Not mad, just sad

Something besides a football game was lost on Thursday night in Cleveland. On a wind-swept, bitter cold night less than 2 hours drive from Pittsburgh, the last semblance of swagger and pride oozed out of the Steelers. Less than 10 months after winning their 6th Super Bowl, the black and gold had become not merely ordinary, but truly the doormats of the NFL.

Impotent on offense and floundering on defense, the Steelers made a 1-11 team with a chump QB look like NFL competitors. But with all the problems Mike Tomlin and his team have to deal with now, there's no point in recounting the myriad failures that have characteized this dismal season. There will be plenty of time for that later. This is a time for somber reflection, as we mourn the collapse of a recently great and proud team. It's also time to figure out how on earth Pittsburgh can recover that wonderful, intangible quality known as Steeler football that went missing somewhere on a frigid Cleveland night.  

When you can already sense the doom before a game even starts, you've reached that special corner of Hell populated by the fans in Detroit, Tampa Bay and, yes, Cleveland. Losing teams that you dominated as recently as last year are only too happy to dance on your grave and proclaim "the king is dead." Even the world's worst-ever play-by-play team  (NFL Network) is quite pleased by the opportunity to walk up to the reeling champ and sink their clumsy daggers.

But amid all the sorrow and humiliation, we also find a strange sense of liberation. The Steelers have freed themselves entirely now from the weight of this season's great expectations. Nothing else to do now but work on getting better. If I know Mike Tomlin and the Steeler front office, this process will begin immediately. And for some of the players and coaches that we saw on the field in Cleveland, this well may be a final hurrah. Heads are going to roll, and rightly so. 

The coming off-season will be especially tough for the Steelers. All the better, then, that the 2010 pre-season should be starting more than 8 months early. At this point, winning the final three games means nothing. Tomlin and company need to start building the next generation of this team immediately. But as a fan, the experience of the past 5 weeks has been more like attending the funeral of your best friend.