Still crazy after all these years

Barack Obama and Dan Rooney in Pittsburgh in 2008: Getty Images … President Obama sent him to Ireland and left his son solely in charge To say that 2008 was a great year to the late Dan Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and chairman of the board, would be an understatement. In February, his team won its sixth — and last — Super Bowl, and the future certainly looked rosy for second-year Coach Mike Tomlin.  Rooney was able to fulfill an NFL directive to buy up all of his brothers’ shares of the team because they were involved in gambling, racetracks. He also helped orchestrate Barack Obama’s election as president of the United States even though he was a Republican.  Then, in March of 2009, President Obama appointed him as ambassador to Ireland, and tremendous honor and great responsibility.  However, in retrospect, it actually saw the start of the decline of the Steelers as a Super Bowl contender. They returned there two years later, and lost.  Since...

The $41 million Steeler problem: Getty Images … “Is Rooney in Denial? Did Steelers CEO/President Art Rooney II just throw Ben Roethlisberger under the bus, while concomitantly saying that he would like the QB to finish his career in Pittsburgh? In short, the Steelers owner realizes that the team is in major trouble because of the reduced salary cap of the NFL, and that it cannot afford to have Roethlisberger return unless significant concessions are made to his contract, which ESPN says is virtually impossible.  In doing so, Rooney said that the late-season collapse is the fault of the QB and the offense, not his current coach, Mike Tomlin, whose playoff record over the past ten years is 3-5 and who has not won a playoff game in four years.  After the embarrassing end to the 2020 season with a loss to the previously woeful Cleveland Browns, you would think that the coach is on the hot seat. That is not the case.  In a virtual zoom meeting with reporters yesterd...

From The Ringer … “The NFL’s Analytics Revolution Has Arrived” Many, if not most, Green Bay Packer fans are outraged at their football coach, Matt LaFleur, who is in just his second year and directed his team to the NFC title game last Sunday.  The fans believe that their coach made a horrible mistake when he decided to take a field goal with just over two minutes in its game with Tampa Bay. That decision narrowed the Tampa Bay lead to five points instead of eight, but with the probably league MVP in quarterback Aaron Rodgers, why didn’t he try to score the TD and then, hopefully, tie the game with a 2-point conversion? Well, my belief is that is “Much Ado About Nothing.” In truth I think that this game was won in the first half, at the end, when Bucs Coach Bruce Arians made what was a very crazy call that worked.  The similarity, though, is that both decisions may have been made by metrics, or analytics.  What does that mean? Analogy to baseball I do not w...

Has the Super Bowl window closed? … let’s move on from Ben The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette paid for a post-season poll that indicated how much frustration Steeler fans felt after the 2020 season, one that started so propitiously with 11 consecutive victories. The most interesting number for me in the poll is the one that fans care about most, and one that I pointed out a few weeks ago: “An overwhelming majority of 85% believe the team’s Super Bowl window is now closed.” I said that the Steelers may not win a Super Bowl until 2034, basing that on the drought that the team went through from 1979 until 2006. With the number of free agents this year and the aging of the team as a whole, that is more likely than not. What the fans are saying, in other words, is that it is time to rebuild and get rid of most of the current players who have big contracts. That is not surprising for a team that lost four of its last five games, the final one an embarrassing debacle to the Cleveland Brown...

Todd Haley's offensive numbers are the best in Steelers' history … instead of firing OCs, look in the mirror At his season-ending media briefing, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said, “I’m not going to maintain the status quo and hope the outcome changes. That’s the definition of insanity.” Less than a week later, Tomlin slipped on a straitjacket and is hoping no one notices. Replacing Randy Fichtner with Matt Canada as offensive coordinator is a matter of same thing, different bobo. Mark Madden, Tribune-Review When a football team collapses from an 11-0 start to a first-round exit from the playoffs, it is an indication that changes are needed.  Mike Tomlin, the Pittsburgh Steelers coach who is 3-5 in the NFL postseason playoffs over the past decade, asserted in the above quote that he was not going to devolve into the Edgar Allan Poe’s “Raven,” the insanity where he hears something “tapping at my chamber door.” Yes, those Ravens lasted longer than did the Steelers, a...