I don’t know if it’s blasphemous, but I’m actually silently hoping we lose right now, or this will eat at my conscience. My God that was a disgusting call. And we have no right winning because of it.
Is there a such thing as a bittersweet defeat? This will be it.
Someone please come in here and tell me I’m not the only one who would feel disgusted and embarrassed if we won because of that call.
I would feel worse, but did you see the one earlier when Hines caught that TD pass that was reversed cause of the holding? It felt like payback to me.
All hyperbole aside, Tomlin going for two from the 12 with ten minutes to go is the stupidest coaching decision I have seen in 30 years of watching football, and it cost them overtime. Unconscionably stupid.
That was only a two point conversion.
oops
not a good idea to fumble there
Thank God I can sleep soundly tonight.
I’ll be a Steelers fan until I die, but I rooted for the Jaguars for those last 3 minutes. I want the Steelers to win, but I never, ever want to see them win because of a thing like that.
I’d rather go 0-16 than win a playoff game because of a blown call like that.
You, sir, are an honorable man. My [sports team of choice] cap is off to you.
That was easily the greatest game I have ever seen. I’ll tell you one thing, though, I have seen the Prevent defense, but until tonight I have never seen the Prevent offense. What goes through one’s mind when they decide to run a QB rush on 3rd and 6 when all you need is a first down to close it out?
Also, let me be the first to thank Alan Faneca for his years of top notch protection. Good luck wherever you end up, dude. God knows I wish you would stay in Pittsburgh, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
Good luck to Jacksonville. Beat the hell out of the Patriots.
With that, I am going to dive into the bottom of a bottle of hooch and think wonderful thoughts of August, when I will come at you with round six of my annual sadomasochistic flogging.
This is Dave, signing off, depressed beyond words but already anxious for next season. And thanks for the participation in my thread. It’s always fun, it’s never personal, and no matter what team you root for, long live football.
An excellent game for sure. I couldn’t believe Pittsburgh got back into that game, but they did despite a great defensive effort from Jacksonville. Exciting to the very end. Sorry, Doors and Steelers fans, but you can’t feel too bad about losing a game like that.
I’m proud of my team. They played their hearts out, and it remained only the horrid play calling that ultimately lost the game for them. 3rd and 6, and the short pass has been there for us all night long whenever we needed it. It’s crucial that we convert so that we can kill clock. So we try to run Ben Roethlisberger. On third and 6.
I agree that missing the call on Hines was a make-up for the phantom holding on the conversion attempt. I was surprised at how bad the officiating was, and how little they were calling holding. And Soapbox, it doesn’t matter if it was a touchdown or two point conversion. How much did we lose by? If your conscience was bothering you about a call that went in favor of the Steelers, I’d suggest that you go back to a replay of the Gerrard conversion run at the end of the game. Watch it from both angles.
Still, don’t get me wrong. What lost the game for us was really bad play calling.
Of course, you pulled the plug after 8 minutes, so I’m not surprised that you were rooting for Jacksonville at the end of the game.
Ahem…8 minutes into the second quarter. 
On second thought, yep, you’re absolutely right. I rooted against my team simply because I would not have been able to face the shame of eating my words. Because Lord knows I’d much rather avoid eating crow instead of seeing the Steelers win another Super Bowl. :rolleyes:
Had nothing to do with winning honorably at all. Granted, the Steelers had no affect on the penalty calls that were made, but those calls almost had a very big (and in my opinion, negative) impact on the game. We played horribly for three quarters, and in the end that is ultimately what cost us the game, as it should have.
We had 45 minutes (prior to the fourth quarter) during which to play well enough to win the game. Winning by one point because of a blatent facemasking that gave us first down at the goal line would have cheapened the victory, and cheapened anything we would have achieved for the remainder of the playoffs.
Agreed. Lots of strange stuff tonight, but that 3 and out was clearly a disaster.
Hard to say what the conclusion should be. The Steelers made shocking mistakes, but still came back against a good team and easily could have won.
The conclusion is that the Jaguars clearly have a better chance at beating the Patriots than the Steelers would have had, and isn’t seeing the Patriots lose really all that’s important?
[Argument no one wants to hear about at this particular moment]
Nonsense. “Overrated” is a relative term of how highly something is thought of vs its actual performance. For instance, if the perception of the, say, 2005 Steelers offensive line was that it was the best line in history, it would be overrated even though it was elite in run blocking. That’s an exaggeration, but my point is that overrated is not the opposite of elite run blocking.
I know it makes you feel manlier and more of a purist to say “RAH RAH I HAVE SO MUCH TESTOSTERONE THAT IF I WERE COACH WE’D RUN 70 TIMES PER GAME AND NOT EVEN HAVE A QUARTERBACK”, but there’s no team in the NFL in which the passing game is unimportant. I said that they were overrated in general, including their overall performace in both the run and pass games. People seem to think that the Steelers have a great overall line, but it’s completely one dimensional - Roethlisberger has been sacked more times per attempt than any other QB. So yes, in my view, it’s overrated “in general”, even though they’ve been historically very good at run blocking. Not so much this year - still good, but not like in the past. I’m guessing a combination of Mahan being underwhelming and Faneca not really having his entire heart in it, but it could be Arians’ scheming weaknesses - I haven’t really tried to break it down.
On the issue of O-lines this year, they laughed at me but I was completely right. They’re way too stubborn to admit it at this point though even though it’s obvious.
And the difference is just going to get bigger. Joe Thomas was a rookie. Our possibly best lineman spent the year on IR (Bentley, not McKinney). Everyone else is young and signed for the long term, except Tucker who was a backup anyway.
The Steelers are going to lose probably their best lineman.
This is ridiculous - he’s posted at least 10 straw man arguments. He constantly attacked the position “an o-line can be good by pass blocking well despite run blocking poorly”, an argument that I never made. I stressed, repeatedly, that the Browns didn’t run because their defense was so poor that it dictated an offense that scored until the end. I also pointed out how they were at the time 14th in rushing yards (and 6th in YPC) despite having the 22nd most attempts - meaning that when they ran, they ran well, but circumstances dictated that they couldn’t run as much.
This was later proved when the defense started to play significantly better at the end of the year, and the team ran more - Jamal was popping out 100+ yard games left and right.
But most of his arguments thrown at me are stuff that basically boil down to stuff I never disagreed with about how running is important.
To quote him:
I never made that claim, or anything like it. I’ve made that clear several times. But basically every argument he’s made so far attacks that argument. Hence straw men.
[/Argument no one wants to hear about at this particular moment]
I’m not really going to gloat, because the Browns shit the bed when it came to winning the division, and because for the most part, this hasn’t been a smack thread. I came in here being very respectful, actually - more than I’d typically be for Steelers fans - and only 2 people have been asshats to me.
I was certainly happy to see them go down, though, and I was surprised that the game was as close as it was - the Steelers seemed like a clear 1 and out team given their performance at the end.
Posturing aside, the pass protection issue really is a huge, gaping weakness. It’s more important that you have not-terrible protection than it is to have great protection - and having the leagues most sacked QB (partially his fault for holding the ball too long, but he also saves tons of sacks by making his remarkable shrug-off-the-tackler plays) in terms of sacks per attempt will kill your offense at critical times.
It’ll be an interesting race for the AFC North crown next year. Balitmore is in rebuilding mode, Cinci needs dramatic changes, and the whole division has a brutal schedule. You’ll be facing NE and SD while we get BUF and DEN but otherwise we play the NFC East and AFC South.
Possibly so, given recent play. I continue to feel that the Steelers playing as they’re capable of doing are one of the elite teams - better than the Jags. I was hoping they’d shake off their lethargy and step up in the playoffs, and felt it was definitely possible they’d knock off NE and Indy. Given the mistakes they made tonight, they should have been thrashed. They weren’t - but they lost, and that’s that.
God DAMN you Stiller fans on the boards. Why do you have to be so reasonable about that blown facemask call? Keep it up and I’m going to be forced to conclude that y’all are gentlemen and ladies despite years of abuse that I have seen from Stiller thugs at M&T when you guys play here. Way to bust my stereotypes guys.
Good game, great comeback, and while I’m not going to say I’m sorry you guys lost (I’m not, I hate the Stillers), you guys here remain a class act.
However, I saw this about the Browns move from Cleveland and I just thought I should point out the obvious:
Old Cleveland stadium was an unprofitable DUMP. (The new stadium is a profitable dump, Christ, they can’t even get the toilets to work right there). No matter how many fans poured into it on Sundays, no matter how bad a businessman Modell might have been, that stadium was a 500 pound albatross around the neck of the franchise, and the NFL, for all it’s chest pounding over the “wrong” done to Cleveland, would NEVER have come back into town unless and until a new stadium was guaranteed, in fact they didn’t commit to the new Browns until that was a done deal. If Cleveland had committed to building a new stadium in 1994-5, Modell never would have left in the first place. So, point the finger at Baltimore all you want for “bribing” Modell (actually, he just took advantage of the same deal that was on the table for the NFL during expansion, when Crooke, Rooney and Tagliabue conspired to shut us out), but remember that when you do that there are 3 other fingers pointing back at you.
Modell was offered a new stadium with taxpayer dollars. The reason he didn’t take it was that the Indians also were getting a new stadium. You see - the Indians also played at old the stadium, and even though the stadium was paid for by the city, Modell received rent payments from the Indians.
The city building two new stadiums would take the rent money from Modell, so he stalled on the issue.
How, though, is having an old stadium that fills up with 72k, where the city takes care of maintenance, and that another professional team gives you free rent money unprofitable? Sure, if people wouldn’t go there because it was old, or because you had to pay high repair costs on an old stadium, that’d be a problem - but that wasn’t the case.
No, Modell got a ridiculously great deal from the taxpayers and fan support for decades, and yet still through incompetance managed to repeatedly get himself into trouble. I could see why you’d be motivated to think Modell was a victim, though - you wouldn’t have to feel the shame for what your illegitimate franchise represents.