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    Fickle Finger 2024 Winner

    Bycopanut

    Another season has come and gone, and another Baller can lay claim to superior football knowledge. The final results are in the table below. I’m only showing the “delta” tabulations – the difference between our guesses and the final result.

    MWalsh26 Earl Copanut Eleven TomPaul
    BillyBob    		 tennbob drock Estimated
    Prophet    		 Tuskegee
    _Brown    		 JAMESH
    Steelers 4 3 1 2 0 1 4 2 0 7
    Bengals 2 9 1 3 1 2 3 2 2 6
    Browns 6 3 5 5 4 5 8 8 6 0
    Ravens 0 12 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 9
    Base 12 27 8 11 5 8 15 13 9 22
    Bonus -1 -1
    Total 12 27 8 11 4 8 15 13 8 22

    This year, by popular request, I added a bonus point for the person who most closely predicted the Steelers’ final result, although you may be happy to know that it didn’t matter. TomPaulBillyBob and Tuskegee_Brown both accurately chose the Steelers final tally of 10 wins, but Mr. BillyBob blew everyone away by also accurately predicting the Ravens’ 12 wins, and missing out on the Bengals by only one point. With his bonus point, he pretty much lapped the field with a total score of 4. There was a three way tie for second place between Tuskegee_Brown, Copanut, and tennbob, but I think we can give the edge to Tuskegee_Brown for more accurately predicting the Steelers’ record.

    Last place goes to Earl, who took a big hit for not submitting guesses for the rest of the division, but on his Steelers pick he beat out MWalsh26 and drock, with their chronic underestimation of the Power of Tomlin to pull out yet another winning season. If we’re going for last place on the Steelers prediction, we’ll have to give the edge to MWalsh26, because drock edged him out on the tiebreakers. They both correctly guessed the 2nd most receiving yards (Friermuth) and exactly divined the total touchdowns thrown (21), but drock predicted Wilson would have the most starts, while MWalsh26 went with Fields.

    Dishonorable Mention goes to JAMESH, who had a ghost writer submit his usual 17-0 prediction. He finished with a score of 22, which is kinda sad, until you consider that Earl finished with 27.

    May we all have better luck in 2025.

     

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    Celebrating 10 Years of Steel Balls!

    Bycopanut

    Allow me to extend a humble thank you to the teeming hordes of miscreants who have graced this site with their boundless charm, rapier-like wit, and prescient insight into all things Steelers, for these past ten non-losing seasons.

    We began this enterprise as a response to the P-G paywall, and to have a place to compare opinions and predictions, and now we are only a few weeks away from what may be a momentous NFL draft event where we can once again prove just how much more we know than the professionals.

    We’ve had a lot of fun over the years, but we still have much yet to be accomplished, beginning with a jointly-enjoyed Super Bowl appearance and championship.

    I poured through our user list, which numbers well over 1800 thanks largely to Russian spam bots, to try to extract a list of legitimate users. I may have deleted some that were legit, but here is my best guess at our participant list over the years. Here they are, in order of registration.

    copanut
    abennihana
    jeffmi
    steelerfan58
    drock
    ChicoSteelersFan
    BGINTN
    steelers1
    MWalsh26
    Tuskegee_Brown
    TomPaulBillyBob
    mack
    tennbob
    Earl
    STILLERS35
    craig
    Steeltyke
    Army01
    steelerfan
    JMS55
    malsor
    J A M E S H
    EstimatedProphet
    saneman
    ktyoung
    Clubber
    cerone
    BlitzBurghDude
    jac
    gsmaroff
    floyd3421
    fatxbrian
    hksteelerfan
    RickinLA
    Black and Gold Foo
    endaround
    stillers_35
    Steeler_in_VZ
    Toadsly
    Poz
    Froggy
    testname
    sixter
    bgigli
    Reacher
    JoeSlice
    Pete
    Steeler 1950
    afrazier9
    JimHim
    Steelergill66
    steelddiddy
    jconroy
    WritersRock
    reddog
    pubunchka
    SteelerFanBudMan
    blackanyellow
    tobiathan
    Fansincebubbywouldntmopup
    kalel1199
    kingribel
    BigJ
    Ravenslayer
    sean.willison
    Bill Strickland
    davesdogs
    Bill S
    BiggiePops67
    kedorfman
    HetBob
    ktalk
    Stu
    captainnasty86
    kordellStewart
    Steelers252006
    dberry731
    justjack1961
    diamondback13
    Miguelipto
    sdsteel
    moose
    GodfatherofPittsburgh
    72Steel
    mikeflores16
    eneg
    Bilbo_shaggins80
    elesher43
    therealdonaldtrump
    DumbCrackerDouche
    Tomee4758

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    2017 Season Prognosticator of the Year

    Bycopanut2

    Now that the NFL 2017 season has officially come to a close, we put our Steel Balls supercomputers to work crunching numbers to determine the winner of the coveted LamBalldi Trophy. MWalsh defeated last year’s winner (Army01) by a hair. The race was so close, in order to reach the final result we had to delve into tie breakers.

    As for the rest of us, well, it was a sad showing. Two participants (kalel1199 and mwalsh) correctly guessed the final season wins total for the Steelers (13), and another six of us (copanut, tuskeegee_brown, tompaulbillybob, army01, estimatedprophet, and tennbob) were off by only one win. However it should not come as a shock that the Browns were the undoing of the majority of us who incorrectly guessed that the Browns would finally put all of their myriad high draft picks to some use. Boy, were we wrong.

    Earl was the most pessimistic (10 Steelers wins) and jamesh the most optimistic (16 wins). Go figure. Who could have ever guessed such soul-mates could have such opposing world views?

    Getting back to our winner and runner-up, both had exceptionally strong regular season predictions, with mwalsh nailing the Steelers, Ravens, and Bengals, and only whiffing on the Browns, while army01 was slightly more accurate on playoff wins. As a result they both ended up with 7 points and we had to go to the first tiebreaker where we look at the predicted game by game results. Even that was close, with mwalsh guessing 12 games correctly, compared to 11 for army01.

    The full results are summarized below. As for now, cheers to mwalsh, while the rest of us lick our wounds and get ready for our springtime draft predictions.

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    Purple Bird Nose Dive

    Bycopanut2 
    to Auger In  -  verb; to crash (e.g., an aircraft) into the ground. Named for the large crater an aircraft makes in the ground when it crashes at high speed. 
Examples: "The Baltimore Ravens augered in two years in a row, first due to the Steelers 'Immaculate Extension', and then, inexplicably, at the hands of a desperate Red Rocket."

    How far did the Ravens fall in the blink of an eye? According to ESPN, they entered the day with a 97% chance of making the playoffs. In the space of a few seconds, they plunged over the cliff like Thelma and Louise:

    That’s two years in a row where the Ravens controlled their destiny to have it snatched away at the final seconds by a defensive collapse, with multiple defenders flailing on the ground. What do you say, John?

            John Harbaugh Sheds Purple Tears

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    Yes, Copa. I’m Serious.

    Byabennihana

    I really do not think that Ben creates a 6 point swing vs the Ravens this week.

    Don’t get me wrong. You want your best players on the field for every game vs. a rival. If he’s healthy enough to play, he should play. Is he better than Landry? Gawd, yes! But is he a six-point-swing better? I doubt it.
    Ben doesn’t have the best track record vs the Ravens in particular, especially vs. Dean Pees’ Baltimore defenses. I don’t know why, but Pees seems to have his number, especially when the games are played at Ratland Stadium, where Ben is 0-4 in his last 4 starts, has thrown 3 TDs and 6 INTs and owns a passer rating of 69.76.

    Ben’s Career vs. The Ratbirds:

    ben-career-vs-ratsIf you would like to see a larger version of this table, just click on the image.

    Steelers’ backup QBs are 1-3 vs Harbaugh and 1-4 under Tomlin vs the Rats, respectively. I’ve also included Landry’s career stats here for discussion.
    steelers-backup-qbs-vs-ratsIt can be argued that the best game any Steelers QB has ever had, at Baltimore, vs a Dean Pees coordinated Ravens defense was in 2012, under Charlie Batch.
    I do not  recognize Mike Vick’s game because it was at home and his yards per attempt was anemic. But, otherwise those backups did “ok” when compared to what Ben has done vs. Baltimore the past 5 seasons.

    This week’s game is further complicated by the fact that Ben has not played in three weeks. I should not need to remind you of Ben’s track record in games coming back from injury. But just in case you’d like to read about it: An article from last season.
    Granted, Ben seems to play exponentially worse the longer the layoff and this was a short one. That may give you reason for some optimism.

    I do believe that Ben is the best option Sunday, even at 80% of normal health. I just don’t think that he’s 6 points better than a healthy backup.

    *Interesting point that many may not be aware of: Pees was also the Patriots Defensive Coordinator from 2006 through 2009. He reportedly did not get along well with King Bill.
    **Also interesting, Ben has missed a TON of games vs the Rats. Seven games missed in 11 seasons has to be a personal record for games missed vs one opponent.

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    A Tale Of A Wishy Washy Raiders Fan

    Byabennihana

    Richie

    My buddy Richie S. comes to Portland on a Monday and the only time I can see him is during the Steelers Monday Night game vs. the Chargers. So basically, I told him that was what we were doing. There wasn’t really even a, “Hey, how do you feel about this?” type of suggestion floated out to Richie. I said, “This is going on.” He said, “Sounds like fun!”

    Richie shows up, cheers for the Steelers, has a good time. It’s evident from the TV coverage (and subsequent stories that Rivers went to a silent count during a home game) that Qualcomm Stadium has been taken over by Steelers fans. Jonny has been sack tapped the week before as a good luck omen (long story). All seems right with the World. Steelers win. We go home because we all have to work the next day.

    Fast forward 24 hours and Richie gets outed by my buddy Matt T. as a Raiders fan. On the one hand, after finding out that Richie was actually a Raiders fan, I thought to myself, “What the hell? I would never put on the shirt of another team and cheer for them, no matter how much I liked one of their fans.”
    Then, “Oh, what the heck? We won. Why question it? Maybe it was because Richie finally left the Dark Side. The football gods must have rewarded us with our first West Coast road win in a decade due to my intervention in his sporting life.”

    Fast forward again to this past weekend. Richie texts me about how our two favorite teams are playing.
    I respond with, “You only get one team, Richie.”
    He responds with, “That would be the one.”
    I knew then that we would win. I was absolutely certain that the football gods would punish Richie’s wishy-washy, flip floppiness with a Raider loss. Then mid 1st quarter, Dan sack taps Jonny with his Terrible Towel and the outcome was all but completely certain.

    I felt pretty bad about goading Richie into turning his back on his favorite team and fellow fans for a second….

    Well, no I actually didn’t. It just seemed like a polite thing to write. But, you all know me and realize statements like that are BS. So, nevermind.

    Fast forward again to the Sunday. Steelers are up 35-28 and cruising toward a victory, I’m teetering between whether I should send a conciliatory text to Richie or just taunt the heck out of him for showing some fair weather fan tendencies, thus sending his team on the path toward defeat at the Steelers’ hands.

    And then,…. Aldon Smith stumbles while trying to tackle Roethlisberger and lands on Ben’s left foot. Watching the replay, I was sure that Roethlisberger’s foot was broken. Hoped not, but really thought it was.

    It turns out that Big Ben’s injury was only a sprain. He will probably miss a week, but Monday morning on his radio show said that he is not counting himself out this week versus the Browns.

    Just the same, I probably should have waited to gloat until it was over. That’s what I get.