Finally, some real Steeler news with the advent of the free agent signing period. The worst part of the silly season is over, at least until the draft is over . . . .
My favorite signing so far is the three year contract for “Big Play” Willie Gay. Aside from being the team’s most consistent cornerback, he is as mentally tough as any player on the roster.
Once the favorite whipping boy of more critical fans. Gay not only survived the torrent of catcalls for his ouster, he has improved to the point where keeping him was critical to the continued improvement of the secondary. Ike Taylor might have had a lot to do with Willie’s mental toughness. . . .
There are those who say that winning the Lombardi is not the most important thing but the only thing. If you honestly subscribe to that line of thought then being a devoted fan of any particular NFL team is an exercise in masochism.
If we just examine those teams that qualified for this season’s post season tournament, four (Cincinnati, Houston, Minnesota and Carolina) have never reached the Promised Land of being the last team standing. Perhaps it will happen for the Panthers in February.
Four others have championships (not all Super Bowls) as artifacts of their history but no real experiential relevance to the vast majority of their current fan bases. The Cardinals, for example, won once, before I was born, when they were located in Chicago and Harry Truman was president. Kansas City won during the first Nixon administration. Washington and Denver won sometime in the nineties. Of the four remaining, the successes of New England and Seattle have been strictly recent.
A great many weeks ago I got the following email from Steeler Fever:
I am really impressed with DHB this season. Somehow he has manufactured a set of hands and is really contributing to the offense. Any thoughts of doing an article on him? If he keeps going at this pace he should be in consideration for comeback player of the year though I am not sure how many touches he will get when Bryant returns.
Heyward-Bey may seem an odd choice for this series. From a strictly pragmatic standpoint, the information on Heyward-Bey is scanty, as you would expect from the fourth receiver on a team who generally plays three-WR sets, one who earns his bread and butter on special teams.
Furthermore, Heyward-Bey is not a name which you see plastered all over the community events. (A little sleuthing did turn up a photo of him helping out with one of the Thanksgiving turkey drives, although he wasn’t identified.) Unlike many of the players he doesn’t appear to have started his own foundation. I found one reference to a donation he made back in 2012 which was pretty much couch cushion change for a player on a first-round contract.
And yet I contend he belongs in this series. I will now present my case:
Heyward-Bey was taken seventh overall in the 2009 draft, ahead of several more highly-touted receivers. (Michael Crabtree and Jeremy Maclin were both expected to go well ahead of Heyward-Bey. Other first-round wide receivers in that draft? Percy Harvin, Hakeem Nicks, and Kenny Britt. All of them have had more prolific careers in the NFL.)
Al Davis had a love affair with speed, and Heyward-Bey was too speedy for him to resist. Apparently until the day he died Davis never learned that while you can’t teach speed, speed without a sufficiency of other characteristics is always going to be limited in its effectiveness. Continue reading “Character (Ac)Counts: Darrius Heyward-Bey”
As luck would have it I had to schedule an afternoon rehearsal yesterday from 4 – 6:30. I was hoping I could somehow manage to not find out the outcome before I finally had a chance to sit down and watch the recording of the game. I guess it was a day of miracles, because in Pittsburgh I managed to avoid finding out anything ahead of time, and the game itself was pretty sweet.
Homer J., PaVa Steeler, and Ivan sent me comments, so what follows will be a sort of melange of our impressions. Our collective impression, though, is mainly YES! Homer was obviously pretty excited, as his commentary was entirely in CAPITALS. I’ve mostly removed them for ease of viewing.Continue reading “Game Recap: 49ers at Steelers”
Finally, some real Steeler news with the advent of the free agent signing period. The worst part of the silly season is over, at least until the draft is over . . . .
Going Deep: 