As we are snowbound today, I trekked on foot to the local market to have a cup of coffee. Started chatting with a mid-50ish tall, black chap from the neighborhood who said he used to play for the Steelers in the late 70's.Extremely warm and articulate fellow who still expresses very strong positive feelings for the Burg and the Steelers family. His son is a first baseman now in the Pirate organization.

Anyone know more about Fred, particularly his days playing for the Stilllers.

What is it? Every preseason Ben is flapping his lips about the "no huddle" offense and how much they were going to use it. Then the season starts and nothing. Wouldn't the NH have been a perfect antidote for the Texans pass rush? Would love to hear your opinions.

Help me how to I add 25 more words to reach the 75 minimum? Let's see, "we will unleash h8ll". How is that? or "Everyone has to put his hand in the pile (and hold his nose with the other)" or "the standard is the standard (even for the kid whoever will be playing LT next week?).

Arians states that his strategy is to gain yards in "big chunks".

So where were the chunks the past two weeks? Ben has either underthrown Wallace or hit Sweed in the "SweedSpot" on the deep balls.

The strategy may be to get big chunks, but, the execution seems to only produce dinks and dunks.

To add insult to injury, Holmes has been channeling the "hands of Ike".

I'm sure that some of the O Line bashers will try to put the blame on Z. Hey, at least his taste in porn was within the acceptable boundaries of prurient interest.

Much has been made today in the Titans post mortem by pundits about the TItans apparent failure to bring pressure on Ben led to the loss. I've been wondering if that is the case given the unique attributes (not athletic talent) of Ben. Trying to analyze this game, and by extention the Steelers with the traditional "pressure the QB" paradigm may  not apply to this situation and to this QB for the following reasons.

Generally, teams do not continue to blitz for the following reasons a) blitzing is risky putting your DBs in man coverage and the blitzed team capitalizes - the almost universal reason for not continuing to pressure when coupled with b) blitzing continually is more tiring on the D than the O, which happened last night, leaving the O able to capitalize (see a)or c) the QB is not effected by the blitz even when successful (this is rare and might only apply in today's NFL to Roethlisberger).

Rationale c) does not fit the traditional paradigm which is pressure the QB and eventually he will change his play, become more cautious, more averse and less agressive. This is the primary reason for blitzing. Sure it is about sacks and disrupting the play at hand, but, the paradigm is about disrupting the plays when you are not blitzing. It is about changing the play of the QB with the threat of the blitz. This paradigm doesn't apply to Ben.

Both the DC of the Titans and Vandenbosch (sic) their rush end admitted as much. They brought all they had against Ben, then the were played out, but, Ben did not act like the other QBs after getting banged about (including Brady and Peyton) his "game" in the fourth quarter was not negatively affected. Vandenbosch said it best: "Ben is the most fearless QB in the league (he never folded as all the others would have given the pressure on them). The Ravens Suggs had a similar thought when he said that Ben was the best at playing "playground football and will kill you with" (He's the best and only true practitioner, because all of the other QBs become shells of themselves coming under similar pressure). In fact, he has the unique ability to not just not "cave" to the pressure, but, play even more inspired as the game wears on.

Any thoughts?

Quite a controversy arose at our local watering hole in Bellevue Washington, where we were ghettoized for a Sunday afternoon due to the TV scheduling gremlins.

Observing Coach William Belicek’s interesting wardrobe choice of a burqa, we were about evenly split between those who believe that a burqa is appropriate attire for a male and those who are sure that Coach Billie was recently betrothed.

Assuming that the latter are correct I have a number of queries, which perhaps you can resolve: First, will Coach Billie be required to walk behind his mate? Second, will Coach Billie no longer be able to be in the presence of single men without a male member of his new husband’s family present? Will Coach Billie have a tabouli recipe to die for? Will praying five times a day limit his film study in the future? And what about that prayer rug? Finally, will fingering prayer beads under his burqa constitute an unfair advantage which should be investigated by the league front office or perhaps Arlen Specter?

It seems that every chance he gets Schlereth is knocking the Steelers. Is there a history here? Now he is one of the few predicting that the Steelers will fall Monday night to the Ravens. His rationale is that Flacco is more than adequate to sustain the Steelers D while the Steelers  O has no chance against the Ravens D. Perhaps, since he is off his career performance meds and has been reduced to normal size like the rest of the populace, he has not been thinking clearly. Or, perhaps he feels inadequate having been upstaged by another Alaskan who looks to be "outmanning" him with all of her moose-skinning escapades.