brett Keisel? Maybe we can go to church with Troy Polamalu? I wanna know if Troy can make turnovers, I wanna know if Keisel can return for a touchdown again, I wanna see if BB can get us that come from behind 4th quarter win. I honestly don't care what these men do in their personal lives. That's why we have the law, if any one of them commits a crime, let the justice system handle it. Do they get special treatment? Ofcourse, is that unfair? Yes. But let's not call people hypocrites or point fingers, we are in it as fans.

Big Ben didn't go unpunished and I commend the commissioner for doing so, these are role-models to children and people with influential characters, and of course they must act accordingly.  But to expect, perfect citizens, non sinning individuals is kind of digging your head in a Utopian hole, it's not like that, they are people too. It's just sad how much attention goes to this while there's so much we can devote our time to, or focus on. The time, effort and money to report such gossip, is all such a waste. If we were to raise up our noses as the morale police, then where do we cross the line? Is it ethically warranted to then devote so much time on judging another, without judging yourself first, and devoting so much time to it, whilst in turn you could have gone and helped a person, fed a person or just listened to a person's bad day and actually made a minute, yet important impact? I'm not trying to be a hippy, or the Socrates of this blog. I like this blog because it does have respected opinions and pretty smart individuals on here. Reading all the things going on really made me stop and wonder, and why it has all come to this.

All in all, this organization is well respected, our players have usually conducted themselves very well on and off the field, and we'll never be as cocky as the Patriots of a few seasons ago, or be the 'bad boys' of the league like the Jets, at least that's a good thing. But next time you're gonna whine and piss and moan about some guy you dont know's antics and what he did and if he's guilty or not, stop and think, life is short. How's your dad doing? Do your kids need help with their homework? We see these guys for football, and that's all it really is.

With 2009 coming to an end soon, I thought I'd give out some awards to some people:

Best mod: Blitzburgh, this is also referred to as the brown-nose award

Best female in a leading role: Momma Rollet

Best female in a supporting role: MDGeekyGrl

Best male in a leading role: SoCallSteelerFan

Best male in a supporting role: Johnny_S

Best Villian: Mr Malor

Best drama: Johnny_S (I believe it was Johnny_S, I could be wrong) and Baltimore Warrior's feud that resulted in Bruce Raffel almost banning Johnny_S on the Beatdown

Best romance: 5020 and SoCallSteelerFan's litte spat turned bygones be bygones.

Best heart attack inducer: Bruce Arians

Best Omar Epps impersonator (for the umpteenth time and winning in consecutive years) : Mike Tomlin

Best hair: Troy Polamalu

Best daydreamer: Deshea Townsend

Best chance at becoming AFC player of the week when you least expected it: Steelers Defense

So far everything we wanted to happen has happened after losing to the Browns, although it was all very realistic. Jags losing to the Colts, not surprised, are you? Now the comes the kicker, not only are we rooting for the Steelers this week (duh), but I'm assuming all of Steeler Nation is for the Bears this week as well.

It's come down to not having the playoffs be in our teams hands anymore, we need the Bears to win! And even if that happens we need to beat the Packers.

Miracle:

1 : an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs
2 : an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment

M&M's are tasty, but their also the first two letters of two things we need this week, a miracle and momentum. They're going to coincide. Steelers win, Ravens lose that's the miracle that will ride out into a major momentum shift for this team and I'm 99% sure they win out then, this is my gut feeling.

The most ideal scenario is obviously rooting against the Jets, Dolphins as well. Jaguars already put the first piece into play for us and sadly enough this is a domino effect that it going to be 66% attributed to how other teams perform. But will the M&M make this team a force to be reckoned with IF they make the playoffs? That's also a toss up don't you guys think?

Hi Steeler Nation,

Hope you all are well and having recuperated from the dreadful loss of past Thursday. All there is to talk about it is how much we have sucked, and yes we have. And the playoffs? The odds of us making it is a statistician's dream right now with so many complex scenario's, actually they are not that complex.

It all comes down to a very simple logic at this point, we ALL wanna see the Steelers win out now. Not for the sake of playoffs but for pride. That's what makes these next three games interesting, I hope it gives Tomlin and the entire organization a look at who's getting the boot next year. So it should be quite interesting. Since they are playing for pride how about we play for pride/bragging rights ?

Let's make the best of this gloomy season, let's have a little contest going.I know it's pretty much a pick-em game, but meh.. a shorter version thereof where we compare amongst Steeler Nation. 

Here are the wild card teams followed by their remaining schedule in parentheses and I will put my predictions behind the remaining schedule with a W/L. So I figured a W gives you 3pts, a loss obviously 0. If the teams draw 1.5pts. Here are my picks:

• Denver Broncos 8-5 (Raiders W, @Eagles L, Kansas City W) finish season at: 10-6
  
• Jacksonville Jaguars 7-6 (Colts L, @Patriots L, @Browns L) finish season at: 7-9
  

The teams in the hunt:

• Baltimore Ravens 7-6 (Bears W, @Steelers L, @Raiders W) finish season at: 9-7
  
• Miami Dolphins 7-6 (@Titans W, @Texans L, Steelers W) finish season at: 9-7
  
• New York Jets 7-6 (Falcons L, @Colts L, Bengals W) finish season at: 8-8
  
• Pittsburgh Steelers 6-7 (Packers L, Ravens W, @Dolphins L) finish season at: 7-9
  
• Tennessee Titans 6-7 (Dolphins L, Chargers L, @Seahawks W) finish season at: 7-9
  
• Houston Texans 6-7 (@Rams W, @Dolphins W, Patriots L) finish season at 8-8

Broncoes get the 5th seed, and the Dolphins-Ravens go to a tiebreaker. And what a woozy that tiebreaker is equal conference record, then equal record in the common games (if I understood it correctly), they'd go to strength of victory and I have no clue how that one works, but I'll just say Dolphins get the 6th seed!

Have fun Steeler Nation! (I'll be happy with 5 replies to this, just 5, I don't ask for much :P)

Well, another tough loss another agonizing game to watch, here's my take on what unfolded last night:

1. We scored no touchdowns on the league's worst defense and allowed the league's worst offense to score a TD on us, their first running TD of the year, and it's one us. We gave the Vikes their first L, we gave the Browns their first rushing TD, they kind of balance each other out, but right now the Vikes win means nothing because they are a playoff team, we don't even deserve it

2. I'm a big fan of Tomlin, I know he inherited "Cowher's Team" but at the same time, how often do we see a coach inherit a gream team and make a mess of things? I mean come on, we really expect this guy to coach us to a SB every year, this is the luxury of rooting for a favorite team, had we been 1-15 last year, we would be writing great things this year on how we're much better, the future looks great. So it's always a mindset, I bet most Tomlin haters were saying jibbah jabbah like "Tomlin's the best ever", and ofcourse being such a solid franchise we can't ignore the fact we have bandwagon fans that just dump this team, not me, not the Steeler Nation, I bet 99% of this blog is a lifer!

3. I've been so mixed on BB getting sacked, I'll just go and say it, our O-line is fine! Not the best, but also not the worst in my opinion. BB is a cocky guy, wins his first SB, crashes his motorcycle, wins the second has a cotroversial allegation against him, we'll never know if he did it or not, being a celebrity you get a great lawyer and all that, poor girl maybe had no chance of winning, the justice system favors the rich, sadly enough. Or then again, it coulda been some whore who consented to sex and then wanted money, you really never know, it's 5-50 and I really don't give a fuck how BB is off the field, he's not my friend, I don't know him, prolly will never meet the guy, I just know he's our franchise QB and I'd want no one else. He's been having a career year numbers wise. Back on the O-line, I think BB relies too much on his scramble magic, it won't always work, for that same reason he is prolly the most targeted guy out there, I know if I was a LB I'd play the guy extra tough, he's a motivation for a sack, because he thinks he can always make that big play, win the WR some magic, I'd be out there to prove him wrong. And that's what I think pumps up LB's against this guy, or DE's/DT's for that matter of fact, any who sacks well for the most part. Again our O-line ain't the BEST, but they can do the job, and sometimes I find myself yelling at the tv screen throw it away, or keep your eyes downfield don't run now! THROW it away dammit! I bet he can see the guys coming at him much better than we can, his drive to make that blame bites him in the ass and hurts the team, Therefor I suggest Arians becoming a QB coach again, I miss Whisenhunt, now that was a good OC. I liked his play calling, BA is just BS

4. This season is one for the ages in terms of just being so goddamn odd. I never thought we'd be that team, our 6-2 Steelers going to 6-7! No one saw it coming! Who has the longest losing streak in the NFL now? We do! If we look back at this season in hindsight who was the major choker of the '09 season? We are! Titans win this Sunday we are no better or worse than they are, and look how much shit they got this season, they're fans are ecstatic now for next season and we're really confused . Seeing the Patriots become mortals again, I just hope this is not it for the Steelers, I always thought this team had 1 more SB in them, and I honestly thought they were gonna do a repeat! I did not think this in '06, I didn't think they had the discipline yet, but this time around, the motto was "We learned from 2006!", it was repeated over and over again, and look at us now. We still might be better than '06, but that requires a 3 win streak now, win 2 games we're just the same, win one more we are actually worse, maybe they tried too hard to avoid this and it made them collapse?

5. We've got 11 guys on defense, 11! Sure Smith and Polamalu are out, but come on! Why wasn't there that one guy who just said you know what guys, I'm gonna be THAT guy this year, I'm gonna be this year's Troy! In honor of him, in honor of the team in honor of the fans, as I team you owe it to the entire organization and fanbase to step the hell up! That's team sports people! But it happens, the Ravens are without Reed and they are worse. But then again's our D is still top 10, maybe Troy was the one guy who stepped up when it matters most and we just really never had any one else capable and doing so in crunch time, because last year we dominated those situations, remember the Cowboy's game? Remember the pick against the Ravens?

6. I've come to terms with this season, we can't expect it every year. And you never know it this year it ain't mathematically over, the whole expect the worst hope for the best is the best mindset for me right now. I've gripped the fact we might go 6-10, I posted yesterday during the thread that I looked at all SB champions' record after a SB win, and the conclusion was that in the 16 game era, only the Bronco's and Niners had worse records, but the NIner's, if I remember correctly,  went 3-6 in the 9 game season of '82 (I'm naming these facts off the top of my head, I could be wrong with details) and the Broncos went 6-10 after Elway retired. So again this meltdown is one for the ages, losing Elway to retirement is not way the same as to losing TP and Smith to injury, and I really hope we don't go 6-10. And besides, I'm not optimistic and I will be rooting as hard as I did when we were 6-2 against the Packers, call me crazy, but this team has played down to it's opponents, besides the Bengals losses all of our losses were to teams under .500 at the time, or currently a under .500 team i.e. the Bears and Ravens. But then again we did manage to beat the Lions and Browns in the earlier weeks, God this season confuses me!Either way, I think if they are truly motivated now with having the whole nothing to lose demeanor we might see a pouncing of the Pack, or if they can not get out of this mental slump it will be a total asskicking because those guys are playin good ball right now. And I also believe if we beat the Packers we finish 9-7. This is all speculation, I just have a gut feeling about this, don't know why. I mean sports tend to follow patterns and that's how this season's been, beat the good teams, lose to the bad.

7. Last and final note, to all the pessimists or optimists, have your say, it's your opinion! Whether you hate us now, or love us, whether you hate the way we are playing right now, whether you still think we'll make the playoffs or think we won't, anything can happen so far, it's not mathematically over and I just suggest everyone relax and make the best of it, we still have three weeks of football to go, and hey the playoffs are always fun, it's better with the black and gold around but hey you can't always have it your way right? Whether we make playoffs or not, at this point a miracle should happen, but hey the Eagles of last year made it in a semi-miraculous fashion I found at 9-6-1. Our miracle is just much bigger if needed to happen, but again, the speculation won't matter, to each his own! I've just come to terms with the fact they are not making the playoffs, but I sure as hell won't complain if they do ;)

The Oakland Raiders apparently used Tomlin's words of unleashing hell as motivation, wow, talk about that blowing up in our faces, it even had me going, oh well Tomlin you play voodoo with our emotions!

Oh well, I'm still optimistic, we can make it, even if we lose in the playoffs, playoffs are fun, anything can happen you never fucking know we'd be going into the playoffs with a 4game win streak. Pat Kirwan interviewed the Steelers and they are ANGRY, sucky thing is even more rookies on the field against the Brownies, Ward and Gay (who cares about him) are improbable

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/thehuddle/post/2009/12/raiders-mike-tomlins-unleash-hell-comment-motivated-their-win-vs-steelers/1

The Steelers of today looked like they don't deserve to be in the playoffs.

The Steelers of today, had I had my memory erased, would have me laugh at the fact if someone told me they won 2 SB's in the past 4 years

The Steelers of today are like the Steelers of the entire season, inconsistent, bland, and lack that deadly instinct to put a game away

The Steelers of today beg to differ with lingo of bringing hell to the table, obviously their definition is bringing hell to the fans who watched on crappy streams, fans like SteelersBuddha who put of doing some work, fans who walked out of Heinz Field with their heads down.

The Steelers of today, not only managed to lose to the Raiders, they lost to a team with no name WR's, and had a defensive performance in the 4th quarter that was very very very embarrassing.

The Steelers of today are right now at this moment a .500 team and are tied with the Dolphins and Jets are one game behind the Jaguars for the WIld Card and if the football God's are fair, I hope they will be tied with the Ravens come Tuesday morning, and I cordially invite all of you in Steeler Nation to join me in taunting Mr. Malor and Baltimore Warrior on their blog, because hey that's what THEY do right? On second though, I retract that, let's not stoop down to their level, we are Steeler Nation and not some Edgar Allen Poe Raven Baltimorians, who have the Iclass of .... a Raven... on the side of the road..... as roadkill.... 

The Steelers of today, made me feel unhealthy, and made me smoke three cigarettes in a row, and I am a medstudent, I am a bad example now and should be punished by Hippocrates

Okay... done venting now...

To start of this FanPost, I'd like to say it's pretty damn cool when you've got a coach saying something like. I don't know about you guys but it certainly sparks a fire in my pants, and not the arousing type, and I'm not even a player. I wonder how the Steeler's locker room is like right now, if it already has an effect on us the fans, I'm sure it's gonna rile up some players. I do however miss the intensity Joey Porter brought, with him on the squad, it's things like this I see him feeding off of. He'd probably smack a few people around and play his best football of the year. The Steelers seem a soft spoken team, I like that though, they keep their cool, no one makes predictions, they don't come across as arrogant bunch, they are a humble team.

Back to Tomlin's words, hell... hmm... so Dante's Inferno's gonna reign down in the NFL dressed in Gold and Black. Saying it is one thing, are we gonna notice it? Are we going to see a new Steelers ? Is this gonna be it? If you look at it, in almost every sport, the champions are the ones who get hot at the right time, some champions tend to stay hot all season long, but in general, if they Steelers end up playing "hell" mode, who knows? I don't want to get my hopes up too much, this season has been rather rollercoaster-ish. All my friends tell me oh you Steeler's fans, you whiners, get over it. You've atleast seen 2 championship teams in your lifetime already, God knows how many BB can still rake in, okay it does sound true. One of my friends is a Dolphins fans and the other is a Saints fan, both have suffered and especially the Saints fan thinks this year Drew Bree and company can go all the way. But quite frankly, who gives a shit. You root for your team I root for mine, life's a bitch, I want a repeat! I wanna bash those annoying Patriots fans, in my lifetime I've there have been 4 repeats! I'm 25, 4 repeats! I want my team to have repeat number 5 dammit! I know winning a SB is oh so sweet, but a repeat! A repeat is so rewarding, so fulfilling...

So again back to reality, I zoned out seeing the Steeler's raise the Lombardi while I'm grinning at my Saints fa friend, yeah in my little day dream it was Steelers-Saints, bla bla...

So anywhoo, if the Steeler's win out it'll feel like a mini super bowl to us Steeler fans I'm assuming. Then if there will be a tough loss in the playoffs, and if they lose honorably and BA doesn't wanna make me send him dogpoop in the mail, then I'll be saddened but at the sometime pleased. There's always next year. So the morale of my story, (it has nothing to do with interviews a la Hines) is that I wanna see this black and gold hell, this season has given me tunnel vision! Week by week, I'm not thinking playoffs! I want this, we all want this, I wanna see us eat up and spit out each remaning opponent. I wanna see us clobber the Raiders and then absolutely wreak havoc on the Browns, and then make Aaron Rodgers look like Brett Favre's grandmama with down syndrome, I want this hell!!!! But right now all there is on my mind is Oakland, please, bring this hell! If we do this and bring this hell Mike Tomlin promised I promise you guys the playoffs are gonna be fun! Win or lose, we can atleast know the season ended on a high note.

First of all, I'd like to congratulate Dennis Dixon on winning Steeler Nation over. I'll be honest and I think I speak for most of us, a W tonite seemed very far fetched. This team has a lot of kinks, and our key players are not what we are used to and ofcourse the injuries to Smith, Kemo, Troy, and Big Ben are a big factor coming into this game tonight, Baltimore is a good team. After watching this heart-attack inducing game tonite (thank you fellow BTSC members for making it enjoyable), I made some conclusions. Dixon played well, I was pleasantly surprised. The INT was big, I feel bad for the kid, but... why didn't the coaching staff improvise along the way? I mean they see this kid practice and I could already tell after the first half, this kid can run! Why was the playcalling so bland? Why was it so predictable. The W's and L's come down to the players' performances obviously, but you can't count out bad play calling. Against KC it was the same. Why weren't there any more rollouts for Dixon? I mean I don't wanna jump on the wild-cat bandwagon, but look how the Phins surprised the Patriots last year. With Dixon in today we had the element of surprise, did they have to call it so safe and boring? Dixon had 3 carries for 27 yds, why not utilize that more often? All I'm saying is that I don't understand why no risks were taken, it was an uphill climb. Baltimore didn't know what to expect with Dixon, look how he surprised them on the TD run, I firmly believe and that TD run was Dixon seeing a hole and using his best tool, his legs. Arians wanted a PA, I highly doubt that was the intended play. This is just my two cents, we have an amazing team we root for, and it's just frustrating with some of these plays I saw on the field today. Does anyone else agree/disagree? I'd like to hear your thoughts, and if this means I might get bashed or whatever, then so be it, bring it on ;)