Steelers News: Rooney, Brown, Faneca

The Steelers players head into the offseason for recovery and the coaches head out to prepare for free agency and the draft.

Steelers season never truly ends for Steeler Nation so while the offseason starts to heat up we’ll be busy looking for mentions of your Black & Gold so we’ve got you covered. Here’s your Steelers Morning Huddle for Friday, Feb. 5^th.

Rooney Rule Expansion

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Teresa Varley reports

that the NFL will expand the Rooney Rule, named after Steelers chairman Dan Rooney, a rule in place to require a team to interview at least one minority candidate for openings in coaching and senior football operations positions, to include women for executive positions.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell spoke at the first-ever NFL Women’s Summit held at Super Bowl 50 this week where he discussed the expansion.

"“You can see that progress is being made. And our commitment is we have something called the Rooney Rule, which requires us to make sure when we have an opening that on the team or the league level, that we are going to interview a diverse slate of candidates. Well we’re going to make that commitment and we’re going to formalize that we, as a league, are going to do that with women as well in all of our executive positions. Again, we’re going to keep making progress here and make a difference.” – Roger Goodell"

Ok, here we go guys. If we all pull together we can get me hired as an NFL executive. I’ll eat Goodell’s yogurt out of the fridge and mess with the height of his office chair and do everything I can to annoy the ever-loving piss out of him. We can do this.

Business is, indeed, booming

Just in case anyone was wondering how business was for Antonio Brown so far this offseason. Booming would be the correct answer. In between appearing on ESPN’s First Take to call out punk-ass Bengals players Adam Jones and Vontaze Burfict he also debuted his new ride.

Brown showed up at training camp last summer with a custom Phantom Rolls Royce and it looks like the carmaker and Steelers super star have collaborated again for vehicular gold. Literally.

Problems with the Pro Bowl

Ed Bouchette brings up a pretty valid topic as a Hall of Fame voter, particularly with respects to former Steelers guard Alan Faneca, who is up for enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame for the first time this year.

Bouchette, who just finished his 5-year long crusade to get Jerome Bettis enshrined now, has to argue in Faneca’s favor to the other voters. The problem that has been presented is for players like Faneca, whose position means he’s not lighting up a stat sheet, there use to be something to having “x” number of Pro Bowls listed in your resume.

Next: Still Curtain Interview with Brett Keisel

Now, everyone bolts on the Pro Bowl because it’s lame and one week before the Super Bowl so by the time the game is played they’re at their 7^th, 8^th, possibly 11^th replacement. There’s going to come a time when a player having however many Pro Bowl appearances on their resume won’t do anything to get them in the Hall of Fame.