Pittsburgh Steelers are on their way to Lion land. Little chinks turn into big holes. The QB ends up being driven out of town. The owners anticipate problems and sign no free agents. A couple draft choices get hurt and then , bottom feeders.
I guess we’ll get good draft picks…
An astute analysis, surely. But I look back to 2006, when we went 8-8 the season following a Superbowl victory.
I’m not pleased with a repeat of the performance, but I would disagree that the present state of things means that the Steelers are anything like the Lions. I’m sure that misery loves company, but really, nobody is in the Lions league in that regard.
Don’t dis the Lions, dude, they won a playoff game…one playoff game…in the last 40 years.
I agree that comparing the Lions to the Steelers is utterly silly.
But I also wonder at your confidence in a “repeat performance” of an 8-8 record from 2006. The Steelers may not win another game this season the way they have been playing since, you know, the Bengals beat them.
Better than none.
Never been in a Superbowl. Not even once. It is good to be consistent.
You certainly make a good argument that this team may be even worse, given that they lost twice to the Bungles. To my mind, 8-8 and 6-10 for the Steelers would be about the same. Missing the playoffs is missing the playoffs.
Even that doesn’t put us near the depths of the lowly Lions as a franchise or in terms of optimism about the future. It only means that this year sucks and that we will not lay any claim to another Superbowl dynasty - yet.
Unlike the Vikings and the Bills, the Lions have not lost four Super Bowls!!! 
As far as fandom goes: if my team had a chance at the playoffs, and to do it, they had to win three straight games and hope, you had best bet I’d be hoping they did it!!! You NEVER know how far a team will get once they are in! :eek:
We will never know, that is pretty sure. The world will end in 2012 and we will never see a Superbowl.
It’s different though. To me, getting bounced in the first round is about the same as not making the playoffs. We expect to win the Super Bowl every year…even when there was the 25 year gap…we expected to win the Super Bowl every year…anything less is disappointing. Sure, some years its far less disappointing than others…but it still sucks.
Sure, I hope we win out. But I can’t see this team winning a playoff game this year, unless the real Steelers return. I’d love to see that…but the realist in me knows this year is toast, and so my hope for wins is so we get some confidence at the end, and they get PISSED at their performance this year, with the desire to be great next year.
You AFC North fans have such a weird dynamic. To my mind, that one franchise has had so much success while two others have had so much frustration has warped the relationships between the fan bases – Baltimore isn’t so much a part of *that *fight, but the fact that they’re the Traitor Browns is a crazy monkey-wrench unto itself.
Compare this to fans from the NFC East, in which even the most snake-bitten franchise (Philly) has been excellent for a decade now. Obviously there’s still some sniping and crowing, but mostly it’s a race to the bottom for us: “Please, you think *your *team is a pathetic embarrassment? You don’t know how good you have it!”
This is about the highest form of praise one can expect from a Steelers fan, what with your sense of entitlement and all…
Haughty and annoying in victory, bitter and condescending in defeat. Yinz take this way too seriously! Perhaps my franchise’s many moons of losing has conditioned me to be apathetic and resigned when we lose. I don’t know.
Hilarious, and true. On my end, part of it has to do with the level of play in the division and the subsequent rivalries heating up since the arrival of Marvin Lewis and the recent relative success of the Ravens. The Steelers have been pretty good to excellent for a long time. I think Palmer’s injury caused a lot of bad blood between the Bengals and Steelers fans (and the teams) too. The Steelers are used to picking on the Bengals, they don’t like it much when they get punched back. And now they are utterly punch-drunk.
Thanks for the compliment, that’s very kind of you.
You might be interested in some of the clips in the Media Center on the official site. They also post a fair number of clips and video breakdowns at postgameheroes. You probably know about those guys already but they’re worth mentioning again. The other place I’ve been really impressed with is the show playbook on NFL network (do I sound obsessed yet? :p) Joe Theismann is a grade-A moron and a couple of the other guys are not really that insightful but I can’t get enough of Brian Billick of all people. I find defense easier to understand than offense and he does a great job of explaining little nuances that he looks for in evaluating their options during a game and how they design passing plays. It’s great.
I agree with everything you said in that post. I should clarify what I think of Ziggy Hood. He isn’t anywhere near Aaron Smith’s level yet. I would feel more comfortable seeing him replace Brett Keisel than Smith. He just doesn’t look as strong but he has the quickness and hustle to do everything Keisel does, IMO. I feared a run D collapse like the one against Jacksonville. It’s declined but not as much as i feared, of course a lot of that credit has to go to Lamarr Woodley who backs up the line much better than Clark Haggans ever could.
It’s kind of sad to point out but it’s worth remembering that last season Aaron Smith missed a lot of practice time because his son has cancer. The defense really rallied around him and he said he only kept playing because it took his mind off things and because of his great respect for Dick Lebeau. The defense doesn’t seem to have that same focus this year. That’s not the way we want to see them get it back but I have a lot of faith in Dick Lebeau and Keith Butler to sort things out. Not so much with Bruce Arians. 
I truly hope Casey Hampton retires a Steeler. He really is a force to be reckoned with in there.
Oh, I’m not giving up on the Steelers, in that I’m saying I hate them, just that maybe we’ll at least have ONE championship this year.
It’s just so depressing to lose to the BROWNS. 
I know we’re a much better team than this. Oh well. I doubt we’ll make the playoffs, but hey – there’s always next year.
(Enjoy your one victory, Browns. We’ve got six Lombardi trophies – how many do you have?)
Haha, I’ve heard the “look at the rings!!!” I think about 17 times right now and it gets more pathetic each time.
As I alluded to above, haughty and annoying in victory, bitter and condescending in defeat. There’s always a reason, they’ll always be back, they can’t be this bad, and if any or all of the above proves true…SIX LOMBARDIES, beeatches!
Someone else said it best (oldie but a goodie, I’ll paraphrase): Link: Why Your Team Sucks: Pittsburgh Steelers
**Why Your Team Sucks: Pittsburgh Steelers
**
*1. If the word Sixburgh doesn’t make you nauseous… It is never, EVER, a good thing when one NFL franchise has sole possession of the record for Most Super Bowls Won. Since 2005, there has been a very comfortable three-way tie for that crown between the Steelers, Cowboys, and 49ers. This was for the best. It meant one group of fans could not take all their Super Bowl titles and Lord them over you like complete fuckheads. Trust me, when the 49ers had more Super Bowl titles than anyone, you heard about it often. And now, you will hear it over and over again from asshole Steelers fans in their Hines Ward replica jerseys and hard hats. Simply show up to any Steelers game or bar wearing the colors of another team, and you will be subjected to any number of uninvited taunts that YOUR team does not have six Super Bowl rings, and that YOUR team is not the flagship franchise of the NFL, and that YOUR team is not family-owned and does everything the right way.
Worst of all is the notion that the Steelers somehow reflect the populace of their city by playing hard-nosed, blue collar football. THEY BROUGHT THEIR LUNCH PAILS TODAY, GANG! THEY’RE SO PITTSBURGHISH! This is the biggest steaming load of eviscerated shit I’ve ever heard. Nearly all the steel mills in that town are gone. Find me a Steelers fan who’s an actual fucking steelworker, and I’ll put a unicorn in your driveway. That town was repurposed ages ago as a center for tech, banking, and ketchup distribution. It is not a tough town. It’s as yuppified as fucking Portland (Oregon or Maine, take your pick), only it’s stuck in the center of Pennsyltucky and everyone there is fat and smells like sticky buns.*
I happen to live in Northern Ohio. I don’t follow the Cleveland Browns all that much(I DID watch the game last night with MUCH enjoyment, though :p)
You have six Super Bowl Trophies, signifying you won the NFL championship game six times in 42 years.
From 1946-1949, the NFL Championship was won 4 TIMES by the Cleveland Browns. 4 out of 4.
from 1950-1959, the NFL Championship game was won by Cleveland 3 times. A third of the time.
So, in 13 years, the NFL Championship was won by Cleveland 7(seven) times. That’s slightly over half of all the Championship games.
So, you gots bubkes
Now, if fairness, Cleveland is living on it’s past glory. And, don’t forget, I’m not all that into Cleveland Browns sports. I’m a retarded Redskins fan. From the 1955-1970 era. Pray for me.
That’s incorrect, the 46-49 ones were for the AAFC, which got absorbed into the NFL in 1950 (sort of like the AFL later). You could argue that the AAFC had lesser competition… which was the assumption of the NFL at the time.
When the NFL admitted the Browns in 1950, they wanted to show them who was daddy and who the real league was, so they set them up for their first game against their champion team from the previous year - the Eagles. Their goal was to show the little league Browns they were in over their head… and then the Browns demolished the NFL’s champions 35-10. They went on to win all but 2 games the rest of the year, including the championship. Never before had anything like that happened in sports - and as far as I know, never has - where a team from an “inferior” league was absorbed into another, and then proceeded to kick the shit out of that league.
So it’s very likely that if the Browns played in the NFL from 1946-1949 they would’ve won some or all of those championships since they crushed the best the NFL had to offer, but they didn’t have the opportunity, and they don’t count as NFL titles.
Edit: More on that here
By my count Cleveland has 10 major football league titles:
NFL 1924 Cleveland Bulldogs
NFL 1945 Cleveland Rams
AAFC Browns 4
NFL Browns 4
Ancient history, certainly, but still accurate history.
It’s not accurate to say that they won 4 NFL titles from 1946 to 1949, though, which is what he said.