This is what The Grandstander had to say back on September 9 in concluding my thoughts about the Steelers and their upcoming season:
Maybe this is a season where the team just takes a step backwards while retooling for another sustained stretch of Super Bowl caliber seasons down the road. With a QB like Ben you can never count them out, and the Bengals can always be counted on to be, well, the Bengals, so you never know, but let's call it a 9-7 season with the team missing the Playoffs. Hope I'm wrong.
Today the Steelers season came to a practical end, if not an official one, with a loss to those same Cincinnati Bengals that I so sneering referred to in that write up. So I was wrong about the Bengals, to be sure. And with a record that now stands at 7-8, the very best the Steelers can do is 8-8, so I was wrong about that, too. But on the Big Issue, I was correct: no playoffs for Rooney U. this year.
It should also be noted that at a few weeks back, the Steelers were 6-3 and in firm control of their playoff destiny. Since then, they have gone 1-5, and, as noted, no post season for them. Sounds a lot like another team that toiled on the North Shore this year.
Next week's season finale against the Browns shapes up as something that the Steelers haven't had in recent memory, a totally and completely meaningless game, but is it really? A win can mean an 8-8 season, a non-losing season, something that that other North Side team knows nothing about. And is a game against the Cleveland Browns ever really meaningless? And the Steelers could see this as getting a pound of flesh against a crummy team that beat them during this second half decline. Will the Steelers show some pride and professionalism and do something that they failed to do two weeks ago against San Diego, like show up and be ready to play? Seeing how they answer that question will make next week's final game interesting to watch.
More post-season analysis and recriminations will be coming once the regular season is, officially, over.
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