‘Pay no attention to the guy in the hat next to me. Now let’s talk about the inadequacies of the players!’ Courtesy of PPG.com
‘Tain’t nothing funny at all about this particular Colbert Report. And if Steelers GM Kevin Colbert makes good on what he said on Wednesday, some Steelers will probably wish they were interviewing with the other Colbert on the Comedy Central series instead.
Kevin Colbert sat down with the press on Wednesday and laid into the Steelers roster – more so than we saw back in 2009 when the Steelers last missed the playoffs. Referring to the ’10 and ’11 records Colbert said:
“When you’re 12-4 and a playoff team, sometimes you get mesmerized by your success and you get a little reluctant to change. If we don’t change a roster that produced 8-8, we’d be silly to expect a better result.”
When asked about the 2012 offense being the worst offense since 1978, Colbert said:
“Indicative of the talent we had at the position.”
[Record scratch]
Did you just hear what I just heard? Is Colbert saying that the Steelers 8-8 record was because the offensive roster was full of guys who weren’t talented enough to win more games? That just doesn’t make any sense. You sure it wasn’t the guy sitting next to you during that presser that has something to do with it? Or what about your new offensive coordinator? You’re really going to peg the roster? Is that because it’s easy enough then to justify releases and/or deciding to not re-sign someone?
I understand that roster has a bit to do with a team’s problems from season to season. We’re not talking about performance here either. Colbert used the word ‘talent.’ That is such a strong word in evaluating what went wrong with your team…. and somewhat damning on his part. Isn’t Colbert responsible for finding the most talented players with the given salary cap? Something smells fishy and I don’t think it’s my leftover Colossal Fish & Cheese Primanti’s. Could Colbert be catching the Rooney Fever – double speak and not really letting on what’s going on behind closed doors? It just seems so trite – blame the roster and insinuate cleaning house. It’s too easy.
I’m calling shenanigans on this one. Maybe the release of Hines Ward last season had something to do with this… I think this is an attempt by Colbert to lay the seeds of ‘Hey don’t come yelling at the front office, Steeler Nation, when some of your favorite veterans are gone next season. They just don’t have the talent anymore.’
Stand by – I will be doing a breakdown between the 2011 and 2012 roster to find what Colbert was talking about in my next post.