Still crazy after all these years

… an annual lament Steeler fans who watched Josh Dobbs in the preseason finale had to be impressed, even if he was playing against the Carolina scrubs for most of the game. Dobbs completed 8-of-12 passes for 151 yards and a TD, but also showed that he can do something that none of the other QBs can. As columnist Kevin Gorham wrote this morning on the TribLive websote, “… but what separates him from Ben Roethlisberger, Landry Jones and Mason Rudolph is the ability to use his legs … The Steelers have to decide whether they are willing to part with a quarterback who brings a dangerous dimension the others don’t.” That is true, but the real decision has to do with the future. Do the Steelers want to continue wasting time on a QB like Landry Jones who has thrown almost as many interceptions in four years (7) as he has touchdowns (8), as person with an 86 QB rating? Or do they want to cast their lot with two young QBs who have demonstrated tremendous potential, rookie Mason Rudolph and Dob...

… Remember, “One for the Thumb” took decades It is the the preseason, but the Pittsburgh Steelers fans are optimistic again — or at least some of them are. The Pittsburgh media have been predicting for years that this offensive “tsunami” was going to carry them to another Super Bowl. However, as the voluble radio personality Mark Madden noted a few weeks ago, the track record of those great offensive weapons has been spotty at best. “This is the last season of the Le’Veon Bell/Antonio Brown era. It feels like the Steelers have accomplished something in the era’s five years prior, perhaps because of the assorted histrionics. But they haven’t. It’s honestly hard to figure why they didn’t.” Last year was particularly galling after winning 13 games. Losing to a wild-card team, Jacksonville, in their first game was downright embarrassing, even if they did score 42 points. However, even worse was what happened the year before when the Steeler millennials and Gen-Xers were certain that Sup...

… Thomas Wolfe: “You can’t go home again” While I never took this idea seriously, it did cross my mind this week when a local community in which I reside part-time said that they were not having a 7th-grade football program because they could not find a volunteer coach. The thought was fleeting and not practice since I have scheduled two eye surgeries over a two-week period in late August and into September. I did spend almost a quarter century coaching football, and I definitely enjoyed it despite experiencing mostly success but also some difficult years. These young men ranged from college seniors down to fourth graders, so I understood the gamut. I was fortunate to have coached five undefeated teams and seven that earned championships. However, I also went through two seasons in which we did not win the game. Believe me, I remember those winless seasons as well as the undefeated ones. However, there was one common component that would lead me back to coaching: The relationships ...

… will Tomlin play disciplinarian and bench Bell? A year ago, James Conner’s football jersey was the hottest selling one in the NFL — even better than Brady. Why do Pittsburgh fans love Conner so much? Some may call it the Brian Piccolo effect, but it is much more intense than that. First, Conner starred at the University of Pittsburgh as a running back, earning Player of the Year honors in the Atlantic Coast Conference when he ran for 1,765 yards and 26 touchdowns, an average of just under six yards a carry. However, what really motivated the fans to embrace Conner was how he battle back from big-time adversity. First, in 2015, his junior season, he tore his MCL in the first game of the season. Then, in December of that year, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. That led to a series of chemotherapy treatments, 12 in all, after which he was diagnosed as cancer-free. Return Conner returned in 2016, rushing for 1,092 yards and 16 touchdowns. He was named first-team ACC that seas...

… Ohio State should have fired him While suspended Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer expressed his regrets, they were tempered by mercy — toward himself, but not toward the young woman who was repeatedly assaulted and battered by one of his coaches. “I want to apologize to Buckeye Nation,” after he received his slap on the wrist from Ohio State, a suspension of three games this season. He apologized to the community and the president, but he attempted to give himself the benefit of the doubt. “I followed my heart and not my head. I fell short in pursuing full information because at each juncture, I gave Zach Smith the benefit of the doubt.” Smith was the wide receivers coach for the Buckeyes until this summer, until his ex-wife, whom he battered for almost a decade, was forced to obtain a protection from abuse order from him despite their being divorced for about two years. Smith, who is a grandson of former Ohio State legendary coach Earle Bruce, started this abuse right after h...

… Big Ten title in his third year Sometimes, polls or surveys are released that have little validity, so much so that you must ask, “Why did they even bother?” That is the case of the recent survey by CBS Sports in which they tried to ascertain who the most overrated and underrated coaches are in FBS college football. When you have just one out of five coaches respond to your survey, perhaps you should can the results. That is the case with the CBS poll prior to the 2018 season. Here is what CBS said about their study: “Our CBS Sports college football writers spoke with one-fifth of the 129 active coaches leading FBS teams entering the 2018 season.” To save you time doing the math, that is just 26 out of 129 coaches. That is an incredibly small sample and should be just ignored. However, since James Franklin, who is entering his fifth season at Penn State, was ranked in a tie for first place, I decided to look at the reality of what they were saying. Franklin and Florida State Coa...

... a few more "could have" opportunities This is the second installment on the topic: Should the Steelers have won more Super Bowls? Or could they have won more? When talking about the Steelers today, the gold standard was set by Chuck Noll. Though the media never gave him the attention that a superstar deserved, Noll was a low-key guy, but one who knew when he was hired in 1969 what he had to do to elevate the program. Elevate it he did, using some outstanding drafts, and then molding them first into a great defensive unit and then one that provided some tremendous offensive weapons. The result was four Super Bowls in six years, starting in 1975. He built the foundation of Steeler Nation as we know it today, and Cowher and Tomlin have done a respectable job keeping the franchise a contender over the years. Noll’s teams struggled in the early years, but he drafted the inimitable Mean Joe Greene in his first year and the rifle-armed QB Terry Bradshaw in the second draft...

… “should” and “could” very different helping verbs Sports columnist Tim Benz tackled an interesting topic a few weeks ago, one that many Pittsburgh Steeler fans have debated over the years. His focus is a little narrower than the one that I am taking here. Here is his premise: “Should the Steelers have gone to more Super Bowls in the Bill Cowher-Mike Tomlin era? And if so, is coaching to blame?” he wrote in the Tribune-Review. First, Steeler fans are spoiled by their success since the woeful first 41 years of their franchise. Art Rooney, Sr. was a great guy, but the Steelers were second on his list of priorities. His racetracks brought in the big bucks. Never did he imagine during those years that the football franchise may worth a billion dollars or that his teams would win six Super Bowls. So, the six Super Bowl wins is still the gold standard for all teams. No one else has that many, but the fans have yearned for more over the years. Are those desires realistic? Should the Steele...

… confession not good for the soul When a person reaches the pinnacle of his or her profession, he expects to receive the benefit of the doubt. For a college coach who has won 84 percent (177-31) of his games overall, 90 percent (73-8) in his current job, that should occur. Unless he makes a major mistake, which is what has happened with Ohio State football Coach Urban Meyer. With three national titles under his belt, and now in his 50s with a team that could compete for the 2018 national championship while earning about seven million dollars this year, life should be great for Meyer. Instead, his Buckeyes started their preseason camp without their leader in their midst, serving an administrative suspension. Things are so bad for Meyer right now that he had to resort to a Sylvia Plath confessional response, albeit not a poetic one. Meyer instead wrote a note to Ohio State fans on Twitter with an acknowledgement that he had lied last month when he said that he did not know about an a...

… domestic abuse and sexual abuse enablers The details that are revealed through text messages and interviews are gripping: A young, pregnant woman was battered about by an assistant football coach at the University of Florida in 2009. He was arrested, but the head coach’s friends convinced the wife to drop the charges. Then this assistant coach was hired at Ohio State a few years later, and he followed a familiar pattern. He battered his wife with his child clinging to her in 2015. She divorced him, but the records that reveal the abuse are sealed by a judge in Ohio — who was probably more worried about Ohio State’s chances for a national title than for the safety and welfare of women. More than a decade earlier, a sleazy Ohio State team physician abused more than 70 athletes during his decades at the university, but no one did anything about it. Now, former wrestlers and others are suing the university because of the abuse, and a former assistant wrestling coach, whom they say kn...