Losing a game before a bye week is rough. There’s no immediate gratification of a potential bounceback win, and you have an extra week to stew about what went wrong. The one thing that can help is that the Pens start their season while the Steelers are off. I’m heading to Newark for Pens at Devils on Monday October 11th, and after watching the first 2 games at Foley’s or my place, that will be the first actual game I’ll really be able to get pumped about since this loss. It’ll be like my therapy. Some unfortunate Devils fans are gonna get unloaded on.
17-14 Ravens. Shut up.
The best thing I could think about this game was that we at least lost a game before Ben eventually lost one cos if the Steelers were undefeated through his suspension when Ben lost his first, you know there’d be a gazillion armchair GMs saying that the team is better off without him. And you never wanna rationalize losses. That sucks.
Charlie Batch: 12 of 21 for 146 yards and a meaningless pick. Except that pick confused me greatly. Arians bizarrely had Batch throwing bombs downfield all game even though Chuck’s touch from last week was clearly not in the same state. He overthrew Mike Wallace at least twice deep, and I don’t remember anyone really overthrowing Mike Wallace. Even when the Ravens had 2 offside penalties and Batch had a free play, he still missed on both long tosses. But Arians kept it up all game. Until that last drive, needing to go 60-some yards for a makeable FG with less than a minute to go. Then, the call is for Batch to just sling it 15 yards downfield? That’s the time we NEEDED a deep bomb, and it ends up in Ray Lewis’ hands. Charlie gets 2 of 5 motorcycle helmets, but that’s also lumping in Arians cos that’s always fun and easy to do.
Mendenhall: Against the Ravens D, Mendy had a great game. A 3.2 yard average and just 79 yards on the ground is nothing Earth-shattering, but he had one touchdown and another BEAUTIFUL score and managed the only points of the game for the Steelers. 3.5 of 5 helmets.
Jeff Reed: 0 of 5 motorcycle helmets. Apparently, the Steelers can’t bail Jeff out every time he decides to sabotage an incredibly winnable game. You put up an 0fer on the board and that’s what you’re gonna get from me in the MMCNY recap. How about play like a kicker who has played at Heinz before.
Michael Oher: This will be the only dig you’ll here from me regarding the officiating and one Michael Oher in particular. You know how you see something and then try and immediately tell yourself you’re wrong cos you’re the only one who probably saw it and can’t get proper confirmation? Well:
(click for full size)
“Don’t nobody say the same shit about you for 20 Goddamn years! What the f**k is you talking about? If a motherf**ker call you a crackhead for 20 years, b*tch you are smokin’ crack. Whitney done smoked her kneecaps off and we still like ‘Uhn-ah’.”
– Katt Williams
0 of 5 helmets. I don’t care how many lame-ass, sappy, Oscar-bait weep-fest movies are made about your life featuring Sandra Bullock, that still doesn’t mean you weren’t getting at least one unflagged step before the snap on every offensive pass play. You probably made Jesse James cheat on Sandra with that tattooed Nazi stripper chick. Hope your boy Ray Lewis complains about the refs from this game, too.
Real talk.
Bye week coming up. Then Steelers at Browns. Whoop dee do.
(thanks to Doug for the banner pic)
