End of an Era?; Playoffs Thoughts; CFP Prediction

Wow. Just wow.

The Steelers were behind 7-0 fourteen seconds into the game, 28-0 after the first quarter, 35-10 at the half, and ended up losing 48-37.  They put a scare - maybe - into the CleveBrownies with an abortive comeback effort, they had closed the gap to 35-23 at one point in the third quarter, but in retrospect, the game was over when Maurkice Pouncey's first snap of the game sailed over Ben Roethlisberger's head and turned into a Cleveland touchdown.

Lots of introspection needs to take place, and lots of questions need to be asked as the Steelers begin to move on and prepare for 2021, but here are two of them:

1. The team at one point stood at 11-0 and then lost five of their next six games, and looked very bad in doing so.  What in the hell happened and why?
2. Was last night the last time we will see so many Steelers in Black & Gold, including their seventeen year veteran Hall of Fame quarterback?

These and other questions are best encapsulated in the photo that is atop this post.

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Other observations...

Bills 27 - Colts 24.  This first game of the six game weekend was easily the best of the bunch.  Buffalo now becomes, to me at least, a sentimental  favorite to advance to the Super Bowl.  And was this game the Last Hurrah for 2004 Draft Class QB Phillip Rivers?

Quarterbacks Standing Tall.  Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Baker Mayfield, and, most improbable of all, Taylor Heinicke of the Washington Football Team.  For reasons I won't go into here, the WFT has become a team of interest to me, and I have recently become friends with many fans of the team. Their performance against Brady's Bucs on Saturday was a valiant one, and while Heinicke probably isn't a long term answer for them at QB, he played one hell of game on Saturday.

Quarterbacks Coming Up Small.  Russell Wilson, Ryan Tannehill, Ben Roethlisberger, and Mitch Trubisky.  I was planning on going into a full scale rant about the awfulness of Trubisky and the Bears, but in light of the Steelers performance last night, I figure, screw it, I have no room to talk.

Resting Players.   Last year, the 14-2 Ravens rested Lamar Jackson and other players in week 17, had a bye week, and then came up well short in the opening round of the Playoffs.  Last week, the Steelers treated their Week 17 game with the Browns as a pre-season game, resting Roethlisberger, Pouncey, T.J. Watt, Cam Heyward and others.  Now there were many reasons for that awful performance last night, but you will not convince me that taking the week off, essentially, last week wasn't among them.  Clearly, they certainly didn't gain anything by resting those guys.  It will be interesting to see how the Chiefs and Packers come out of the chute next week after their weeks off.

Okay, now who do I root for?  So the Steelers are out, so what team(s) do I attach myself to for the duration?  In no particular order, I'm going to be rooting for these teams going forward:

• Chiefs - How can you not root for Patrick Mahomes?
• Bills - They've been down so long you just got to root for them, right?  And a $20 bet on them winning the Super Bowl made a few weeks ago at 12-1 odds is a pretty nice incentive, too.
• Packers - Aaron Rodgers. Like Mahomes, how can you not like the guy?  Plus, an historic franchise, and my new Wisconsin friends Steve Ozbolt and Karen Kaminsky.
• Ravens - Yeah, I know that they are a bitter rival of the Steelers, but I like them (now that Ray Lewis is gone).  A solid organization, a good coach, and another really good and charismatic QB in Lamar Jackson.
• Sorry, like the Bills, the Browns have been down forever, and they also have a charismatic young QB, but I can't bring myself to root for them.  I just can't.

Good for what ails you.  At halftime of the Steelers game last night, when all hope appeared to be lost, and a feeling of doom pervaded, I took myself to the kitchen and fixed myself one of these.

Yessir! A root beer float can cure a lot of ills!

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A terrific football weekend comes to a conclusion tonight when #1 Alabama meets #3 Ohio State in the Championship game of the College Football Playoff.  In trying to come up with a prediction, it comes down to the question of which Buckeyes team shows up.  Will it be the one that looked good but quite ordinary in beating Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship game?  Or will it be the team that thoroughly thumped and eviscerated Clemson in the CFP semi-final?  If it's the former, then it's an easy call for Alabama.  If it's the latter, then it becomes a bit harder, but on the theory that you can't ever go wrong by picking for Nick Saban, I'll call the game as a win for the Crimson Tide.  They are 8.5 point favorites, and as of this writing, how I'm gonna bet on it becomes a closer-to-gametime decision.