• One Giant Leap for Steel Kind

    Bycopanut

    Even when he whiffs, Troy makes the opposition think, always goes all out, and entertains us.

    I’m sorry, but this just cracks me up and I need to post it again, this time as an animated GIF courtesy of Steelers Depot. In the not too distant future, Troy will be a fond and fading memory, and we need to enjoy this lunatic while we still can.

     

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    One Ugly Rush

    Bycopanut

    ScreenShot942No, I don’t mean this perverted drug-addled gasbag to the left. Rather, I was startled to learn from an article at ESPN that the Ray Rice Ravens have been a worse rushing team than the Steelers so far this season. Newly minted Steelers rusher Le’Veon Bell has a paltry average of only 2.8 yards, but that is exactly the same average of both Ray Rice and Bernard Pierce. Bell at least has the excuse of being a green rook with only a couple of partial games under his belt. As the chart shows, the Ravens overall yards per rush is actually worse than the Steelers, and that’s saying something.

    ScreenShot941

  • Romo Roethlisberger Realities

    Bycopanut

    It’s easy to rip on Romo. Lord knows, any good Steelers fan despises anything having to do with the Dallas Cowboys. But in the wake of Romo’s recent epic game and epic choke, the point was made that Romo never comes through in the clutch. The statistics seem to show otherwise, and I’d enjoy hearing arguments on this question.

    Ben started his career with an unbelievable run, including five 4th quarter comebacks (4QC) and six game winning drives (GWD). He’s also had many amazing comebacks and drives since then, including many postseason stunners. But what has he done lately? In 2011 he had one 4QC and 1 GWD. Last year he had two 4QD and three GWD. So far this year, of course, he’s on a pace for zero and zero. (Roethlisberger GWDs)

    In 2011, Romo had four 4QC and four GWD. Last year he had five of each. (Romo GWDs)

    Maybe two years don’t make a trend, but in a league that craves instant gratification, the trend cannot be ignored.

    Certainly the ability of the QB to mount heroic drives is not on the QB alone. He needs to have reliable targets who get open and go after the pass, and he needs to have at least a modicum of blocking assistance. Even so, as Ben would be the first to admit, he’s got to find a way to engineer 4th quarter drives without all the fumbles, picks, and overthrows we’ve been witnessing for the past couple of years.

    Would I take Romo over Roethlisberger? No way, absolutely not. I know Ben can do it and hope he will get the mojo back. But if you look at the stats alone, he seems to have hit a ceiling.

    Now, where did I put that asbestos suit?

    Romo vs Roethlisberger

  • Login Problems? (New Update)

    Bycopanut

    [Update: although we still don’t have a fix for the login problem described below, and frankly we may never have a fix other than retrying 2-4 times, we do have a partial workaround. You no longer need to log in to participate in chat. If you can’t log in but want to share your comments, go ahead and do so. You won’t have an avatar or be able to send private messages or write articles unless you log in, but you can go ahead and chat.]

    Some people are having log in issues. I am aware of two problems.

    Problem #1 appears to be a bug in WordPress or one of its plug-ins. Sometimes when trying to log in you might get an error like this:

    “An appropriate representation of the requested resource /wp/wp-login.php could not be found on this server.”

    If you get this error, refresh the page and click retry or resend and it will usually work on the second or third try. Also, check the “Remember Me” checkbox so you don’t have to keep logging in. If you remain permanently logged in, you will never see the error again.

    Sorry for the hassle. The offending plug-in is probably our chat system, and I don’t want to remove that!

    Problem #2 has happened at least once where the user’s IP address was blocked by the host firewall, apparently due to too many login attempts over too short a period. If this happens, I need to have your IP address in order to get it cleared. Send me an email to let me know if you need help. The message for this type of problem looks something like this:

    “Safari can’t open the page “http://steelballs.thenetmail.com/wp/” because the server where this page is located isn’t responding.”

    If you don’t know your IP address, you can find it here.