Looks like the AFC showdown between #1 seed Tenneseee and #2 seed Pittsburgh will remain in its 1 pm EST (10 am PST) slot Sunday. Here's your TV Distribution Map - if you're in the state of Ohio, I'm sorry. You ain't escaping Cleveland - Cincy. And that's a really, really bad thing. There's actually quite a bit of competition around the country in this time slot, so it looks like there will be plenty of us not able to watch this one at home. Sooo, if you're looking for a stream of the game, try here. Post other options in the comments thread as well if the above link isn't the answer.
Ok, to the game.
I've strayed away from my tendancy to make bold predictions this past month. A few weeks ago before we were set to square off against the pretender Dallas Cowboys, I wrote I thought we were the team to beat in the AFC. I admitted it was a bold statement considering our fairly pedestrian outings against San Diego and Cincinnati. Sure, the win at New England was nice, but I don't think too many people really consider New England as legitimate contenders this year in this conference. Nevertheless, I saw something though in those three games that convinced me that we were going to be able to overcome some of our deficiencies to be extremely competitive.The resiliency shown against Dallas was admirable; and we saw tonight that our victory at Baltimore was pretty damn impressive - they physically dominated the Dallas Cowboys in Texas Stadium.
So, here we are 11-3 and I'm ready to make one more prediction for this particular team: we're going to win this football game in Nashville and we're going to look pretty damn good doing it. I want to use the word 'explosion' when referring to our offense, but I think I know better. Still, I think we're going to see an offense that plays much closer to a complete 60 minutes of football on Sunday than we have in recent contests. We've had a couple of really impressive drives in most of our games this year, but I know all of us are still waiting to have the kind of game we had against the Houston Texans, where we were efficient both on the ground and through the air. The problem, of course, was that game was Week 1 of the 2008 season.
If there ever were a time to have a breakout game of sorts, this would be it. The stakes are enormous - 1st place in the AFC to the victor.
Go Steelers!