These are the times where being a sports fan is difficult. You give it your all, you give it your money, you give it your time. You believe that you're rooting for something real. You believe that those athletes you watch feel the same way.
But do they? Do they really?
It's times like this that make you really question what the point of all of it is.
After this performance put on by the "Pittsburgh Steelers", it's difficult to find a point in any of it.
It's easy to throw the cliche at us and say "You just won your second Super Bowl in four years, and your sixth of all time, you have no right to be angry". And it would be folly to totally dismiss that point. To a degree, it does make sense.
But not in Pittsburgh. Not for the Steelers. We want better. We expect better. We need better. But what we've received this season is anything but better. And the answer after this freezing, epically disappointing night in Cleveland is abundantly clear...
The players don't care.
It's not fair to us as city. It's not fair to us as fans. We expect more.
This is a team that returned 20 of 22 starters from a Super Bowl Champion. And those two new starters? They were on the team last year and they contributed. How many Super Bowl Champions can say that in the modern era? This is a team that statistically had the most difficult schedule in NFL history last year and went 12-4, 6-0 in their division and won the Super Bowl. This year, they had statistically one of the easiest schedules, and are currently 6-7, 1-5 in the division and all but mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. Frankly, it's embarrassing.
I know the Steelers followed up their Super Bowl XL victory with a lackluster 8-8 season but the comparison is ill fitting. That team was the 6th seed in the playoffs and basically had to win every game from Week 12 on to even make the playoffs. That team began with Roethlisberger nearly killing himself in a motorcycle crash, having an appendix removed and other numerous season injuries. That team was coached by a head coach already planning his retirement. That was a 10-6 team who got hot at the right time and lost numerous starters. This team dealt with none of that.
This years team inherited the majority of a 12-4 team with quite possibly the decades greatest defense. This years team had a mostly healthy Ben Roethlisberger, career years by Hines Ward and Santonio Holmes, discoveries of gems of young players in Rashard Mendenhall and Mike Wallace and a favorable schedule. Sure, Troy Polamalu has been injured the majority of the season (and everything he brings to the table ridiculously obvious now) as well as the always underrated Aaron Smith. But teams deal with injuries all the time. Great teams overcome injuries. The Indianapolis Colts haven't played a single game with their starting secondary and start two rookies, one undrafted and yet sit comfortably at 12-0. The excuses are over.
It's not that this team doesn't have the talent. Up until this game, they've never trailed any team by more than 7 points. When you think about it, that's silly. This team has an abundance of talent.
That's where we come back to our initial point. The team simply doesn't care. They have no focus and they have no drive. Through 13 games, not one cornerback on the team has an interception. Their quarterback throws way too many red zone interceptions. They can't tackle. They can't cover kicks. They can't hold lead late it games. All these faults point to one answer: the team simply doesn't care about winning. They have their paychecks and most of them have their Super Bowl rings. And that seems to make them perfectly content.
It leaves us utterly non-content. It's not fair to us fans and the Steelers deserve to give all of us fans one gigantic apology. I'll be waiting.
Was that a death rattle?
ReplyDeleteNo, the death rattle was the Oakland game. The Cleveland game was more like the part where the heart monitor has just that one constant tone, and the doctor is on top of the guy, furiously performing CPR, and finally, after an unreasonably long period of time, one of the nurses goes "Doctor? Doctor!" (saying it twice becuase the doctor is so distracted that she has to yell at him to get his attention off of performing CPR, and he finally steps down off the table, and goes "Time of Death: 12:02 AM". He then agrily throws his latex gloves into a nearby trash recepticle, and storms out of the room. Usually, there's a swinging door, so he thrusts it open with all his might, and walks quickly past another nurse who had been watching through the window, and has that look of desperately wanting to say something comforting, but not knowing what that would be.
ReplyDelete