… there was a few times that BigBen did call an audible… and you could tell when he did… and I was wrong (you’d never hear the OC say that),or not close enough to count it on my side of the score

Sgt. White,

Maybe you could take a little time to conduct a “basic training” refresher course to the Steelers? Nothing fancy, just use what you learned in Pop Warner ball and we’d be much better off next week.

Thank you sir for your service to our country.

Thanks for the basketball support 5020.

May be my only sports salvation this season (July – LA Dodgers lead all MLB by 7 games… Oct – Dodgers season finishes after game 162). For the record, my sports season starts at the first Steeler kick-off and ends…. it might have ended Thursday… oh yeah, The Lakers.

5020… ummmmm… that was a club born out of WWII – 50 weeks, 20 bucks a week (my father told me that). Always puzzled me… the 50…. did soldiers get 2 weeks off without pay?

Yeah I’m rollin’ my eyes at ya raven. Don’t forget you guys still have to play us one last time… We watched our playoff hopes CTD (circle the drain) for a couple of weeks already. Don’t push it… k?

PS- He felt immediately younger.

Regarding your Cocoon remarks (clever but mis-applied by ‘time line’ -- did anyone tell you, “You’re not in Cleveland anymore”.

Actor Brian who did swim with the pods was one hell of a sandlot football player (linesman). Brian was part of that grit & guts era like Unitas (also a sandlot player before turning pro) and 20 years ago he’d kick any butt from Ohio or Maryland, walk to the sideline and say, “How’s that coach… should I hit ’em harder?” You know how say Unitas don’t you? Just think when Baltimore had real football in the past, you put your lips together and blow ‘Quarterback’… as in Hall member UNITAS – FROM PITTSBURGH!!

Where are you from originally and from where do you cheer for the boys now?

I’m trying to get some fans to go to Latrobe next 4th of July to teach the team and coaches a few lessons and we could use some cheerleaders for our side – but if you can block and/or catch, you’re in the line-up.

My secondary plan is (I actually have one unlike Steeler management) …. if the players don’t get it right in Latrobe, we start the fans booing them then, so they remember what it was like this season – wake up – and play like only the Steelers can.

… I didn’t keep a chart unfortunately (wish I had now – my witnesses did keep some tallies on napkins but we lost the napkins when we wiped our tears from our eyes). I figured that BigBen or at least the “Headless Coach” would have recognized the problem and corrected by audible (Ben) or over-rule (HC). I guess I over-estimated their vision and desire to correct (thusly perform and win). Your play selection ‘pghnorthside’ is not that far off or ridiculous. Mendenhall runs to the right side about 8 out of 10 runs – usually one side or the other off tackle. Yeah, occassionally if they think the O-Line can handle it, they pull a guard or cross-block or trap block but it is still the same play. If you’re the opposing defense and you have let’s say 6 variations of your set-up, after you have run those 6 set-ups and see how the Steeler O-Line blocks… you now just know your set-up and simply look to be hit from your right or left side – just plug that gap and you’re gold.

NOTE: I use the word ‘set-up’ rather than formation because the Steeler D taught the whole NFL how not to form-up… you just GEL into a direction & position at snap. Rightly so, cudos to the current DC for this invention (Wait for it…. Wait for it… he actually learned it from watching a Pop Warner game where the kids would ‘Bee Hive’ and run which confused the coaches and opponents – BIG INVENTION – this is not a fact but an educated guess by me and my stats are higher then the DC at this point).

If you take this 80% probability (8 out of 10 run plays) you could see how my 72% was very obtainable. My percentage was lowered by some variance like, RM starts thinking and decided to bounce out or reverse ( the man can only run into the butt of his own guard & tackle so many times before evolution kicks in).

Has anyone caught the fact that RM has quite often actually knocked his own O-Line on their butt when he runs into them…. and how can you wrap-up the ball when you have to use one hand to push your ‘overweight, molasses-fast’ blocker just to get back to the line of scrimmage. Note I said “back to” the line – our O-LIne has another habit… first motion is backward (see my original post regarding the equation F=ma). Correction – when the Steelers sneak Ben, the 1st motion is not backward – because Ben pushes the whole damn line forward!

Good catch… I stand corrected…. want a job as “Head Coach”… you obviously pay more attention to details than the incumbant. I must have been thinking about my Bradshaw comment during that error… and where he grew up “your” is the universal “yer” (‘yer’ is in the Officlal Pittsburghese Dictionary/Dialect manual).

Here’s [ as in here is :) ] an idea, what if all of the Steeler Nation that could, shows up in Latrobe next July 4th. We challenge the Offense and Defense to a scrimmage – hell, challenge the coaches to a coaching scrimmage too. It will just be flag style to start, then those younger fans can have a second go full out. I’m sure we can teach everyone something (besides teaching us older selves that we are over the hill). And perhaps there will be a few of us lucky ones that can beef-up the Steeler draft by walk-on. I HAVE FIRST DIBBS ON #24… my plan is to just flare out or dog-leg 8 yards at a time…. he, he, he… he’ll never touch me !

We’ll charge a few bucks and donate the money to the ‘70s Champs retirement fund — OR — put out that Contract on Neil O’Donell that I always wanted to do.

… you’re entitled to you opinion but believe me, no one was more shocked than me at how high I came in after the first two weeks of experimenting. I should have turned it into a drinking game… but then the rest of the crowd would have passed out by the start of the 4th quarter.

See my follow-up above – "It wasn’t that hard… "

After the last 5 weeks I would probably drop a whole lot in “Steeler Predictaility”…. well… we can hope that would be true… please, please let it be true !

I screamed at the SOB so loud that 2 dozen dogs in the neighborhood started howling… and after the play when I screamed at the TV what I really thought about him, all the dogs started to whimper.

OhioYinzer, I feel for your locale problem. My nephew (staunch Browns fan) is owed a congratulations from me and I think he is actually afraid to talk me yet. Just posting this has my heartrate back up to 120.

Thanks for stopping by and stay away from the lakes – if I got to close the Pacific right now, I might be tempted to jump off a pier.