I Like Ike—and He Likes the Steelers

AP photo/Mel Evans

Ike Taylor recently joined Bob Labriola and Missi Matthews of to give his take on the upcoming Steelers team. He had lots of interesting things to say, and did so in his usual inimitable fashion. But before they talked to Ike they talked about him.

Labriola noted that Ike had lost some weight and was still clearly in great shape. This was no surprise to Labriola, who compared Ike’s workout schedule and general work ethic to Antonio Brown. High praise, indeed.

Furthermore, Labriola noted that Ike went 10 or 11 years without ever missing a practice. Mike Prisuta still regales whoever will listen with his tale about the time Taylor went through the morning practice and then drove into Pittsburgh to have his thumb operated on. You don’t accumulate a streak of 135 consecutive games without toughing out a lot of stuff.

Dancing With the Stars: Can Antonio Keep Up the Momentum?

Last week Antonio and partner Sharna wowed the judges with his jazz routine. Although perhaps “wowed” is the wrong word, as I got the feeling this was what they’ve been hoping for, and even expecting, from him all along.

This week the show has thrown a monkey wrench into things by switching everyone’s partner for a week. AB will now be dancing with Karina, who usually partners another of the NFL guys, ex-QB Doug Flutie.

But before we look at this week’s dances, let’s see how Hines Ward was doing at this point, back in 2011. As I wrote then:

Ward was, surprisingly, subject to performance anxiety throughout the competition. He even admitted that he often felt like throwing up before going onstage. He was especially nervous about the week five rumba, as it is a slower dance that requires more control.

So what did the judges have to say?

• Bruno – “Ease of movement, musicality, and just the right amount of sensuality to make all the ladies swoon!
• Well played.”
• Len – “It’s not false – it has a naturalness, an ease and an elegance that is charming, and I think that’s probably your best dance.”

• Carrie Ann – “You make it look so easy – I’m getting worried for you because you make it look so easy, but that’s a good thing.”

A Blast from the Past: Today’s Question We Were Debating Back in the Day

SA Today Sports/Charles LeClaire

On October 26, 2011, Hombre de Acero wrote:

The 2011 NFL season is 7 weeks old, with Week 8 rapidly approaching. The Pittsburgh Steelers are 5-2 and riding high on a three-game win streak. But all three wins have come against less than stellar competition. The Steelers took care of business and are now set to begin the “varsity section” of their schedule starting with this week’s game against the Patriots. Which brings us to this week’s 5 Burning Questions:

But rather than debate the present, Hombre first speculated about the “top-flight nose tackle” the Steelersi n his created scenario, drafted in the spring of 2012. Which as we all know didn’t happen. Nor did Hombre necessarily think it would. But it is interesting to reflect how far the team has evolved in one year under Defensive Coordinator Keith Butler that hardly anyone is talking about how we ought to look for a Casey Hampton type.

A Blast from the Past: More Questions We Were Debating Back in the Day

 

steelers.com

I hope you are all enjoying these, because you’re going to see a lot of them until actual current football stuff starts happening. And by “current football stuff” I even mean the Combine and the draft, which shows how desperate I am.

As I explained in the first post in this series, I asked Hombre de Acero for permission to re-pose, if you will, questions from his Burning Questions of the distant past.

He was initially skeptical, as he has always attempted to keep the questions very topical. But I think today’s question will illustrate just why I thought this will be an instructive thing to do.

Surviving the Offseason, Part 3: The Nuances of Development

by Ivan Cole

The Steeler Way: Development. The Football Way: Interdependence.

If, as so many claim to do, you bleed black and gold, there is an implication that your knowledge extends beyond just knowing the team colors. Yet it is sad that so many look to untutored outsiders to be instructed as to how to think about the Pittsburgh Steelers and how they, very successfully by NFL standards, do their business.

Mike Tomlin recently sat down with Bob Labriola to talk about the 2015 season.

From the very beginning of the interview when Labriola asked Tomlin to discuss what he spoke to the younger players about in their exit interviews, the limitations of making evaluations solely upon performances in the lower levels of football, measurables, and snapshots became glaring.

Players getting “acclimated to professional football”.

Players such as Jesse James and Bud Dupree being asked to adapt to playing at a significantly lower weight.

Getting beyond “preconceived notions about professional football”. “There’s a lot you don’t know”.

But there are no such concerns in Kiper World, suburban radio, total access and all the other places where great minds and their disciples congregate.

The Pittsburgh Steelers All ‘Bust’ Team: Defense

 by Ivan Cole

If you missed Part One, let me review some of the ground rules.

‘Bust’ vs. Bust. This is an exercise in irony. So if you are expecting to see the Limas Sweed Story in this piece you will be deeply disappointed. To qualify for this team you have to be a success who is declared a failure before or during the time you are succeeding.

We in Steelers Nation are masters of this sort of thing. There are a number of ways this gets done. The criteria which will receive the greatest focus here will be:

1. declared a failure before putting on a uniform or playing a game,
2. not developing in a timely enough fashion,
3. being fragile, injured too often, having personal conduct issues that supposedly disqualifies a player from receiving our support, or
4. being declared washed up (old or otherwise done).

There will be something of a bias in favor of the Super Bowl era (some would say that everything Steelers prior to then is by definition a bust), and skewed even further toward the latter years of this period.

Part One detailed the offense and included two players and one coach who would end up in the HOF—Terry Bradshaw, Mike Webster and Chuck Noll. It also included a few others who have a pretty good shot of ending up there as well. Here we will take a look at the defense, which includes at least one HOF player among their ranks.