Cleaning out the Mental In-Box.....
Quick hit football thoughts:
- Another rough day at the office yesterday for Steelers rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett. His stat line through five games: 67.9% complete rate, 2 TD's, 5 INT's. How much of this is Pickett's fault, how much is the O-line's fault, how much is it the game plan's (ahem, we're looking at you, Matt Canada) fault?
- (Speaking of rookie QB's stat lines, how 'bout this one: 14 games, 38.1% completion rate, 6 TD, 24 INT. Steelers fans will instantly recognize the 1970 season of Terry Bradshaw. That turned out alright.)
- Steelers entering their bye week, so they have two weeks to try and figure something, anything, out.
- Myron Cope always took the position on his talk show that he "never fires coaches", and he knew more about that kind of stuff than I do, so I won't either, but, man, it sure seems apparent that something just ain't right with the Steelers offensive way of doing things. (We're looking at you, Matt Canada) By just about any metric that you care to use, this year's Steelers are the worst offensive team in the NFL. It becomes more apparent when you watch other NFL games and see those teams throwing downfield to fast and talented receivers. You know, like how Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown undressed the Steelers yesterday. I watched Kenny Pickett for five years at Pitt, and I KNOW that he can throw the ball downfield. Why won't the Steelers let him do that to guys like Chase Claypool, Dionte Johnson, and rookie George Pickens, who may be better that both of the first two guys?
- Speaking of things the Steelers don't do that other teams do, how about running backs who can rip off gains of 7, 8, 10, or more yards several times a game? Watching Green Bay play Buffalo last night and seeing their RB's in action made me want to cry.
- No one was more enthusiastic about the drafting of Najee Harris last year, but be honest now, who has been better (and this is damning with faint praise, I realize) at the position thus far, Harris or Jaylen Warren? It can't ALL be the fault of the linemen, can it?
As to non-Steelers thoughts....
- How much fun is it watching the Buffalo Bills? Josh Allen surely is the leading contender for MVP after eight weeks of the season, unless....
- ....the leading contender is Jalen Hurts of the Eagles. The Eagles are undefeated, and Hurts and Company sure laid an ass-kicking on the Steelers yesterday, which, to use the phrase a second time, may be damning with faint praise.
- And how about the performances of Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers so far? Plenty of season left to be proven wrong, of course, but it seems that these two have all of a sudden "gotten old" and are approaching the end.
All of these thoughts lead to the return of.....
I know you've all been waiting for them, so here we go, through Week Eight.
- Eagles
- Bills
- Chiefs
- Cowboys
In my heart, I think the Bills are better, but that may be only because I've seen them more that Philly, but an undefeated team can't be anything less than #1.
Now, on to Baseball.
The third game of the World Series will be played tonight, and if you are surprised that The Grandstander has not written one word about the MLB Post-Season, well, I can tell you that I too am astonished by this fact. In actuality, I watched some, but very little of the first three rounds of the Playoffs. (As an aside, I will say that I do like the Three, Five, Seven, and Seven format that MLB has instituted for the first time this season.) I can attribute this to a couple of factors. One, the fact that Baseball has begun a descent into the lower tiers of importance in American professional sports; there are reasons for that too numerous to go into right now. Two, the level of excellence that both college football and the NFL has been providing this season has overshadowed MLB. Three, too much other stuff going on in my own life right now. Four, the Pirates have succeeded in lessening, if not killing, my enthusiasm for Major League Baseball.
Still the World Series is the WORLD SERIES, so attention must be paid. I watched the first game of the Series with rapt interest. The Astros staked Justin Verlander to a 5-0 lead which the Phillies overcame and fashioned a 6-5 win in ten innings. It was an interesting and most entertaining game and a lot of fun to watch, despite it lasting over three and a half hours. It was a game that reminded you of why you like baseball in the first place.
I skipped Game Two, won by the Astros, in favor of the Pitt football game, wherein Pitt "Pitted" and lost convincingly. Bad decision on my part.
Tonight the Series moves to Philly, where a no doubt raucous scene will unfold. The Phillies were the sixth seeded team in the NL and are actually an easy team to root for. They hit the ball, score a lot of runs, and have good starting pitching, and a bullpen that can be, ahem, adventurous. Hard to believe that Boy Wunderkind Bryce Harper turned thirty years old this past season. Perhaps through reasons not entirely his fault, Harper has always been kind of unlikable. A guy you like only when he plays for YOUR team, but for me at least, and maybe this will last only through this Playoff Year, he seems to have moved beyond that, and I find myself rooting for him and the Phillies. The Astros are a better team, or they were over this past 162 game season, but we are now down to a best of five series with Philly having the home field advantage, so who knows? I am looking forward to the remainder of this Series.
Finally, and Absent Friend....
Jerry Lee Lewis
1935-2022
The last of the true pioneers of Rock 'n Roll, Jerry Lee Lewis, died last week at the age of 87. The first two paragraphs of Lewis' obituary on the pop culture website Vulture describes Lewis far better that I can:
Jerry Lee Lewis was known as the Killer, and it wasn’t a casual sobriquet — a schoolmate called him that after he tried to strangle a teacher. He once shot his bass player in the chest; just about all of his seven wives, including one who was a child, said he beat them; and there’s a lingering suspicion that he murdered wife No. 5. He was the very model of a high-functioning sociopath and somehow defied hard living, drug and alcohol abuse, and serious health problems to make it well into his ninth decade.
The pianist, singer, and showman, who was one of the three or four people who decisively ushered in the rock-and-roll era — and utterly personified an unbridled and dangerous part of the music — died today, his family announced. He was 87 and, after the death of Little Richard in 2020, the last man standing from the dawn of rock and roll.
On his podcast today, Tony Kornheiser said that while Lewis wasn't Elvis, he may very well have been on the next step below him.
A few years ago, I saw the musical "The Million Dollar Quartet" which tells the story of a time when four legends, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Lewis, all recoded together at Sun Studio in Memphis on the same day. The show's curtain call had each actor perform one song as the performer they portrayed. I said at the time that during that curtain call, and in fact throughout the entire show, the actor that played Lewis stole the show. Maybe it wasn't just the actor, but perhaps the energy of Lewis himself that stole that show.
If you've never seen him, here's a clip of The Killer in action on the Ed Sullivan Show back in 1969.
RIP Jerry Lee Lewis.
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