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(7/29) It's time for the annual two-part look at the most criticial questions facing the Steelers. It's been a tough offseason. In the span of 18 months, the Steelers went from kings of the world, to suffering thru a miserable 4th quarter-blowing season, to being the new Cincinnati Bengals of troublemakers. But all of that is (hopefully) behind us now, and The Nation is ready for a new season to dawn. Here is part one: Will the Ben Roethlisberger situation be a total circus? How will the Steelers address the Willie Colon injury? Is Mike Wallace ready to start? Which second-stint Steeler will have the greatest impact? What will become of Deshea Townsend? Should Ike Taylor just stop talking? How much pressure is on Rashard Mendenhall? How important was the recent contract extension for Kevin Colbert? Are there any more Steelers who will get into trouble this season? 
(7/17) Exactly one decade ago on this website, I lamented the terrible offseason that the Steelers were having. In the time span between the end of the 1999 season and the start of the 2000 training camp, a series of unfortunate events seemingly destroyed the team, leading me to refer to that time as “The Offseason from Hell”. Well, if that offseason was from hell, I shudder to think of the origin of this current offseason! Since ending the season with a disappointing 9-7 record, the Steelers have spiraled into depths once thought unimaginable. First the team was forced to jettison Santonio Holmes after he yet again got busted with drugs. Holmes was the Steelers best wide receiver, a Super Bowl MVP, and arguably one of the most clutch players in franchise history. At age 26, he had his whole career in front of him. He could have been the next Swann or Stallworth. Now he is gone. Then the Ben Roethlisberger Milledgeville incident exploded. Ben was cleared of any criminal activity, but the conviction in the court of public opinion was perhaps just as damaging. All of Pittsburgh – especially of its female residents – now despised Roethlisberger. On a national level, the Steelers once proud reputation had been reduced to a laughingstock, inciting Roger Goodell to step in. The Steelers will now have to play the first 4-6 games of 2010 without their most important player. The rest of the offense suffered losses as well. Willie Colon is done for the season. So is Limas Sweed, whose catastrophic NFL career continues to go downhill. So now the offense – the strong point of the team – will not have its two-time Super Bowl winning QB, its best WR, or its starting RT. And the offense was the strong point of the team. The defense – the unit who blew five 4th quarter leads last season – continues to age without a great deal of effort from the front office to correct it. The strategy that the Steelers seemed to employ going into the 2010 season was to ride their crop of veteran players to one more Super Bowl run before the impending work stoppage next year. This strategy was evident in all of their offseason moves, from franchising Casey Hampton to bringing back Larry Foote and Antwaan Randle El. That strategy was seriously derailed however after the Roethlisberger and Holmes incidents. So where does that leave the Steelers? Many fans are already bracing themselves for a 6-10 type of season. While a downturn may be normal for other franchises, it will be taken harder here because (a) the Steelers have only had one losing season so far this century and (b) many of the big name players – Smith, Ward, etc. – don’t have much time left in their careers, so one losing season could easily turn into three rebuilding seasons. However, there are reasons to be hopeful. All is not lost this offseason. The personnel moves should help improve the team. Hanging onto Ryan Clark, Casey Hampton, and Jeff Reed will prevent new holes from forming. The Foote and Randle El signings were good ones, as was the trade to bring back Bryant McFadden. If the defense stays healthy, they should bounce back from last year’s debacle (remember that two of their three best players – Aaron Smith and Troy Polamalu – were hurt for the majority of the year). On offense, Ben is the key to everything. If the Steelers can stay afloat during his suspension, I think he will come back with a vengeance. Ben has always been motivated by proving everyone wrong, and while his personal behavior over the next few months will be the way to prove that he is changing off the field, he knows that playing well on the field will go a long way towards helping him rehabilitate his image. Mike Tomlin, who finally had his contract extended this week (that seemed destined to be another offseason fiasco), is a great coach who is capable of pulling everyone together during tough times. Things appear to be in shambles now just as they were ten years ago. When the 2000 season kicked off and the Steelers played one of the more putrid games in recent memory at home against the Ravens, it felt like the roof had fully caved in. But that team rebounded. They put together a memorable winning season, and a few years later, a new Steelers dynasty was born. This 2010 team has even more potential, being just two years removed from a Super Bowl title. Let’s hope they can shake off “The Offseason from a Place Worse Than Hell” and surprise everyone with a great season. 
(4/12) Shocking news from Steelers country today as Super Bowl XLIII MVP Santonio Holmes was traded to the New York Jets for a 5th round draft pick. This comes after news that Holmes will likely be suspended for the first four games of next season for failing yet another drug test. The Steelers were clearly fed up with Holmes' repeated drug-related offenses. Reports are that they were prepared to release him if they could get nothing in a trade. He is also set to be a free agent after this season, so even if he played here next year, he was only going to be a Steeler for 12 more games. The Steelers also picked up two free agent receivers and Mike Wallace has proven himself to be capable of starting alongside of Hines Ward. Still, dumping your best receiver for a 5th round pick?!? That decision has of course sparked a ton of discussion. After having some time to digest it, here is how I would frame the deal: you have to look at it from the Rooneys' point of view. We know the facts - Holmes was going to be yet another black mark on the once-proud franchise this offseason, so here were their options, all of which resulted in essentially a no-win situation:
So when you look at the options, you can see that there really wasn't much of a choice for the Steelers. At some point, they had to put a stop to all of this mass embarrassment to their organization. It sucks that Holmes had to be the scapegoat, but he worked harder than Ben, Reed, Harrison, and all the others to stand out as the king of the troublemakers, even with the glass throwing incident apparently cleared from his record. I will miss Santonio. He was one of the best clutch players I have ever seen in a Steelers uniform. From the overtime touchdown he scored to knock Cincinnati out of the playoffs in his rookie season to his amazing performances in all three 2008 post-season games, Holmes always stepped it up for big games. I hate the fact that he is gone, especially under these circumstances, but his name and the image of him making that catch in the final seconds of the Super Bowl will be forever ingrained in Pittsburgh lore. Best of luck, Santonio. I truly hope you can get your act together, because you could still have a stellar career ahead of you.
(4/3) NFL running backs all come with expiration dates. Typically that expiration date coincides with their 30th birthday. For Willie Parker, then end came a bit earlier. By the end of last season, the 29-year old runner who had helped the Steelers win two Super Bowls was banished to no man's land while the younger, healthier Rashard Mendenhall carried the load for the team's running game. It left FWP upset, and rightfully so, but there is no blame on the Steelers for this one - it's just the way things go in the world of NFL running backs. With nowhere else to go, the unrestricted free agent signed with the Washington Redskins. It was an odd signing for the Skins, who already have Clinton Portis and Larry Johnson (Penn State sucks), but then again, Washington has never been a team that let's logic get in the way of its annual free agent signings. Regardless, it's good that FWP has a team for the 2010 season. Even though his time here was over long before this signing happened, he will still be missed. The first time I saw FWP play was on November 4, 2000 at Three Rivers Stadium. Pitt had a Saturday night home game against Parker's North Carolina Tarheels. It was going to be an easy win for Pitt, as UNC was riding a four-game losing streak. But FWP had other plans. He had 117 total yards, and with five minutes left in the game and Pitt's defense having UNC pinned at their own 2 yard line, FWP reeled off a 25 yard run, a 34 yard catch on a screen pass, and then an 11 yard catch and run. UNC beat Pitt that night and Parker looked like a star, but the coaches at UNC didn't see what those of us at Three Rivers saw that night. He rode the bench for the rest of his collegiate career and never got drafted when he turned pro. The Steelers signed him as an unrestricted free agent in 2004, but he wasn't expected to do anything sitting behind established veterans Jerome Bettis and Duce Staley. However, by the following year, Parker was the starter. He soon took the NFL by storm. He set the Super Bowl record for longest run with his 75 yard TD against the Seahawks, helping the Steelers win their fifth world title. He made the Pro Bowl in 2006 after setting several team records, including most yards in a game (223 against Cleveland in a game where Bill Cowher took him out in the 4th quarter). In 2007, he was leading the entire league in rushing until the second to last week of the season, when he got hurt in a game in St. Louis. That was the beginning of the end. In my opinion, FWP should be remembered as one of the best runners in Steelers history. He isn't going to be in the Hall of Fame like Franco Harris or Jerome Bettis, but the Steelers would never have had the success they had in the last six years if not for this guy. I hope he can extend his career for a few more years, and more importantly, I hope Steelers fans recognize his accomplishments here years after his career is over.
(3/30) One of the things I always valued about graduating from Duquesne University was the fact that people from Pittsburgh always spoke of that school with tremendous respect. It was a classy institution, free from the controversy and troubles that plagued other area colleges. Duquesne was indeed a great school, but the view that nothing bad could ever happen there was far from the truth. During my four years there, we had some bad stuff happen on campus, but the university was always able to either sweep it under the rug or minimize its impact in the media. A perfect example of this was when two Duquesne football players killed someone and the local media kept referring to them as "Mt. Lebanon graduates" while absolving head coach Greg Gattuso of any wrongdoing even though those two weren't the only football players running amok on campus. Duquesne did however get a heavy dose of bad PR in 2006 when a shooting on campus injured several basketball players. Ironically, that incident was not the school's fault, but regardless it was the first time in recent memory that something bad happened to tarnish the Duquesne brand without the university being able to do anything to control it. While Duquesne is a respected name in Pittsburgh, the Steelers are treated with the kind of sacred reverence normally reserved for deity. We have the classiest family ownership in pro sports. Our franchise has won more Super Bowls than anyone else and we have done it with high character people. While other teams go out and sign known criminals, we only employ the cream of the crop. We are proud of our team not just for winning, but for representing our fine city to the rest of the country as the NFL's signature franchise. But as was the case with Duquesne, perception does not always equal reality when it comes to our beloved football team. The Steelers teams of the 1970's were almost mythical, but they were not exactly squeaky clean. Ernie Holmes once shot at a police helicopter. Joe Gilliam struggled with substance abuse. At least a few other players used steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. The next two decades brought many other incidents of Steelers players getting into trouble. Pro Bowl guard Carlton Haselrig went AWOL from the team because he was addicted to drugs and alcohol. First round draft pick Tim Worley was suspended by the NFL for an entire season because he failed two drug tests. Running back Bam Morris was arrested for possessing cocaine just months after leading the Steelers to Super Bowl XXX. Flash forward to this decade. Players like Richard Seigler and Cedrick Wilson ran afoul of the law, but the Steelers were always able to dodge any kind of reputation damage. Even when Jerome Bettis - one of the most respected players in team history - was accused of rape, it didn't make a dent. As far as everyone was concerned, the Steelers were still the model professional sports franchise. In the last couple of years however, reality has overtaken perception. A barrage of accusations and charges have been leveled at Steelers players, and not just the Najeh Davenport's of the team, but the key franchise players as well. James Harrison, Jeff Reed, Ben Roethlisberger, Santonio Holmes - all have been hit with serious charges multiple times. Ben is facing his second sexual assault allegation and just yesterday Holmes, who has been arrested several times since joining the Steelers, was accused of striking a woman in the face with a drink. These latest allegations may very well be false but the damage has already been done. The myth that the Steelers are so far above the problems of other sports teams has been shattered. I keep hearing these "Mike Tomlin has lost control of the team" comments. Making Tomlin the scapegoat is absurd, but to my previous point, the fact that Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher were never accused of this speaks to the fact that the perception of the Steelers today has changed even though the off-the-field issues really have not changed. We live in an age of mass media, cell phone cameras, and access to all kinds of hearsay. People are highly cynical these days and it will take some serious rebuilding of the Steelers brand before the franchise can once again stand back on that high pedestal. It's disappointing to say the least. The Steelers need to get their house in order, especially now that there are actual consequences to embarrassing behavior by the people who are supposed to proudly represent them. We need to be proud of our team once again, and not because they display a certain image to everyone else, but because they live it themselves.
(3/15) It is not unusual for an athelete in any sport to decide to leave a team and then regret making that choice later. It is rare however for an athelete to openly admit that leaving was a mistake. Larry Foote won two Super Bowl rings with the Steelers and was a very effective run stopper in the team's 3-4 defense. Last year Foote saw that 2007 first round pick Lawrence Timmons was destined to be a starter and realized his role would be limited (especially after the team tried unsuccessfully to trade him before the 2009 draft), so he understandably asked for Pittsburgh to release him. The Steelers granted his wish and he signed with his hometown Detroit Lions. Things quickly soured in Detroit (as things typically do there) as the team won just two games. For downtrodden Lions fans, that was two more games than Detroit had won the previous season. For Foote, that was an unbearable amount of losing. "I'm begging," said Foote last week, "I want to get back to a winner." For the second straight year, the Steelers granted Foote's wish. They signed him back today to a three-year, $9.3 million contract. It was a good move for both parties. Foote will not be slated as a starter but will likely end up getting a ton of playing time in a system where he had success. The Steelers get much needed depth and flexibility at the linebacker position, where James Farrior is getting old and where there is absoultely no one to back up the outside starters (Harrison and Woodley). All of these signings make next month's draft really interesting. It seemed certain that the Steelers would lose Clark and need to draft a safety. Now they have Clark and Will Allen. It seemed certain then that the team would draft a linebacker, but not so much now. It's also nice to see the Steelers signing back old players who know the system and can add value. I still remember Tom Donahoe's stubborn refusal to sign Rod Woodson in 1998. Like Foote, Woodson had left the Steelers (for San Francisco) the previous off-season but did not have much success with his new team. The 49ers did not want him back and the Steelers had a chance to get him so that he could finish his career where he belonged while adding value to what was at the time a very depleted secondary. Not only did Donahoe not re-sign Woodson, he also made the infamous comment that the Steelers were "not the Salvation Army". It was an unnecessarily inflammatory remark that reeked of bitterness and revenge. Players leave teams all the time for more money. Donahoe himself had flirted with leaving for Seattle before the Steelers offered him more money to stay. It's a business and while the fans certainly hate to see their favorite players go, those in management need to be more immune to having their feelings hurt. I always thought the refusal to even consider bringing back Woodson - who instead signed with the Ravens, moved to safety, and was instrumental in helping them win a Super Bowl - was a black mark on Donahoe's otherwise good record as Steelers GM in the 1990's. Fortunately Kevin Colbert holds no such ill will against guys who have left. In recent years the team has signed back multiple former Steelers regardless of the conditions by which they left. I hope Colbert keeps exploring this option where it makes sense to do so.
(3/8) Readers of this website know what my opinion is of Ben Roethlisberger. I think he is one of the all-time greatest Steelers players. There is no way we win two Super Bowls without him, and it ticks me off to no end that he never gets the proper respect from the dumbed-down national sports media. That being said, I have to say that I am really disappointed to hear these latest off the field allegations. In case you missed it, a college student in Georgia is accusing Ben of sexual assault. This may be true or it may be made up like it was in the Nevada case. If it is the latter (and The Nation better pray that it is), there is still a big problem at hand. Roethlisberger is a superstar quarterback. He has millions of fans, including a ton of kids. God blessed him with an amazing talent for playing this game. And what does he do with that talent? He uses it to not only pick up random women, but does it in situations that leave him vulnerable to trouble. On the field, Ben is more comfortable winging it. He works better when operating out of the no huddle or scrambling around to make a play. It would seem that he operates his personal life in much the same way. Unfortunately, the results haven't been quite as good. Maybe it's time for a new way of living. Maybe it's time to start acting like a grown-up. If this latest mess doesn't wake him up, I'm not sure what will. (3/8) I was all set to upload a story detailing how upset I was by the signing today of Tampa Bay safety Will Allen. It's not that Allen is a bad player, but rather that this signing seemed to signal the end of the Ryan Clark era. That would have been a huge mistake. Clark is probably the most underrated player on the defense. Fortunately, the Steelers came through. The Allen signing turned out to be for depth only because the team announced tonight that Clark has been re-signed to a four-year contract! This is great news for Steelers fans. The big three key free agents are all staying in the fold. They will have some new teammates however. The Steelers made an uncharacteristic splash into free agency today by signing two more players in addition to Allen. The first was Buffalo tackle Jonathan Scott, another depth signing. The second was San Francisco WR Arnaz Battle. He is a seven-year veteran who will add - you guessed it - depth to the position. He will also likely push Limas Sweed out of a job. If that is the case, it would mark the end of a disastrous tenure in Pittsburgh for the team's 2008 second round pick. Let's just hope that the Battle signing works out better than the last time we signed a 49ers receiver. So you would have thought the Steelers would have been done there, right? Nope. One more player was signed later, and it's a familiar one. Antwaan Randle El is heading back to Pittsburgh four years after leaving for a lucrative free agency deal in Washington. I really LOVE this move. I'm not sure Randel El is still the same playmaker he was when we had him the first time, but he is still a productive receiver (50 catches last year) and an all-around great guy whose presence will only do good things for the Steelers locker room. The Super Bowl XL hero got a three year deal. The offense is now loaded at the receiver position. Bruce Arians must be a happy man. (3/4) Free agency starts tomorrow. The Steelers have several big names on the list this year:
(2/25) I had planned to write a whole free agency preview thing next week evaluating if the Steelers could retain their big free agents, but now it looks like the two of them - Casey Hampton and Jeff Reed - will both be sticking around. Let's start with Hampton. The Big Snack signed a three-year deal for $21 million. Like Ted Washington or Pat Williams before him, Hampton is at that point in his career where his skills may have diminished, but he would still highly valued by any NFL team because of the way he can plug up the middle of a defense. While it seems doubtful that he could really play at a high level another three years (at which point he would be 36), the Steelers simply could not afford to lose him, especially with all the defensive issues that became so apparent after last season. It's also good that the Steelers did not have to force the issue. They had threatened to use the franchise tag, and in return Hampton had threatened to hold out. Those types of things are never fun to deal with, so it's nice that all parties could avoid it. Reed was slapped with the franchise tag, which means big bucks for him this year (nearly $3 million, which is a lot for a kicker). I was admittedly down on Reed this past season. He wasn't totally sharp on the field, missing key field goals in the Chicago game and whiffing on tackles during the 47 TD returns that the special teams allowed. Off the field, he was doing bonehead, fratboy kind of crap. However, after watching the kicking debacle that was the 2009 NFL playoffs, I remembered how important it is to have a great kicker, and Reed is one of the best. These were interesting moves by the Steelers, and they were both precipitated by the fact that there will be no cap next year, and potentially no season at all in 2011. The front office realizes that this is a team that is still a Super Bowl contender. They can't afford to slowly fall apart from free agent losses. It's better to hold the nucleus together with some duct tape while they rebuild their aging defense thru the draft. That being said, I'm not sure I understand why they didn't use the transition tag to hang onto Ryan Clark. That seemed like a logical move given his importance in the secondary. Not sure I agree with that one, but it's good to have the loveable fat guy and the loveable drunk guy back in the fold at least!
(1/7) It looks like the Steelers will indeed retain offensive coordinator Bruce Arians (there were reports earlier this week that he was getting fired). This is good news. There is really no reason to make a change on offense. Arians play-calling is somewhat suspect at times, but you can’t argue with results. The 2009 unit was a top ten offense. Records were set, milestone numbers were reached, and big points were put up. Most importantly, the offense won games and aside from the Cleveland game, was not responsible for any of the losses (conversely, the defense and special teams can directly blamed for the other six losses). Arians is a person who many Steelers fans love to hate, but that makes no sense to me. The guy is doing a good job. Our franchise QB keeps getting better and he likes working with Arians. Why would we mess with that, especially when offense is nowhere near the top of the list of problems that need to be addressed? The team did fire offensive line coach Larry Zierlein and special teams coordinator Bob Ligashesky. I get the Ligashesky move, but I don't understand why Zierlein was fired. Granted, the o-line has been a problem for quite some time, but why did they wait until the line actually showed improvement to fire him? That move just reeks of "we missed the playoffs so heads had to roll" logic.
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