Pittsburgh Proletarians Pummel Pillagers
Sorry for dumping Pete's Cyclops anti-fan-art from the top of the blog as he predicted, but: Pittsburgh did prevail over the Bay Area Bandits this afternoon, winning 35 to 3 in a game that the Post-Gazette's Ed Bouchette calls, in his crustily trenchant style, "not as close as the score indicated".
I didn't see much of it -- I was in Seattle with Kyle overnight, visiting friends of hers who were there for the weekend -- but while we were packing up the hotel room this morning I caught the end of the first quarter and the beginning of the second, enough to see the Steelers' solid, sufficiently balanced first touchdown drive. I also got to see the defense starting to tighten all the way down on Oakland, despite Ryan Clark drawing a fifteen-yard penalty for having a reputation for helmet-to-helmet hits, that on a play in which he smacked his head into a receiver somewhere around the middle of the shoulder blades. (The NFL's new, slightly less nominal commitment to preventing long-term brain damage: I probably shouldn't be so cynical about it, but it still leads to some pretty crappy officiating!) Having built up some football-emotional scar tissue since this time last season I was able to easily turn away and not worry about the very real possibility of a late-game Steelers meltdown but I'm glad the team sealed the deal this time: They'd been beaten twice in a row since 2006 by worse Raiders teams and Oakland, based on what I saw of their defense on the hotel TV, looks like it's slouching towards actually legit this year.
I haven't read more than the initial game summary, nor should I probably expend any more of my limited time on this pale blue dot we call Earth familiarizing myself of the details of a game already won. But I did at least get my random jolt of unearned happiness from it, rather than a random jolt of unwarranted sadness.
I didn't see much of it -- I was in Seattle with Kyle overnight, visiting friends of hers who were there for the weekend -- but while we were packing up the hotel room this morning I caught the end of the first quarter and the beginning of the second, enough to see the Steelers' solid, sufficiently balanced first touchdown drive. I also got to see the defense starting to tighten all the way down on Oakland, despite Ryan Clark drawing a fifteen-yard penalty for having a reputation for helmet-to-helmet hits, that on a play in which he smacked his head into a receiver somewhere around the middle of the shoulder blades. (The NFL's new, slightly less nominal commitment to preventing long-term brain damage: I probably shouldn't be so cynical about it, but it still leads to some pretty crappy officiating!) Having built up some football-emotional scar tissue since this time last season I was able to easily turn away and not worry about the very real possibility of a late-game Steelers meltdown but I'm glad the team sealed the deal this time: They'd been beaten twice in a row since 2006 by worse Raiders teams and Oakland, based on what I saw of their defense on the hotel TV, looks like it's slouching towards actually legit this year.
I haven't read more than the initial game summary, nor should I probably expend any more of my limited time on this pale blue dot we call Earth familiarizing myself of the details of a game already won. But I did at least get my random jolt of unearned happiness from it, rather than a random jolt of unwarranted sadness.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home