Steelers 26 - Giants 16

JuJu Smith-Schuster hauls in one of

his two TDs against theGiants last night

How can one count the ways that last night's season opening 26-16 win over the Giants was so satisfying?

• After a somewhat rusty start, Ben Roethlisberger showed that he is back and ready to play.  With the team trailing 10-9, the Steelers got the ball with 1:32 to play and proceeded to execute an eight play, 76 yard drive in eighty-five seconds that culminated in a 13 yard TD pass to James Washington for the TD that put the Steelers up 16-10 at the half.  It was vintage Big Ben.
• The amazing effort that Washington put into staying on his feet and driving into the end zone for that score.
• Two TD catches by JuJu Smith-Schuster.
• A defense that smothered Giants' quarterback Daniel Jones, and held Saquan Barkley to only 6 yards on 15 carries.
• An interception at the Steelers goal line in the third quarter after the Giants had marched 87 yards in 19 plays and 8:50 of game time and were getting ready to take a 17-16 lead.  A ferocious pass rush forced Jones to lob up a big balloon that Cam Heyward picked off at the goal line.  If you're the Giants, it was a positively soul-crushing play, and it turned the game around completely in the Steelers favor.
• Ben passed for 229 yards, three TDs, and no interceptions while completing passes to eight different receivers.
• An interception by TJ Watt, picking up right where he left off last season.
• A phenomenal game by OLB Bud Dupree, who may well have been the best player on the field last night.
• 113 yards rushing by Benny Snell Jr.
• A couple of catches by Chase Claypool who in his first game looks to have been a wise draft pick for the Steelers.

On the down side, what appear to be serious injuries struck offensive linemen Stefan Wisniewski and Zach Banner late in the fourth quarter, and James Conner couldn't get out of the first quarter after suffering yet another injury.  For many reasons there is no athlete in Pittsburgh for whom I root more than Conner, but was the performance of Snell last night a "Wally Pipp Moment" for Conner?

All in all, a most satisfactory win for Rooney U. last night to start the 2020 campaign.

Cleaning Out The Mental In-Box, Sports Division

A whirl around the wide, wide world of sports.....

Perhaps the most stunning news in sports this past week was the surprise announcement that Indy Colts QB Andrew Luck was retiring at the age of 29.  Yet another injury and the facing of yet another long and laborious rehab process caused Luck to reach this decision.  Equally stunning were the reactions of both the fans of the Colts and of the (too) numerous ex-jock talking heads that populate the (too) many sports networks that have too much time to fill.  How dare Luck do such a thing?  Everything from his dedication, his courage, and his very manhood was questioned by these neanderthals.  It was kind of distressing, actually.

From what I know and have read about Andrew Luck, he is an intelligent guy, and he would not have come to this decision lightly.  I hope he does well in whatever his future endeavors are, and that he can take every opportunity possible to tell the Steve Beuerleins of the world to go pound salt.

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When the circus that comprised much of the Steelers off-season came to a merciful end this past winter with the free agent signing of a former RB by the New York Jets and the trade of one of their WR's to the Oakland Raiders I made comments in this space to the effect that I won't ever have to write about the two guys again, and I have pretty much kept to that.  Events over this training camp season and reports out of the Raiders camp have only reaffirmed that decision of mine, and it seems that everyone surrounding the Steelers would be well served to do the same.  In fairness, the Steelers themselves have pretty much adopted that stance.  That changed this past Sunday night when Ben Roethlisberger was interviewed by Michelle Tofoya on NBC and the subject of said wide out was mentioned.  I thought Ben took a high road and handled it well, but, of course, it brought up the idiotic tweets out of Oakland, and some idiotic comments by, among others, Shannon Sharpe.

Enough already.  That should be the last time anyone connected to the Steelers agrees to have anything to say about the guy who was last seen in Pittsburgh walking out and quitting on his team during the last game of the season.

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How about those "Players Weekend" uniforms worn by all MLB teams last weekend?  Without doubt, the ugliest and most stupid idea ever.  Whomever in the high echelons of MLB came up with the idea for those monochromatic monstrosities should be fired immediately.

Earlier in the week, I made a post on Facebook and asked if anybody, anybody at all, actually liked them.  All I got were more comments saying how much everyone detested them.

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Earlier in the year, Steve Blass got into a bit of a jam when he made an old-man-yelling-at-the-clouds comment about the excess amount of jewelry being worn by some opposing player.  The comment was seized upon by some as being racist and Blass was branded as such.  Now, you can say that Steve Blass is many things, a cranky old guy being one of them, but one thing that he is definitely NOT is racist.  His entire body of work in his sixty year association with the Pirates and MLB makes such a notion absurd.  Blass is also smart, or he certainly was in this case, because he chose to ignore the entire kerfuffle.  Never responded to any of the changes, and inside of a week, the entire story deservedly went away.

I mention this only to suggest a path for those associated with the Pittsburgh Steelers to follow whenever the subject of a certain Oakland Raider comes up for discussion.

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One of the more distressing bits of news amidst the crashing and burning of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the second half of the 2019 season was the news that Jameson Taillon underwent Tommy John surgery for the second time in his career, and that he would be lost not only for the rest of 2019 but for the entire 2020 season as well.

Taillon was the second player selected overall in the amateur draft in 2010, and it hasn't been an easy road for him.  Tommy John surgery and surgery for a sports hernia cost him parts of two seasons in the minor leagues and delayed his debut in Pittsburgh.  He also was a cancer victim a few seasons back.  He seemed to turn a corner in 2018 and it looked like he was going to become the ace of the staff that the Pirates expected him to be when they used that high draft slot to select him.  This second TJ surgery on his pitching arm certainly throws his future and career in doubt.

Of course, shortly after his surgery, Taillon tweeted out the above photo of himself with the message that he knows what lies ahead, and that he will do the work necessary to get back to where he belongs.  Nobody really knows what our sports heroes are really like in real life, but Jameson Taillon has given every impression that he is as he seems:  hard working, strong, and, mainly, a good guy.

Here's wishing him nothing but the best as he heads down the long path of rehab.

Quite A Football Weekend for Pittsburgh

The weekend of October 6-7 could have been a disastrous one for fans of Pittsburgh's two football teams. Pitt was 2-3,  was coming off of a loss to a bad North Carolina team, and was about to face 4-1 nationally ranked Syracuse.  The Steelers were 1-2-1, playing lousy and were about to play a 1-3 Atlanta Falcons team that desperately needed to win a game. A loss for either team that weekend could have sent the respective seasons into a tailspin from which it might have been hard to recover.  

We know what happened that weekend and what has happened since.  Both teams have combined to go 11-1 since then and the loss was a near upset of still undefeated Notre Dame by Pitt.  It's been a nice seven weeks.

Let's start with today's highly improbable win for the Steelers over the Jax Jaguars.

Jacksonville led 9-0 at the half and pushed it to 16-0 in the third quarter.   The Steelers defense could not get off the field in the first half as the Jags and Leonard Fournette ran roughshod over them.  Only the fact that Blake Bortles stinks and could not get into the end zone, prevented this from being a blow out.  The Steelers offense was worse.  Ben Roethlisberger threw three interceptions.  James Conner couldn't run.  Deep into the third quarter the Steelers had made only six first downs, and three of them came on Jacksonville penalties.

The something happened in the fourth quarter.  The Steelers defense came alive, and realized that that was Blake Bortles and not Joe Montana at QB against them.  A Roethlisberger to Antonio Brown pass clicked for a 78 yard TD pass in the third quarter, but Ben was still struggling.  It wasn't until there was 2:28 left in the game that a Ben-to-Vance McDonald TD pass put the score at 16-13.  The defense forced its fourth consecutive three-and-out, and the Steelers got the ball at their own 32 with 1:42 remaining.   Nine plays later.....

Ben Scores with :05 left;

Steelers Win!!

....and the Steelers had an amazing and highly improbable 20-16 win.

I have written countless times in this space that "You are never  - never! - out of a game with Ben Roethlisberger at quarterback."  He proved that today yet again, and in game where for the first three quarters, he was just plain awful.

Steelers now at 7-2-1 and hold a two and a half game lead over both the Ravens and Bengals in the AFC North.

Meanwhile, down in Winston-Salem, NC yesterday, Pitt overcame a 10-6 half-time deficit to Wake Forest by scoring 28 second half points and handily defeating Wake, 34-13.  It was Pitt's fifth straight ACC win, moved them to 7-4 overall, 6-1 in the ACC, and more importantly, clinched the ACC Coastal Division.  In two weeks, they will play Clemson for the ACC Championship, and who besides Pat Narduzzi and the players themselves saw that coming after being pasted by Penn State and Central Florida, and losing to North Carolina?  

Pitt did something that good teams do: They improved and got better as the season progressed.  Good for the players and good for the coaches who made it happen.

Clemson is undefeated and ranked second in the nation.  They will be heavily favored to beat Pitt in the championship game.  In fact, it will be the exact same scenario as it was two years ago when Pitt went into Clemson and, uh, defeated them.   It happened once; it can happen again.

Yeah, a good weekend to be a football fan in Pittsburgh!