Steelers MMQB: NFL Off-season News

What We Learned This Week In The NFL Offseason:

• ESPN will use ANY excuse possible to continue to talk about Tebow
• Rooney and Colbert try to save face in the OC debacle
• Goodell still pushing an 18-game schedule
• ESPN camera man gets all up in Tomlin’s grill at a college basketball game

We’re heading into quite possibly the worst month of the whole year for football fans.  The highlights of the season are long gone.  The draft is still a bit too far away, hell even the combine is a good month away from now.  The free agency period hasn’t even begun yet.  Still there is news to be had for those of us that consume the NFL 365 days of the year.

If you still can’t get ESPN out of your regular programming schedule routine than you’ve heard of the NBA’s latest phenom Jeremy Lin about a gazillion times.   You’ve also heard the countless comparisons to Tebow, as ESPN seems to have a habit of creating a phenom and then attempting to tear it down.  Seems to me that they’ve probably contractually obligated themselves to talk about Tebow a certain amount of times throughout the year, so this is just one more way to work his name in to the highlight reels.  I have a constant love/hate relationship with the World Wide Leader.  It irritates me to no end when they basically create their own stories and then spend a ridiculous amount of time blaming the fans for blowing everything out of proportion.  Their coverage of Tebow was ridiculous and their coverage of Lin (although the stories couldn’t be more dissimilar than if they played on different planets) is rivaling that level of ridiculousness.  In an attempt to rationalize covering Tebow in late February, they released that he is spending yet another offseason working with a QB specialist in an attempt to play like a real quarterback some day.  Good for you Timmy, I’m done with my rant now.

Art Rooney II and Kevin Colbert gave interviews this week and both tried to dispel the rumors that the decision to hire Todd Haley as offensive coordinator was Tomlin’s alone and was not, in most opinions, spearheaded by Rooney.  Rooney made it seem that the hiring process was done by Tomlin alone and he and Colbert were merely informed of the on goings by the coach.  He stated that Haley and Former Colt’s HC Jim Caldwell were the only candidates to travel to Pittsburgh for interviews and that Haley was actually a “surprising” choice.  Now I’ve stated before that I’m not buying into all this drama surrounding Rooney and Tomlin but I do understand where it’s coming from.  If Rooney had been upfront about his decision to relieve BA from his coaching duties instead of masquerading it as a “retirement” no one would be questioning the hiring process Tomlin went through for Haley at all.  It was very un-Steeler-like to say the least.  Hopefully though, at least these statements can be taken at face value and we can move on to wondering just how exactly this offense is going to look this upcoming season.

It wouldn’t be an NFL offseason if Goodell wasn’t attempting to ruin at least some part of the game, would it?  Apparently everyone’s favorite Commissioner is pushing his 18 game agenda again and still insisting that he has the fan’s support of it.  Ok let’s have a show of hands once and for all, who wants an 18 game regular season full of injuries and underdeveloped rookies and who wants to just leave things the way they are and suffer through the crappy preseason like we do every year?  I get that the preseason games aren’t a big selling feature for season ticket holders, who are required to pay regular season prices for those game as part of their yearly cost.  They are crappy to watch and most of the time feature players that you’ll never see play in the NFL again.  But when it comes down to it the last two games are necessary to help shape the 53 man roster.  If you take a look at the injuries suffered this season as a result of the lockout and lack of OTA’s and team training prior to camp, you could argue the same type of injuries could occur with 2 less “practice games” and 2 more regular season games.   I just don’t see the need and I honestly haven’t come across any of these fans Goodell seems to claim support the 18 game season.  We all love football but we love what’s good about it, we don’t need a watered-down product just in an attempt to get more of it.

In funny news, one thing about being so widely known as a Steeler fan is when coming to work people can’t seem to wait to tell me about Steeler-related stories to get my take on it.  This morning I was met with “Did you hear that your coach flipped out on an ESPN camera man?”  So I searched for the link and the story.  Apparently Coach Tomlin was enjoying courtside seats at a Kentucky-Ole Miss college basketball game when a camera man thought it would be best to just sit in front of Tomlin and park it for a while.  Tomlin gave a smile and then after an uncomfortable couple of seconds of just being on camera asked the camera man, “You got enough?  I’m trying to watch the game.”  Not really flipping out if you ask me, but it’s good to see some emotions from Tomlin, who is usually as cool and collected as they come.  It’s pretty entertaining that it even made news though, I guess if you slap a headline including the words “Steelers coach snaps” or “Tomlin flips out” than it turns into a story.

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