A scattershot look from The Grandstand at recent happenings in the World of Sports.
Steelers 28 - Washington Football Team 27
Najee rumbles
George Pickens does magic
Russ drops one down the
chimney to Mike Williams
In a week that can be described as "depressing" for some of us sitting in the Grandstand, the Steelers road win on Sunday over the Washington Commanders can be rightly described as "euphoric". The Steelers were coming off a bye week and were 6-2, and the Commanders with their terrific rookie QB Jaydon Daniels were the surprise of the league at 7-2. In all honesty, I was expecting a Steelers loss on Sunday. The nature of the win....a Steelers defense severely limiting Daniels, overcoming a double digit second half deficit, and the dime that Russell Wilson dropped to newly acquired Mike Williams with a little over two minutes to play for the go ahead touchdown....it was, well...euphoric!
I have not written much about the Steelers or the NFL so far this season, so let's reflect a bit. Sunday's win gives the Steelers a 7-2 record and a half game lead over the 7-3 Ravens, and sets ups a BIG GAME this Sunday when Baltimore comes to Pittsburgh. It will be the first divisional game that the Steelers will play and the stakes are, well, big. First place in the division, tie-breaker advantages, and blah blah blah. At the beginning of the year, I felt that Baltimore would be in the Super Bowl, and Lamar Jackson is playing at a level that will probably bring him a third MVP Award. However, the Ravens have shown some defensive vulnerability and a strange propensity for blowing leads late in games. I have often said that there is no better rivalry in the NFL over the last 15 or so years than Steelers-Ravens, and this week should prove to add to the luster of these games. And expect to hear the TV announcers trot out the Mike Tomlin-John Harbaugh to George Halas-Curly Lambeau comparisons.
After that 6-2 start, the Steelers post-bye schedule appeared, and still does appear, to be a brutal one: all six divisional games, plus the Commanders, Eagles, and Chiefs. They already have notched one W from that gauntlet. The rest of the way won't be any easier, but with how the team looked against the WFT, I am anxiously awaiting the next eight weeks, but, of course, I'll be taking them all one game at a time.
Grandstander Power Rankings
Not sure how regularly I'm going to do this, but here is my first GPR of the season, submitted without comment:
- Lions 8-1
- Chiefs 9-0
- Bills 8-2
- Ravens 7-3
- Steelers 7-2
- Eagles 7-2
- Commanders 7-2
- Vikings 7-2
- Falcons 6-4
- Cardinals 6-4
Others receiving consideration: Bengals 4-6, Broncos 5-5, Chargers 6-3, Texans 6-4.
Dodgers Win World Series
The Dodgers five game World Series win over the Yankees was just a little over two weeks ago, yet it already feels like so long ago, so I don't want to let it recede into the mists of history without a few comments.
First off, a Dodgers-Yankees face off was an exciting prospect, because it would pit the two greatest offensive players in the game today in a showdown against each other, Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers and Aaron Judge of the Yankees. That was going to cause fireworks like we hadn't seen since Reggie Jackson turned into Mr. October. Well, it didn't turn out that way. Over the 162 game season, Ohtani and Judge combined to hit .315 with 112 home runs and 274 runs batted in. In the five game series, they combined to hit .162 (6-for-37) with 1 HR and 3 RBI.
And then there was that fifth game. After four innings the Yanks led 5-0, Gerrit Cole hadn't surrendered a hit through four innings, Judge had hit a home run, and the Yankees appeared to be cruising to a win that would extend the Series to a sixth game. Then it all fell apart in a way that only baseball can deliver to us. Aaron Judge, who hadn't committed an error all season (you can look it up), dropped a routine fly ball in center, short stop Anthony Volpe made a throwing error, and then, inexplicably, Cole failed to cover first base on a ground ball to first, and BOOM, the Dodgers had tied it 5-5 and were on their way to a 7-6 win in Game 5 and a World Series Championship. Overall, perhaps it won't go down as one of the Great World Series of our time, but that fifth game, and especially that fifth inning, will make it a memorable one for sure.
Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman, playing with an injured ankle that would probably have put him on the injured list in the regular season, was the Most Valuable Player of the Series. He batted .300, had a Series record tying 12 RBI, and hit 4 home runs. The first of those was an extra innings walk off grand slam that, in retrospect, may have effectively ended the Series right then and there. The MVP Award for this Series was never in doubt.
Freeman came to the majors full time with the Braves in 2011. In those days I was still playing fantasy baseball, and I always coveted him for my team, but he always got drafted by someone else before I had the chance to nab him. From the start he was, as my Dad would have put it, "a nice looking ball player." He was a good player from the start, and he seems to be a likable guy as well. He always seems to chat up and laugh with other players whenever they reach first base, which I think is kind of cool to see. Through 15 seasons, he has hit .300 with 343 HR and over 1,200 RBI. Next year will be his age 35 season, and he appears to still have gas in the tank, so an eventual landing spot in Cooperstown is not hard to imagine. I will look forward to still watching him play.
College Football
What with conference realignments, NIL money, the transfer portal, and a twelve team Playoff, the business model of college football is well on the way to becoming Major League Baseball. If you follow the sport, you know exactly what I am talking about, so I needn't spell it out for you here. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is still TBD, but one thing for sure is that this 2024 season has produced some absolutely terrific match-ups and games, and seems to be doing it on weekly basis. I cannot recall a season where I have looked forward to at least one game every single weekend as much as I have this season, and it shows no signs of stopping right up on through the conclusion of the CFP Championship game on January 20, so at least there will be one good thing that will happen on that day.
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