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Who didn't love RoboCop growing up?
Who still doesn't love RoboCop?
I've always been something of a purist when it comes to movies, and re-makes (and sequels) have never really been my thing. Maybe that was due to the limited appeal of re-makes in my youth, but many of the ones they make now serve as a nice restart to a series that plays on nostalgia more than anything else.
Speaking of nostalgia, I take any opportunity I get to combine discussion about the Steelers with movies - my two great passions. I'm definitely not the James Lipton sort, and love the movies you won't hear mentioned with the Academy. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the upcoming re-make of RoboCop (scheduled for release Feb. 7) won't garner many Oscar nominations but there will likely be car chases and explosions and a lot of good guys beating up bad guys and so on.
It takes little to entertain me.
With that in mind, we had the thought of mixing the idea of RoboCop with the the Steelers. The idea being based in the premise of RoboCop - Alex J. Murphy was gunned down in the line of duty and rebuilt - more or less - with advanced robotics in most areas.
If we take a few attributes of current and former Steelers players, and meld them together all robot-like into one RoboSteeler, who would earn what attribute?
First, we have to start with a model player for one position.
While there isn't much needed to be changed in Mean Joe Greene, we're going to start with his core attributes and add to them from different players throughout history. The Steelers could still play a 3-4 defensive front with a suped up version of Greene at nose tackle, and we're going to give him attributes ensuring his ability to defend two gaps, dominating both of them to a high level.
Let's infuse him with James Harrison's strength. Combining that with his own, he's without question unblockable 1-on-1, but to it, we'll add in Chris Hoke's knowledge.
To that, let's add Aaron Smith's technique - giving us the ability to move RoboGreene to the five or seven technique in certain situations (this will be fun against rookie quarterbacks). We already have Harrison's pound-for-pound strength, but we'll add a combination of off-the-ball explosion of Ernie "Fats" Holmes and Casey Hampton.
Greene drew two blockers on every snap anyway, but with that explosion - as well as the length of L.C. Greenwood - it will be all but impossible to keep just one blocker on him. But just because we can (for the sake of this exercise), let's give him the quickness of Antwaan Randle El.
I know what you're thinking...this is just unfair. We are 10 miles north of unfair right now. He'd be impossible to stop. And with a resistance to injury and fatigue, it's likely there would be wholesale changes in the rules of the game just to stop him, and the Steelers would likely have to give RoboGreene ownership of the team upon his retirement just to ensure he doesn't test his value in free agency. To that end, we're going to give him the calm demeanor of Troy Polamalu. He was a guy who certainly made his money at the height of his career, but there were never any contract issues with him, and he was always seen as a quiet actions-based leader.
Simply put, RoboGreene is indestructible, even by Clarence Boddicker.
