Ben Tate is playing like the RB I was pimping him as during last year’s draft. I think the Texans should feel real good about their RB situation. 9/95 and 1TD. Nice.
Larry Fitzgerald got paaaaaaiiid…
8 years, $120M. $50M guaranteed. Not sure any player is worth that much, but if any non-QB is Fitzgerald might be.
Do you have 400 pound female browns fans handy? I’m not sure I’ll be in Cleveland long enough after the game to find an equivelant bengals fan, especially given that the Bengals fanbase goes into hiding unless they’re having one of their occasional decent seasons.
Hmm, I don’t know, I’ve never done one of these bets. Maybe one of those custom member titles below your user name that says something like “Posting from the AFC North Basement” for a month?
If anyone else has any ideas of an appropriate wager please chime in.
David Akers, subbing for an injured Andy Lee, booted a 44 yard punt. 
But then he had one blocked 
There’s a bit of a kerfuffle brewing after the Eagles-Steelers game from Thursday night. PFT is covering the story here, it centers around Steelers’ LG Ramon foster taking a insanely dirty shot at Eagles LB Jamar Chaney. There’s YouTube video of it here.
It’ll be interesting to see what the Commish does about this. Thus far there’s been nothing, which is insulting considering the attention paid to relatively minor helmet to helmet hits.
Mostly it’s of interest to me because it further highlights what a truly despicable franchise the Steelers are turning into. The I’ve lost whatever respect I had for Mike Tomlin and the way he does business and the Rooney’s credentials are quickly getting flushed down the toilet.
You are mistaken, sir. The Steelers are never dirty. They just play hard because they are manly men and real football players and you are just jealous.
Wow, that was cheap. I didn’t see anything about that in the game, they never even brought it up.
Suspend and/or fine him. There’s no place in the game for stuff like that.
I’m starting to come to the conclusion that it’s not the team or the coaching anymore, it’s the players. Some of them are simply cheap-shot artists. Would you say that Jeff Fisher was responsible for Albert Haynesworth’s head stomp or Cortland Finnegan’s dirty play? How about Tom Cable, was he responsible for Richard Seymour punching Ben in the head last year after the play was over?
I refuse to defend that sort of stuff. If the Steelers want to cut Foster, I’ll shed no tears. If they want to cut Harrison, fine by me. But it’s to the point now where you can’t cut yourself to respectability. Every team has some sort of cancer on it, and we’re just going to have to learn to live with it. I certainly wouldn’t fault Tomlin or the Rooneys for that. I suppose you can fault them for not cutting a player who acts like that, but if you do that you’d have to do the same across the league.
The irony in all of this is that the players are ultimately the ones that have to live with the aftermath of playing football, and you would think that there would be some sort of sense, some idea that doing things like that may end up coming back to haunt you when it happens to you. But no, they go out there and do this sort of thing and then scream about how they have these crippling injuries, injuries that were caused by the players themselves. It’s like they have no sense of self-preservation, no self-interest. Instead they go out and cheap-shot each other. I’d like to say it’s getting out of hand, but as a Bears fan you know it’s been out of hand for a long time.
The commissioner needs to put guys who do things like Ramon Foster did and put them in the dock, and for what it’s worth I’m all in favor of it.
[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
You are mistaken, sir. The Steelers are never dirty. They just play hard because they are manly men and real football players and you are just jealous.
[/QUOTE]
Boy, I sure did miss this.
I posted that partially to bait some of the Steelers fans around here into defending this. Pleased to see that you didn’t fall victim to it.
It’s been surprisingly quiet. Things like this tend to be really hush hush when it involves the Patriots and Steelers. ESPN is loaded with Steelers and Patriots homers, and this is the type of stuff that pisses the rest of the country off so much. The Suh play is getting loads of publicity but this one hasn’t shown up anywhere but PFT. Anyways, I’ll get off my high horse now.
Goddell wants to be the big swinging dick around here doling out justice like Dirty Harry, this is an opportunity to actually do something that backs up all his talk and bluster. Personally, on plays this obviously dirty with such an obvious intent to injure, he should be suspended multiple games. This isn’t a bang-bang helmet to helmet hit where a safety is trying to make a play, this is premeditated malice. If Goodell wanted to protect players he’d treat plays like this as opportunities to make a statement. I’d say a 4 game suspension would be the starting point were I commissioner. If there were previous transgressions, it’d go up from there.
I disagree. It’s coaching and management first, players second. There are certainly isolated cases where there are bad eggs in otherwise classy organizations, it happens and even good players will make really stupid choices on occasion. But when it’s a pattern spread across multiple seasons and multiple players, it’s an organizational problem. It comes initially from coaches and GMs drafting players “with an edge” or who “play nasty”. Then it gets fed and cultivated by coaches who preach this stuff in the locker room and on the practice field and reinforce it by promoting those players who tread and cross that line.
Tomlin is the primary problem in my view. The Steelers wouldn’t be having this happening so frequently if it wasn’t considered the way the Steelers are expected to do business. I’m sure that Hines Ward, Jerome Harrison and who ever else is a vocal “leader” in that locker room can encourage and inspire this stuff, but Tomlin could squash that if he chose to. The Steelers have had so many cases like this where I have to believe it’s far bigger than just the players.
In your examples, the answer is yes on all counts. Fisher is a meat head and the Titans were always considered one of the dirtier teams in the league. I like Fisher generally, but he inherited too much of the Buddy Ryan mentality and it seemed to get worse as his time there stretched out. Tom Cable punched out an assistant coach and the organization is run by Al “just win baby” Davis, who signed Steve Wisnewski, Bill Romanowski and Jack Tatum. On your last note about that Charles Martin hit, that too was an organizational problem, Forrest Gregg was a dirty player who encouraged it in his players as a coach.
LOL…well, you have seen that photo of that, erm, “female” Steelers fan with the really stretchy Rothlisberger underpants floating around the web, haven’t you?
You won’t find any female Bengals fans like that. When they overindulge on brattwursts we send them packing up north.
And a “posting from the AFCN basement” custom title sounds good to me.
LMAO!
Glad to see this refreshing perspective from a Steelers fan. It is not the norm in my experience.
Oy Vey. The Saints laid an egg in Houston last night. Drew Brees was uncharacteristically sloppy, the defense got manhandled, and not much seemed to click. Thomas had some decent runs, and Chase Daniels hit a bomb to Joseph Morgan, but otherwise there wasn’t much to smile about.
Houston looked really sharp on both sides of the ball. They may be contenders this year…
It’s questionable whether Fitz is even the best wideout in the league. There’s no way he’s one of the five most valuable players in the league at any position, but that’s how much he’s getting paid.
Now, if Chris Johnson had gotten this deal, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
There’s no way Chris Johnson will remain as productive as Larry Fitzgerald for 8 years.
I would take Andre Johnson or Roddy White over Larry at this stage of their respective careers…but none of them are worth that kind of crazy money. No wideout is. At least on the surface this looks like a result of the rookie wage scale paying off intended consequences…an elite veteran player at their position getting a ton of guaranteed money after earning it rather than a 1st round pick getting it before playing a down in the NFL.
I do think the contract is somewhat crazy (depends on how it’s structured/backloaded), but how bad would the Cards be without him? He’s the only thing that makes them interesting, so it could be a reasonable financial decision in that respect.
I have to imagine the Fitzgerald deal was done with an eye towards the team salary floors in 2013, when everyone has to spend 90% of the cap. Right now there’s a leaguewide floor but no individual team floor. The ESPN article says the deal is giving him $18 million over the first two years, and $17 million per year starting in 2013.
If the money has to be spent, might as well spend it on locking up your best player.
I think I read somewhere that he gets 75 million of the total money within the first four years of the deal…8 years just seems crazy long for a contract for a wideout that’s approaching 30.
I think Fitzgerald’s value is in how good he makes a QB look when throwing to him. He does better on poorly thrown balls than any other WR in the league right now that I can think of, and I’d rather have him than Roddy White and Andre Johnson if my QB stinks. (90/1137/6 with the QBs they had last year? Wow) I’d rather have Fitzgerald over Andre Johnson anyway. I think FoieGrasIsEvil just hasn’t taken a close enough look.
Johnson is 25. Fitz is 27. LaDanian Tomlinson hit the wall after his ninth season; I see no reason to believe Johnson won’t last that long, especially considering he avoids contact much more than LT did.
Will Fitz be able to play into his thirties, unlike Johnson? Sure - but in all probability they’ll both hit the wall around the same time. There’s no way Fitz collects on the last two or three years of this deal.
Johnson posted two 1,100 yard seasons with David Carr as his quarterback. He’s also caught at least 60 passes in every single season he’s been in the league, which Fitz hasn’t. In fairness, Fitz was only 2 catches shy as a rookie.
We’re guardedly optimistic.
The secondary is vastly improved over last year, but that didn’t stop a couple of wide open deep shots.
Also, we were getting gashed up the middle pretty badly. Last year, the secondary was so bad it overshadowed the fact teams rushed the Texans a ton up the middle when they weren’t tossing TD passes at will. I know Wade said we don’t need a huge NT up the middle, but we’ve all been wondering if he’s just been saying that to avoid saying the entire defense was a tear down project that would take a couple seasons.
I kinda feel bad for Andy Dalton. 2 picks in the first quarter alone, and only a dumpoff to a RB makes him look respectable. Sometimes I’m glad I’m not a fan of the Bengals. OK, to be honest, ALL THE TIME, I’m glad I’m not a Bengals fan.