So I'm fiddling around the internet today, just looking for anything Steelers-related I haven't read yet in preparation of Sunday's game.  For those who didn't find this very site through SI.com, it has a really neat feature that allows users to pick their favorite team, and it gives links to various articles/columns around the internet that have been written recently about that respective team (links to BTSC are always on there whenever people like Blitz or maryrose write a column).

Anyhow, there's a link to a Sporting News column about Big Ben's likelihood of receiving the NFL MVP award if his play keeps up. 

I start to read it, and it's a nice article, always good to see the national guys giving the Steelers props... then I come across this sentence. "Against Baltimore, in Week 4, the Steelers lost Mendenhall and starting guard Kendall Simmons -- the team's best lineman in the wake of Alan Faneca's departure...." That's when I stopped reading.

But that isn't the first time a national columnist did not do his homework.  Example 2, from a Peter King Monday Morning Quarterback column: "Now that Kendall Simmons, the best player on the line, leaves a yawning gap at guard by going on injured reserve, the Steelers are going to have to do what they practiced tons at training camp this year -- the short passing game."

What the heck is this national love affair with Kendall Simmons?! It's like, just because we signed him to a very rich deal recently, that automatically makes him our best lineman.  If anything, his absence has proven his weakness, because there's no doubt the line has improved. Yeah, I know, Hartwig has been helping Stapleton out, yadda yadda yadda, but it certainly wouldn't matter if Stapleton were not adequate. It's not ALL Hartwig, even if he is helping chip Stapleton's rusher.  The national media obviously deals in evaluating talent by dollars and cents, and not common sense. 

Just my rant on something I've seen twice, and was made sick by the first time I saw it.