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LaMarr Woodley

Week 8 Recap: Out-Patrioting The Patriots

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Two out of three ain’t bad.

In my game preview, I listed three things I thought the Pittsburgh Steelers absolutely had to do in order to defeat the New England Patriots. To be honest, I didn’t think they’d actually do any of them. Well, fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, thy name is Bill Belichick.

The Steelers completely overhauled their usual game plan on both sides of the ball yesterday. The result was a convincing 25-17 victory over the hated Patriots. It was, by any measure, the team’s most impressive performance of 2011. If the Black and Gold goes on a run which culminates in another trip up the Stairway to Seven, we’re undoubtedly going to look back at week eight as the turning point in the season.

Longtime Steeler fans will remember an infamous Monday Night game many years back when the Patriots came out throwing on something like twenty consecutive plays. Yesterday, the Steelers gave them a taste of their own medicine. Ben Roethlisberger threw the ball 32 times. In the first half.

Ben would finish the afternoon 36/50 for 365 yards and 2 TDs. He came out firing and never let up, even when it would have been prudent to do so. I’ve been a Steeler fan for a pretty long time. While I’m not exactly reaching for Touch of Grey, I remember seeing John Stallworth catch passes from Mark Malone. I’ve never seen a better performance by a Steeler signal caller than the one Ben put forth yesterday.
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Week 5 Recap: In Max We Trust

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Go figure.

Almost half their starting defense out. Top two running backs injured and a starting quarterback who’s a walking limping human bruise. A never-ending revolving door along the offensive line now featuring a starting left tackle that allegedly suffered a career-ending injury last year and was only re-signed on Tuesday. Facing off against a 3-1 team with the sixth ranked defense and one of the top five running backs in the NFL.

And what happens?

The [intlink id=”21″ type=”category”]Pittsburgh Steelers[/intlink] completely obliterate the Tennessee Titans 38-17. Unlike previous weeks, the final score is precisely indicative of how the game actually went. To say this was the Black and Gold’s finest performance of 2011 would be a colossal understatement. To say they finally looked like the team that went to last year’s Super Bowl would be far more accurate.
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Hate Is Strong Between Ravens And Steelers

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Perhaps no football cliche is overused more than than the dreaded “Bulletin board material.” The term amuses me for several reasons.   First, there is nothing more boring than the canned responses the traditional media frequently receives from athletes.  When a player finally steps outside that comfort zone and says something like “I think we’re gonna win,” the reporters gasp at their audaciousness.  Then the next day, we see any number of talking heads rant excitedly about said player providing “Bulletin board material” to his opponents.

Which is why the Pittsburgh Steelers rivalry with the [intlink id=”141″ type=”category”]Baltimore Ravens[/intlink] is so refreshing.  The teams hate each other and they aren’t shy about it.  Terrell Suggs famously showed up to training camp wearing a shirt which proclaimed his hatred of the Steelers. Ray Lewis crowed about the “bounties” collected for taking out certain Steelers, most notably [intlink id=”34″ type=”category”]Hines Ward[/intlink].  More recently, the teams spent the entire off-season sniping at each other in 140 characters or less on Twitter, culminating in [intlink id=”60″ type=”category”]Ryan Clark[/intlink] stating the rivalry “isn’t really a rivalry” until the Ravens actually win a game.  An infuriated Baltimore coach Jim Harbaugh angrily responded, “I don’t care what Ryan Clark says about anything.”
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Bless You, Troy Polamalu

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Finding an honorable football player is akin to finding a virgin in a whorehouse.  By the way, we here at TotalSteelers were saddened to hear about the recent arrest of the Monroeville Madam.  Hopefully she shredded her records from 2009. The story was shocking not because her clientele included “professional athletes” as everybody knows the Pittsburgh Pirates only score when they pay for it.  No, I was surprised to learn her pimp daddy was “Buck” Buczkowski, an ex-NFL lineman who played his college ball at Pitt.

That kind of work seems far better suited to Miami alums.

Getting back on track, I’ve long held the belief that most professional athletes are assholes.  I’m not saying they all are but there is a certain level of arrogance that goes hand in hand with being paid obscene amounts of money and having 35,000 fans cheer your every move on Sunday.  Think back to who were the most arrogant kids in high school.  The jocks, right?  Pro athletes are the jocks magnified by a factor of ten.  And because of that, many have ginormous egos and an overinflated sense of entitlement.
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LaMarr Woodley Signs Long-Term Deal

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The Pittsburgh Steelers concluded two weeks of nearly constant contract renegotiations by locking linebacker [intlink id=”70″ type=”category”]LaMarr Woodley[/intlink] in to a six year $61.5 million deal.  This is the fifteenth player who was part of last year’s Super Bowl runners-up to either sign a new deal or rework their existing one since the lock out ended.  Thanks, new CBA.  I wonder if the players have realized yet how badly they got hosed.

Anyway, Mister Woodley was by far the biggest fish left to be fried.  The Steelers tagged him as their Franchise player so he wasn’t going anywhere this season.   However, the $10 million salary associated with that designation put an uncomfortably large dent in the cap.  While you math geniuses may notice he’s still making an average of $10 million per season, $22.5 million of his new contract is being doled out as a signing bonus.  As I’ve mentioned before, this is a clever trick teams do to lower the amount per year a contract counts against the cap.
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