Steeler Nation quickly raced to their telephones to drown their sorrows in an all-day talk radio Blame Game party that wasn’t broken up until a whambulance had to be dispatched for a Penn Hills man who nearly died of pessimism.

Thankfully, YOU, sensible Pittsburgher, are in luck, because Pulling No Punches came to work this morning wearing its pocket protector. Let’s get nerdy and go inside the numbers to see what precisely is ailing the 6-3 Men of Steel.

Yinzer assertion #1:

“Kicker Jeff Reed is the problem. Cut him!”

The statistics:

81.3% – Reed’s field goal percentage; 17^th in the NFL.

1 - Touchbacks forced by Reed this season; the worst in the NFL.

The verdict:

Sort of true. Reed is not the sole reason for the Steelers’ woeful special teams performance in recent weeks. A kicker is not paid to make tackles. Reed is paid to do two things: to make field goals, for which he is rather ordinary, and to boot the football really, really far on kickoffs, for which he is abysmal, at least in 2009.

Reed has been criticized for his lack of tackling temerity. In reality, it’s his leg strength that is the real concern. Reed’s 60-yard average per kickoff ranks his right leg as the weakest in the league. I suggest implementing towel dispenser high-kicks into his workout routine.

Yinzer assertion #2:

“The offensive line still stinks! Bring back Dermontti Dawson!”

The statistics:

2.9 – average sacks per game let up by the Steelers offensive line; tied for 26^th in the NFL. Their company at the bottom of the rankings? Oakland (2-7), San Francisco (4-5), Detroit (1-8), Washington (3-6) and Kansas City (2-7).

4.3 – Steelers’ average yards per rushing attempt; 15^th in the NFL.

The verdict:

Actually, false. This is once instance where the numbers do not tell the whole story. The offensive line has significantly improved in 2009, especially in holding the line for the running game. In 2008, they were breached faster than a Tijuana border fence. This year, they’re unspectacularly workmanlike.

However, Big Ben continues to hold onto the ball for longer than he probably should. Many of the sacks the Steelers have given up this season have been coverage sacks – where Roethlisberger has had plenty of time in the pocket, but no open receivers to throw to.

Don’t like Ben’s never-say-die approach in the pocket? What are you, French? Tough baguettes, mon frère. Yes, it’s true that the Steelers are treading in dangerous waters by letting up so many sacks, but the payoff is usually worth it.

Case in point: The Steelers average 8.2 yards per pass attempt (4^th best in the NFL) compared to the aforementioned 4.3 yards per rushing attempt (15^th in the league). Why not play to your strengths? The Steelers did so last season, and they won a big, shiny Super Bowl ring.

If you listened to the misguided Yinzers on the talk-show yap lines, you’d think evil-doing offensive coordinator Bruce Arians was aerially obsessed. In reality, the Steelers’ pass-to-run ratio is 12^th in the league.

I’m no doctor, so take it from licensed professional Dr. Dre: “The game done changed, folks.” Passing works. If you want to see ugly running, go to an Ohio State co-ed volleyball game.

Yinzer assertion #3:

“The Steelers need to get back to SMASH-MOUTH FOOTBALL to salt away games. And on another note…..BEER RUN!!!”

The statistic:
32 minutes, 1 second – average offensive time of possession; 7^th in the NFL.

The verdict:

False. This assertion is marinated in misguided nostalgia. The Steelers are doing a fine job of possessing the football for long stretches of time. Because Ben Roethlisberger’s completion percentage is a stunning 67.9%, the Steelers are able to keep the clock rolling in the second half without tucking their chins and settling in for the predictable “3-to-6 runs and a punt” routine that used to haunt them in the early 2000s under the Cowher administration.

The Steelers have lost three close games in 2009 because of the following two numbers:

3 – Special teams touchdowns allowed by the Steelers; the most in the NFL and…

25.9 – Average yards given up by the Steelers per kickoff; 4^th worst in the NFL.

Why are these two numbers, specifically, so crucial? 

These stats are paramount because they show that even though the Steelers defense is still second-best in the NFL in yards allowed (sans Troy Polamalu no less), and despite Ben Roethlisberger having the most efficient season of his career (8^th best QB rating in NFL), the momentum of a football game can swing dramatically a span of just 20 seconds – the time it takes for an opposing returner to find a sliver in the special teams wall and jet to the endzone.

It’s deflating. It’s demoralizing, especially when it happens in front of the home crowd. Special teams lapses have cost the Steelers three winnable games, and perhaps the NFC North crown.

The Steelers, probably more than any other team in the league, live and die off of momentum. 60 Minute Men win Super Bowls. 59-and-a-Half Minute Men get bounced in the Wild Card round. The good news is that special teams errors are mostly mental. They’re far from fatal flaws. Despite being swept by Cincinnati, even the most pessimistic Steeler fan would take Roethlisberger over Palmer, the Steelers’ defense over the Bengals’, and Mike Tomlin over Marvin Lewis when the chips are all on the table in January.

If there’s one coach in the NFL who can motivate his players to put in the overtime necessary to get the little details right, it’s Mike Tomlin.

Either that, or start making “Renegade” mandatory before every kickoff. Yinzers of all stripes can at least agree on that.

On Saturday nights in Wexford and Ambridge and everywhere, Hall of Fame tailgaters marinate steaks and clean the soot out of their hibachi grills. Some even adorn their houses with black-and-gold Christmas lights. Others drape Terrible Towels over their televisions and go to sleep with a smiling Heinz Ward bobblehead on the nightstand.

In high school, my friends and I had a rather embarrassing ritual on Saturday nights. We couldn’t wait for real football, so we staved off our anticipation by playing hours and hours of the virtual replacement – Madden football for the Playstation.

Now, for the readers over the age of 35, it is truly hard to explain just how seriously my buddies and I took the competition of Madden. See, my friends were all crazy sports fans. And as crazy sports fans, we all thought we knew the most about football. Being the best at Madden wasn’t like being the best at pinball or Pacman. It was a cerebral experience. You had to call the right defense. You had to read blitzes. You had to be a better virtual football coach than your opponent.

Madden is just like real football, only for people who have no desire for actual physical contact, preferring instead to sit Indian-style in front of a TV with a plastic controller and a delirious smile.

Nearly every Saturday night, while our peers were doing cool things like smoking their parents’ stolen Parliament Lights on county park benches or huffing paint fumes in a shed, my friends and I were huddled around a flickering television in someone’s unfurnished basement, living and dying with every virtual Hail Mary.

The revelry would last until 3 or 4 in the morning, or until someone’s mother banged on the floorboards with a broom for us to shut up and go to sleep. We drank Mountain Dew and busted each other’s chops, and since we didn’t have any money, we made preposterous non-monetary bets on each game.

Once, my buddy Mike lost half of his VHS collection after he squandered away a lead at snowy Lambeau field. To the victor went the spoils: Die Hard, BASEketball, Jaws, This is Spinal Tap and an unmarked Cinemax After Dark dub.

My buddy Justin put up his favorite hoodie sweatshirt against someone’s Sony Walkman. I can’t remember who won – all I recall is negotiations heating up over whether the accompanying Weird Al Yankovic CD would be included with the Walkman in the wager.

Using an old NFL general manager’s trick—future considerations—someone even put an upcoming Christmas gift of their opponents’ choosing on the line.

The atmosphere at these events was both sad and hilarious, in retrospect. Picture a hot, hazy, unfinished basement littered with Doritos crumbs and ten screaming, hysterical yinzers pointing at the TV and high-fiving and hugging over the heroic actions of computer pixels. It didn’t help that half the basements in Western Pennsylvania are lined with drywall that has the consistency of Play-Doh.

Once, in the wee hours of the morning during a particularly heated game, a friend who shall remain nameless hurled a Playstation controller in frustration after throwing a crucial interception. The controller stuck right in the drywall, fossilized.

For some reason, none of us had girlfriends.

These days, it’s hard to imagine caring about anything like I cared about the outcome of those Madden games. For a brief time, the world was as big as a 200 sq. ft. basement. Life was a television, a Playstation and good friends. Before we knew it, the world caught up to us. We got cars. We got cool, or something approximating it. We went to college.

My buddy Steve Freund would go on to join the Marines. He was, without a doubt, the best Madden player of our group. He played with an unbreakable intensity. He couldn’t be rattled. He won our biggest tournament ever and took home a grand prize of $100 – 80 dollars cash and a 20 dollar Best Buy gift card that a particularly broke friend had thrown into the pot.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen happiness like I saw it when Steve won our Madden Bowl championship. Along with his $100, he won a plastic WWF Heavyweight Title Belt that signified that he was, indeed, the World’s Best Madden Player in Pleasant Hills, Pa. That night, he slept on the floor of the basement cradling the belt.

The next morning, Steve went to Best Buy and bought an off-brand mp3 player with his prize money. It held something like 40 songs. Steve didn’t even own a computer, but he bootlegged some Metallica and Limp Bizkit off of our friend Mike’s Gateway Pentium II. In those days it took hours for the songs to download, so Steve, Mike and I laid around the basement watching NFL Sunday Countdown and eating cereal as the white light of Sunday morning came flickering in through the tiny glass-block window above the television.

Myron Cope’s shrill voice echoed from the kitchen radio upstairs. The smell of pancakes came wafting down through the floorboards. Someone was still sleeping on the floor in the corner of the room near the radiator, using a hollowed out Mountain Dew case for a pillow.

We didn’t realize how much fun we were having. Most of us would soon go off to college and gradually fall out of touch.

Steve went a different route. He became Marine Pfc. Steven Freund. He became a man. He went on to serve bravely in Iraq until May 23, 2006, when he was killed by a roadside IED while riding in a Humvee in the tumultuous Al Anbar province. He was 20 years old.

I was off at college at the time, and a friend sent me a text message about it. It was blunt. “Did you hear? Steve Freund died.”

And that was that. I was in my car at the time. I sat in a parking lot for half-an-hour. I couldn’t think of anything but our Madden games. I thought that was strange. I thought that would change.

On each Veterans Day since Steve’s death, I see the old World War II veterans on television visiting the graves of their fallen friends who passed on some 60 years ago, and I wonder what parts of their friends they choose to remember as they solemnly salute the headstones and the monuments.

It takes a lot for me to remember the sadness. I have to try hard to remember the funeral. The stars and stripes draped over his casket. The circle of friends, reunited, digging their heels into the carpet, not knowing what to say. Steve’s sweetheart in the corner of the room, sobbing relentlessly into a Steelers sweatshirt.

I think about how strange it seems now, and how strange it could seem in 40 years, that when I think of Steve, what I choose to remember is this: a fall Sunday in a shabby rec room. No one speaking, throats too raw from the previous night’s videogame marathon. Shadows growing longer on the shag carpet. A Terrible Towel draped over the television. Chris Berman making cartoon sound effects over the pre-game highlights. Steve smiling when his Metallica download finishes. All of us waiting—on breakfast, on the Steelers game, on life—with visceral hope and anticipation.

Some things we can never get back, but some idle moments remain vivid forever in our hearts, only to be understood by us, and few others.

Pfc. Steven Freund: 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force. A Pittsburgher.

It wasn’t irony. It was a warning.

Toothless. Mustached. Menacing. Before being drafted by the Steelers in 1974, the scouting report on Lambert, a marginal talent from Kent State, said that while he didn’t have ideal size for a linebacker, he had a “lust for contact.”

It’s not difficult to imagine Steelers patriarch Art Rooney Sr. reading the report, biting down hard on his cigar, eyes bulging from behind his black Wayfarer frames, thinking – we gotta’ get this kid.

If an Uzbekistani immigrant came up to a Pittsburgher on the street and asked what’s up with all this Steelers business, the best way to explain 77 years of history, six Super Bowl victories and an entire culture of blue collar exceptionalism to the outsider would be to hold up a picture of Lambert—toothless and snarling and mud caked—and say, “Welcome to the Steel City.”

They called him Darth Vader. They called him Dracula in Cleats. They said he was from Pittsburgh, Transylvania. During a Monday Night Football game in 1974, Lambert introduced himself as hailing from Buzzard’s Breath, Wyoming.

He fooled announcer Howard Cossell, who referred to Lambert multiple times during the broadcast as “the middle linebacker from Buzzard’s Breath.” Everyone bought into the routine.

The sign hanging outside Lambert’s dorm room at the Steelers’ summer training camp at St. Vincent’s college said it all – the one that informed the maids, “don’t clean this room.”

Steelers Nation, and the nation at large, saw a monster – a crazed hooligan unfit to be a functioning member of a modern society who was only capable of existing in the netherworld between the chalk white sidelines of the NFL. Lambert played into the mystique. He’d often sit alone at the end of the bench, staring daggers into the Three Rivers Astroturf, his breath steaming meanly out from underneath the towel that was draped over his head. 

But Lambert’s shadow was bigger and scarier than reality. If you flicked on the nightlight, you’d see a tall, lanky, unorthodox kid from rural Mantua, Ohio. You’d see an underdog who played out of his mind, hurling every ounce of his gangly 215-pound frame into tackles. A man who was extremely quiet and private six out of sevens days of the week, preferring to walk alone into a tunnel of redheaded oak trees with a hunter’s rifle and a pack of cigarettes instead of a downtown bar or club with an entourage by his side.

And a man who signed every autograph, so long as the saucer-eyed kid said “please” and “thank you.”

Today’s NFL players could learn a lot from Smilin’ Jack. When a primadona receiver sits out a game with a glorified hangnail, you’ll often hear old-timers complain that they could learn a lot from Cold War tough guys like Lambert, or Dick Butkus, or Willie “Contact” Lanier – guys who dove helmet-first into tackles and would play through a lobotomy. But you never hear the old-timers mention the most important thing – what today’s players could learn from the example Lambert set away from the gridiron.

In past two years, the Steelers’ Super Bowl 43 MVP wide receiver was charged with marijuana possession, and that same receiver proudly took a nude photograph of himself that wound up on the internet.

Their prized NFL Defensive Player of the Year, James Harrison, was arrested for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend (charges were dropped, Harrison took anger management classes).

Their kicker was cited for beating up a paper towel dispenser, then vaguely threatening to square off with a cop in a separate incident, and that same kicker also took a nude photograph of himself that wound up on the internet.

And most recently, their star quarterback went on a primetime studio wrestling show with his entire offensive line and executed synchronized crotch-chop gestures.

Yikes. They’re not calling a crossing pattern.

Despite all this impropriety, the Steelers are still a collection of some of the most respectable and well mannered gentlemen in the NFL. The league is rife with self-promoting, Twittering, me-first superstars who crave the velvet rope and the limelight. Even the most wholesome of the bunch seem to make a beeline for the makeup chair of a network studio show soon after their playing days are over.

On the field, Lambert was as advertised. He cussed out teammates with tough-love, including Jack Ham and Mean Joe Greene. He stood up for his kicker, of all people, by catapulting the Cowboys’ Cliff Harris to the turf in the ’76 Super Bowl after Harris thanked Roy Gerela for missing a crucial field goal.

As opposing quarterbacks crouched under center, Lambert pumped his legs up and down, thumping the turf like a war drum. He mouthed threats to opposing running backs that would make even the most hardened Catholic nun weep for humanity. He fulfilled those threats with coldblooded suplex tackles. He may or may not have chain-smoked at halftime, depending on who you ask.

For sixty minutes each Sunday, Jack Lambert was a demon.

But when turf toe ended his career in 1984, Lambert retreated to the hills of suburban Pennsylvania without a peep or a snarl. The Legend of Jack Lambert, the myth, would have lived out his days bare-knuckle boxing black bears and scaring unsuspecting schoolchildren.

The real Jack is a cross between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ward Cleaver. For years he volunteered as a deputy wildlife officer in the tranquil woods close to his home and now spends his time coaching little league baseball, basketball and hockey for his children’s teams.

For a decade, Lambert ran a youth football camp kids that not only taught kids about the game, but about life. He stressed the dangers of drugs and the importance of hard work and respect for coaches and referees. He didn’t invite camera crews or journalists to document his good deeds.

NFL players, are you listening? ESPN doesn’t need you. TMZ and the tabloid sports blogs will survive without your compromising party photos. Kids, however, including your own, do need you.

As he approaches his sixties, Mad Man Jack doesn’t do interviews, and no – he isn’t bitter, as rumored. He’s just a retired dad who never could comprehend why grown men wore his jersey and asked for his autograph.

Lambert understood that he was not larger than life; bigger than the game. He understood that even giants can be felled by a bum toe. He didn’t understand why the fans couldn’t comprehend it; why they fell for the tall tales. The four-time Super Bowl champion understood the real measure of a man – hard work, loyalty and family.

After Lambert bodyslammed Harris in Super Bowl X, reporters asked Steelers coach Chuck Noll about the supposed cheapshot. Noll paused a moment, then looked at the reporters with conviction and said, “Jack Lambert is a defender of what is right.”

There was no one more Pittsburgh than Lambert, and today’s Steelers, emerging legends in their own right, could learn a lot from that f—–’ maniac.

**

Note: Special thanks goes out to legendary Irwin Standard-Observer reporter Vic Ketchman and Sports Illustrated’s Paul Zimmerman, whose pieces on Lambert served as a basis for this article. Have your own Lambert story? Share it in the comments section.

The kicker’s run-ins with Pittsburgh Finest is becoming what the fat cats at the Dollar Bank down the street call a “trend.” In February, Reed pled guilty to disorderly conduct and criminal mischief for beating up a paper towel dispenser that wasn’t cooperating with him in a Sheetz convenience store bathroom in New Alexandria.

It seems like Mr. Reed could use a wake-up call, but since no one uses alarm clocks anymore and Jeff probably dropped his cell phone down a north shore toilet on Sunday night, Pulling No Punches is here for an intervention.

Here are a few valuable “Tips for Life” for the Steelers’ precocious kicker:

1.  Get a girlfriend

Having a girlfriend is a lot like introducing a healthy dose of prunes into your diet. It’s often bland, emotionally taxing and exceedingly unexciting, but it really does keep you regular.

Plus, if you find the right Pittsburgh girl, she’ll go half-sies with you on the case of Pabst and always let you stay up late for Monday Night Football. Although if she’s from anywhere east of New Kensington, she’ll probably have incredibly well fed, ill-natured and innumerable brothers, so just beware, Jeff. They don’t take kindly to frosted tips, casual wristbands and man earrings ‘round them parts.

In fact, Reed would do well to ditch the south side stragglers and north shore strumpets that so often appear on his arm in photographs, similarly doe-eyed and slipshod, always grinning amorously into a digital camera flash with last cab enthusiasm.

Those girls are trouble, Jeff. Remember why the politicians said they picked the ‘Burgh for the G20 summit? Our fine academic institutions! Don’t waste that resource, Mr. Reed. Trek down to Oakland and nab yourself a Carnegie Mellon grad student.

Not only will you learn all you ever wanted to know about subatomic particles, but you’ll make Commissioner Goodell happy. Remember what he said about maintaining financial stability after your playing days are over?

Cha-ching. You’ll spend your retirement watching SpongeBob reruns and pretending to listen to how interesting her day was engineering the Hadron Collider.

That’s Had-ron Collider, Jeff. Stop being so juvenile.

Don’t worry, Jeff. Relationships are easier than you think. It’s like my girlfriend says, “I’m not doing this to punish you. I’m doing it for your own good.”

2.  Drink O’Doul’s

If you drink too much alcohol, you can lose a lot of things – your car keys, a few teeth, your aforementioned girlfriend, even your life. But if you drink O’Doul’s, the only thing you can lose is your dignity.

Sure, it’s not quite a win-win, but it’s not a lose-lose either. It’s more of a win-lose. And Mr. Reed, I’m pretty sure you’d take a 50 percent average, especially this season.

Funny story: sophomore year of high school, a friend of mine thought he was a modern day Fonzarelli, which meant that he did cool things, like talk back to his mom and go to glorified pizza parties. So one night, a group of us (spoiler alert: all males) were sitting around in a cold, carpetless basement talking about the ineptitudes of Kordell Stewart, among others things. As planned, someone emerged with a case of beer from “dad’s fridge.”

Fonzarelli feigned apathy, acting like he’d been to the end zone before. Over the next three hours, the booze flowed generously and we talked about the laundry list girls we wished we could finagle into thinking we were cool – stopping only for whiz breaks behind my buddy’s mom’s flower garden (beat that, Matt Spaeth).

My Wonder Years contained more sausage than an Emeril Lagasse cookbook.

After five or six beers, Fonzarelli was falling all over himself and purposely slurring his words, using his inebriation as an excuse for forgoing the backyard bushes and mistakenly urinating on a meticulously groomed fica plant in the corner of the basement.

“Dude, I’m hammered,” he said over his shoulder to his laughing friends.

Littered at his feet was a pile of discarded O’Doul’s bottles. For the pious readers, O’Doul’s is a substitute lager that tastes like a beer, only it’s legally not a beer. It contains one-half of one percent of alcohol.

After that infamous night, Forzarelli never regained his false bravado, but on the flip side, the incident humbled him for the better, and he never took a cell phone picture of himself beaming proudly in his birthday suit that wound up on the internet, ala Mr. Reed. So maybe Jeff should switch to the soft stuff. Otherwise…

3.  Find a better wingman

Everyone needs a solid wingman. Maverick had Goose. Seinfeld had Costanza. Mario had Jagr. Hollywood tells us that we need a wingman (or wing woman) to help us attract members of the opposite sex that routinely travel in packs.

Actually, that’s not so. Wingers are really there to tell us when we’re behaving like a ridiculous human being. Wingers are there by our side to keep us in check. Famous people especially need good wingers.

Everything that’s amiss about Mr. Reed – from the frosted, blow-dried, blown-out hair, to his penchant for public shirtlessness, to his Platinum tanning bed membership, could be corrected by a proper wingman – someone to look at him sternly and say, “…dude.”

“Dude. No.”

In all fairness, I think 90 percent of Reed’s shenanigans is supposed to be an ironic “Eff you, I’m famous enough to pull this off” shtick.

But as Reed has probably learned, or will soon learn, Pittsburghers don’t like irony. We’re probably the least ironic city in North America, as evident from our favorite sandwich – the Primanti Brothers’. If that sandwich was made in Arizona, it would be a tongue-in-cheek, ironic “play” on a cheesesteak. In Pittsburgh, it’s just delicious. Period.

No, we don’t like irony in Pittsburgh. But we don’t mind an Iron or six.

As our city moves on, with or without us, there’s still one place that hasn’t changed much since the Kennedy administration. It was built for the Civic Light Opera in 1961, partly by funds from Edgar J. Kaufman, owner of the Pittsburgh-born Kaufman’s department stores – which have, of course, like everything else in the city, been repainted, rebranded and ‘red up.

The new opera house was built on a hill with 2,950 tons of stainless steel made right here in the Steel City, back when we made such things, and although the arena’s silver, half-moon dome housed many rousing chorus’ over the next five decades, they weren’t often operatic. The genteel crowds at Pittsburgh’s Civic Audotorium preferred arias like “Let’s Go Pens” and “We Want the Cup.”

Despite having modest accomodations – like uncomfortable seats with the kind of unreasonable, tangerine, plastic upholstrey favored by Western Pennslvanian grandmothers – our humble opera house even entertained aristocrats, like Lord Stanley. Three times, actually.

Bow to your king, Capitals fans.

Of course, the Civic Arena never really was an opera house. In fact, it never really was the “Civic Arena” at all, nor was it the “Mellon Arena” after it too was rebranded. Ever since the 60s, when the Pittsburgh Hornets first skated out onto the ice in leather mittens and Christmas sweaters, the opera house on the hill was known as the Igloo, home of Hockey Night in Pittsburgh.

But that didn’t mean the Igloo didn’t have its fair share of music. Organist Vince Lascheid entertained Penguins fans for 33 years from a cranny high atop the area – way up near the roof. When a big bruiser like Ulf Samuelsson would be sent to the penalty box to mull his indigestions, Lascheid would play the theme from Dragnet. If the pun-loving instigator disagreed with the call, he would serenade the referees with “Three Blind Mice” to the delight of 17,000 puckheads.

Laschied, like Myron and Kaufman’s and the original cork factory and the real South Side, is gone. He left us in March at the age of 85. It sure seems like we’re saying a lot of goodbyes here in America’s most livable city. Seems like we’re replacing the skeletal monuments of every riverside machine factory with a Cheesecake Factory.

Even the Igloo is set to melt away after this season. It’s time. After all, the arena is the oldest in the league. But fans will certainly miss its shabby charm. When the Penguins move into their new $321 million home across the street, and the so-bad-they’re-good stadium nachos are replaced with teriyaki skewers and French microbrews, and the stale funk of the Igloo is replaced by the new car smell of the Console Energy Center, we will miss our old friend.

Sure, the paint on the walls is literally chipping, but if the Igloo’s walls could talk, they would have the smoky rasp of Mike Lange, and they’d tell us old stories – like the one about Bugsy Watson, a Penguins defenseman from the early ‘70s who once played a practical joke on former head coach Red Kelly by hijacking the team’s hotel shuttle bus – standing Kelly at the airport and taking the team on a joyride around Los Angeles.

Or maybe a few late-night stories about hard checking, harder drinking winger Kevin Stevens that aren’t fit to print. The Igloo has many stories to tell, and every Penguins fan has their own. I have mine.

It was February 1992, and the Penguins, defending Stanley Cup champions, were hosting the hated New York Rangers. It was snowing buckets and the black and gold pilgrims were trekking up Centre Avenue and Washington Place. If you were alive in 1992, I don’t have to tell you that three-quarters of the men had mullets – which were tumbling out of their snow caps and down the back of their Starter jackets and Jamomir Jagr jerseys.

Most male hockey fans in 1992 looked like they were guitar teachers, even if they held an office job. But that’s the thing outsiders don’t understand about hockey – especially Penguins hockey: it’s always been the furthest thing from a boy’s club.

The snow-dusted omnistone hill leading up to the gates of the Igloo was filled with street saxophonists improvising tunes through winter gloves and kids with air horns and grandmas with homemade signs that taunted the Rangers with “1940!” (the last year that the Rangers had won the Stanley Cup, at the time). Female “puck bunnies,” sporting improbably frizzy bangs brandished their own homemade signs – ones that beseeched the similarly coifed Mr. Jagr to marry them.

As the crowd marched up the hill, they chanted a chorus of “Go Home Ran-gers” through the falling snow.

Inside the arena, Penguins fans of all stripes – from truck drivers to CEOs to school teachers – spent the next two hours living and dying with every cross-crease pass, every hip check and scrum. There were no long TV timeouts or corporate sponsorships to muck up the proceedings. Just three periods for each and every fan to live vicariously through every check – imagining the bad guys in the blue and red to be their boss, or their 4^th grade math teacher, or the guy who cut them off on the Parkway West.

During the third period, a puck careened over the glass and slipped right through my grasp, causing a free-for-all for the bouncing souvenir in the row behind me. A mustachioed gentleman spilled a plastic cup of I.C. Light all over me in an effort to grab the stray puck. He eventually came out of the pileup with the puck, and held it up for the Jumbotron cameras.

A minute later, he tapped me on my drenched shoulder, and said, “Hey, buddy, I’m sorry about that. Let me make it up to you.”

I turned around expecting him to give me the puck. Instead, in his extended hand was a plastic cup with the frothy remains of his I.C. Light. I looked at my father, who shook his head, then looked back at the mustachioed gentleman, who was wearing a sweatshirt that said Sophie Masloff for President.

“Put some hair on your chest,” he said.

I was eight years old. And he was stone cold serious.

And if you don’t believe that story, then you clearly have never been to the Igloo before the Sidney Crosby revolution, when some of the real characters that used to inhabit the place were slowly priced out.

Even in Pittsburgh, things change. But the heart of this city will always remain.

Thanks to the new arena and owner Mario Lemieux’s loyalty, Hockey Nights in Pittsburgh will live on. When Penguins fans in Crosby jerseys or loosened ties emerge from the Liberty Tunnels and the city’s neon skyline explodes in their windshields, the silver dome of the Igloo may not peak out from the valley behind the skyscrapers. But right next door, there will still be organs and cotton candy vendors and overwhelming heartbreak and silver-haired grandmothers pounding the Plexiglas, imploring goons to drop the gloves and get it on.

While the Steelers define Pittsburgh’s culture, the Penguins and their fans are a separate subculture entirely – a unique slice of the city that will live on long after the Igloo is turned into a parking lot. Or a Cheesecake Factory.

Enjoy the last season in the Igloo, before Elvis leaves the building for good.

Back then, it seemed like the weather would never turn and the city’s collective cerveza buzz would never fade.

But on Monday morning, September 28, 2009, Pittsburghers were awakened by the sound of a chill wind tapping a naked, brown tree branch against their window. Welcome back to reality, Steelers fans. The heartburn. The pillow punching. The berating of the deaf television. A Super Bowl will make you forget what it’s really like to be an NFL fan.

While the previous weekend’s ill-fated trip to the windy city was written off as a fluke, Sunday’s shocking 23-20 loss in Cincinnati was a reality check for Steelers Nation, and especially for the punch-drunk media members who predicted a near perfect season.

Congrats, on winning your Super Bowl, Cincinnati! We’d come join you in celebration, but your city makes Cleveland look like Barbados. Plus, we kind of had this G-20 thing, so…

Just a few weeks removed from being untouchable juggernauts, the 1-2 Steelers are now bracing for a potential must-win game against the frisky and revenge-minded San Diego Chargers. If the Ravens take down the Patriots this Sunday afternoon, the Steelers will walk into Heinz Field for Sunday Night Football staring up at a three-game deficit in the AFC North.

With the Ravens’ Joe Flacco looking like the real deal Hollyfield, throwing for 839 yards and six touchdowns in his first three games, the Steelers can’t afford to give Baltimore that kind of cushion.

So much for boredom.

In the NFL, the line between success and failure is wafer thin. Take wide receiver Limas Sweed, for example. By all accounts, the second-year receiver worked his tail off this spring to make up for a disheartening rookie season, and was one of the Steelers’ most impressive players in the pre-season, fighting through contact to come down with balls over the middle – an area of the field where he had previously sprouted alligator arms.

On Sunday, the path of Sweed’s career changed in an instant. If he had held onto his game-changing dropped touchdown pass for just one more second, Steelers fans would be trumpeting his transformation from zero to hero from high atop Mt. Washington.

Instead, I saw Sweed’s number 14 jersey on a Fayette County goat this morning. Fitting, since Sweed may very well lose his starting job to old Shaun McDonald.

Coach Mike Tomlin now has to make a tough decision. With the swift and sure handed Mike Wallace proving that he can host play 60 minutes by racking up 7 receptions for 102 yards in only his third NFL game, the Steelers already have the big play threat that Sweed once promised. (Kudos to Wallace for using his blazing speed as a decoy to get cushion from defenders, grabbing easy first downs)

On the flip side, if Tomlin yanks the 6”4 Sweed from the lineup, the Steelers won’t have a starting wide receiver over six feet tall. The Steelers have a wealth of possession receivers, but no big target. That could prove to be a problem in goal line situations when space is at a premium and the only place to go is up.

With Sweed out of the equation, there won’t be a fade in sight.

It’s easy to blame Sweed for this loss, but it was only one play. Like last week in Chicago, the Steelers defense had plenty of opportunities to slam the door on a lackluster offense, but instead let a skittish quarterback loiter in the pocket like an amateur Anarchist in Lawrenceville.

The hogs on the Steelers’ offensive line held up their end of the bargain, letting up only one sack, but the defense could only manage two on Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer, who at this point in his career is as spry as an overfed English Mastiff.

Say what?

This whole debacle, like the Chicago game, was not lost because of coaching mistakes (Tomlin’s decision to go for it on 4^th and 4 in the first half), or miscommunications (Holmes turning left instead of right on Roethlisberger’s pick-six) or even missed field goals (Reed’s string of hook-shots that would make Doctor J blush). Nope. Both of these games were lost in the trenches.

Cedric Benson’s 23-yard scamper to bring the Bengals back into the game was resisted only by James Farrior’s pinky finger. Fill-in safety Tyrone Carter’s pursuit angle on the play will undoubtedly cause some spittle to fly in the film room, and compared to Sweed’s drop, is actually more concerning with Troy Polamalu out another few weeks. The Steelers have depth at receiver, but the cupboard is bare at safety.

While the media outlets will nearly burn out their LCD bulbs replaying Sweed’s Herculean blunder, the single image that should stick in the craniums of Steelers fans happened on the final drive of the game.

With game on the line, the Bengals faced a 4^th and 10 from the Pittsburgh 15. Despite all the gaffes that came before that play, the Steelers had a chance to win the game if they could dig deep for one more play and get pressure on Palmer. As the teams broke their respective huddles, CBS cut to a close-up of linebacker James Harrison.

You didn’t need a plasma screen or Jim Nantz to smarmily to tell you what would happen next. You could see it in Harrison’s exhausted eyes.

Winning one NFL game, let alone a Super Bowl, takes an unbelievable amount of sacrifice. As the Steelers search within themselves to rekindle the wild-eyed fire and perseverance that carried them to their sixth Super Bowl, perhaps the dreary autumn clouds looming over Pittsburgh will help fans truly appreciate just how good we had it in the sun.

When your teacher calls you up to the blackboard to correct a mistake in front of the whole class, it seems like you’ll never get another A+. When the phone stops ringing at work, it seems like you’ll never make another sale. When you strike out at a South Side bar, it seems like you’ll never get another number. Maybe that’s why we love football in this town. Redemption is always just six days around the corner.

And remember, seasons are long. With Roethlisberger playing the best football of his career and master motivator Tomlin greeting the Steelers at practice on Tuesday, the sun will shine again soon.

So keep your shades on, Pittsburgh

Pardon us, but after watching the Steelers lose 17-14 in Chicago, Pulling No Punches has its mind in the gutter…because the Steelers’ backfield looked a bit naked and exposed.

One loss and suddenly every talk radio caller is wondering where their beloved hard-nosed, bare-knuckle, Smash Mouth Football has gone. Most of the consternation is aimed in the direction of Willie Parker, who, in the first two games, has pranced and danced apprehensively behind his blockers like Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance.

Hit the hole, Willie.

But anxious Steelers fans need to see the forest from the trees. Let’s not look at what is there (Parker and his backfield buddies), but rather what’s missing.

In 2007, newly arrived coach Mike Tomlin brought a fresh perspective to the Steel City. Most of his changes helped to modernize an offensive philosophy that was stuck in the Cold War era, but bringing over the “single back” offense from his former employer, the Minnesota Vikings, Tomlin tossed out the staple ofPittsburgh Smash Mouth Football – the fullback.

Remember the fullback? Squat, stocky, built like a weeble wobble. From Rocky Bleier to Merrill Hoge to Dan Kreider, the Steelers had always employed an obstinate, ill-humored fullback, or “blocking back,” since the 1970s glory days. That all changed when Tomlin brought offensive coordinator Bruce Arians into the fold. Arians hates fullbacks like I hate parking in the South Side.

Duquesne University needs to start offering a class called Park Like a Human Being 101

In principle, the move was made to give quarterback Ben Roethlisberger an additional downfield receiving threat by swapping out a slow, fumble-fingered fullback for a more versatile tight end or wide receiver.

But you can’t smash mouths without a proper battering ram, and since the fullback was phased out in 2007, the Steelers’ ground game has lost its consistency – its oomph, especially in crucial short yardage situations.

This is what you look like when the Steelers have a 3^rd and short.

Proponents of the single back offense argue that the extra tight end on the line of scrimmage aids pass protection and guards Roethlisberger’s ever-vulnerable blind side. However, the statistics from last season show an insignificant increase in protection.

Roethlisberger was sacked only two more times out of single tight end sets (15) than double tight end sets (13). In fact, his completion percentage was better in 2008 out of single tight end formations compared to double tight end formations: 61% versus 56%. His yards per pass average was also slightly better with only one tight end.

More importantly, by playing without a blocking back to catch the leaks that seep through the offensive line, not to mention open up holes that aren’t thereinitially (like Kreider used to), the Steelers have been flaccid and predictable when they need just another yard or two to extend drives.

Forget a yellow pill, the best medicine for the Steelers’ impotence on third and short is to bring out the fullback in key situations.

Sunday’s loss to the Bears is a prime example. The game turned not on kicker Jeff Reed’s two field goal misses, but on failed third down conversions in crunch time. While the Steelers had to respect the Bears’ running game on third down, Chicago was able to sick the dogs on Roethlisberger without worrying about a quick handoff burning them up the middle.

Two third downs failures came back to haunt the Steelers.

The first missed opportunity came early in the second half on a 3^rd and short near midfield. With just a single yard to gain, Roethlisberger lined up in the Shotgun like he was playing touch football in Lawrenceville. Shockingly, he was sacked, which ended a nice drive and let the Bears hang around a little too long, like an annoying friend.

Hey dude, mind if I crash on your couch until I decide whether I want to play Frisbee or kick around a beach ball? Oh, and I ate some of your chips. Hope it’s cool.

Yet again, on the Steelers’ last possession of the game, Arians wasn’t confident that his running game could get him six feet – enough to salt away the game and get Reed some much needed cushion on a wet, muddy field. Pick up a few steps, and it’s game over.

But on 3^rd and 2 from the Chicago 25, Roethlisberger again dropped back to pass, failing to connect downfield with Santonio Holmes, leading to Reed’s missed 43-yarder and an all-inclusive trip to the Heartbreak Hotel.

In 2008, the Steelers made something out of nothing time and time again. They were Copperfield. But in 2009, they’re Criss Angel. The illusion of Three Yards and a Cloud of Dust, Pittsburgh Steeler Football with a capital F, is waning.

In order to win close games, the Steelers don’t necessarily need to grind out every third down between the tackles, but they need to make their opponents at least think they can. Right now, no defense in the NFL is buying a Steelers play-action fake on third and short. Pittsburgh’s blue collar football identity has gone the way of the fullback, and well, the blue collar itself. It’s becoming extinct. Even for an incredibly deep and talented team like the Steelers, that is a legitimate concern.

Mark it down: 230-pound rookie fullback Frank “The Tank” Summers will see more of the field in the coming weeks, and the Steelers will have more success on the ground.

Let me hear you, Pittsburgh: “Frank the Tank! Frank the Tank!”

Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin has a thing for catch phrases. Throughout the pre-season, Tomlin preached a minimalist philosophy.

“We don’t care about style points,” he kept telling the media.

Boy, I’ll say.

Aside from Stefan “Little Bit” Logan’s tantalizing opening kickoff return, the Steelers were far from stylish in their 13-10 Week 1 victory over the Tennessee Titans. Pittsburgh’s running game was $7 Wal-Mart jeans and their pass protection was 80s bangs.

The nationally televised kickoff bash will undoubtedly send both teams spiraling down the fabled “Power Rankings” on the hyper-reactionary mainstream sports web sites, not to mention downgrade their respective “contender” statuses the minds of America’s ADD-riddled football fans, but don’t be fooled. This was a tight, tactical, hard-nosed game featuring two elite AFC defenses.

This is the NFL, not Dancing with the Stars.

Style points be darned, the Steelers won the game and Titans running back LenDale White went trotting back to Tennessee without a Terrible Towel to trounce on. Mr. White, who tipped-toed for a whopping 28 yards on Thursday, did not keep his promise.

“If there is a towel in the stands, I will stomp on it,” White promised reporters before the game. “I don’t care who gets mad.”

Well, Mr. White, like they say in Congress…

 
“You lie!”

The Steelers snatched victory from the jaws of defeat because the defense was handing out Federal-sized bailouts all night long. The dominance of the defense, both last night and last season, was underlined in big, bold Sharpie marker by the ludicrous pass interference call on Troy Polamalu in the second quarter. In the last five years, the NFL has done everything in its power to favor wide receivers, as last night’s phantom call is evidence of. And yet in 2008, the Steelers defense allowed the fewest yards per play in the last three decades.

Unreal.

 The Steelers/Titans officiating crew was doing its best “distracted pro wrestling referee” impression last night.

Before I get tipsy off all this whine…on to the premier edition of The Steelers Hangover Awards!

Double Yoi! Play of the Week
The first-ever Double Yoi! Play of the Week goes to the Heinz Field PA crew, who boldly waited to unleash the legendary Styx “Renegade” montage until the twilight of the fourth quarter, when the Steelers defense desperately needed to come up with a stop. Casey Hampton reacted like he just found a treasure trove of Chicken McNuggets.

With just a few muffled percussions, Heinz Field was transformed from a public library into a raucous 12^th man. If the Director of Rock (I made that up) would have jumped the gun and pulled out Styx at the beginning of the fourth quarter, as per usual, the Steelers would be 0-1. Believe it.

The Fail Dog Display of Ineptitude of the Week
The Display of Ineptitude of the Week, inspired by FailDogs.com, goes out to the heavily inebriated gentleman in the Kevin Greene jersey who sat behind me in peanut heaven at Heinz Field last night.

With the Steelers driving deep into Titans territory, the man publicly lamented the Steelers’ running strategy.

“Here we go again,” he screamed. “(Offensive coordinator) Arians couldn’t score in the Red Zone if his (bleepin’) life depended on it.”

And so on.

It’s common knowledge among Steelers fans that the team cannot score touchdowns in the red zone, and naturally Arians is the culprit. Great logic. The only problem is that it’s entirely untrue. It’s Steelers Nation’s own little “Death Panels for Granny.”

Actually, the Steelers were seventh best in the league in red zone efficiency in 2008. So, sorry, Mr. Drunkasaurus Rex, but you are the recipient of the premier Fail Dog Display of Ineptitude of the Week award.

What Did We Learn This Week, Children?
We learned that an intangible little miracle called “chemistry” doesn’t make your offensive line any better in one off-season. We also learned that Santonio Holmes is ready to pick up right where he left off, literally, after he grabbed a quiet 131 yards and one touchdown against a very astute Titans secondary (Holmes had exactly the same statistics in last year’s Super Bowl. Spooky.)

Thanks to Hines Ward’s bizarre fumble, we even learned that if you give Ben Roethlisberger (33-for-43, 363 yards, 1TD) two do-or-die drives, he’ll lead his team down the field on both of them, no questions asked (thank you and drive home safely).  

Finally, in just a quarter and a half, we learned that Troy Polamalu is unequivocally the best open-field tackler in the NFL. Forget the one-handed interception. His back-to-back tackles on the Titans’ first drive were super human. His closing speed is more than insane. It’s Usain.

Unfortunately, we were quickly reminded that Polamalu does, in fact, put his pants on one leg at a time when he was knocked out of the game with a flukey knee injury. His sprained medial collateral will keep him out 3-6 weeks – emphasis on the six.

Consequently, we learned that the Madden curse is still as real as ever (which makes sense, because Willie Parker looked like he was running against the “All-Madden” defense on Xbox).

But as unbelievable as it may seem, the most important thing that we learned on Thursday night is that the Steelers defense is so stacked that it can manhandle last season’s best regular season team – even with the league’s most dynamic, full-bodied safety on the sidelines.

So relax, Pittsburgh. It might not always be pretty, but you are watching something truly beautiful.

Now on to Chicago.

Someone must have forgot to tell the boo birds at Heinz Field this past weekend to have a little parochial pride.

The fans weren’t booing the team, who routed The Sisters of the Poor, I mean Youngstown State 38-3 in the season opener. Large pockets of haters in the 48,000-strong crowd pointed their verbal barbs at one man – quarterback Bill Stull.

Nearly every time Stull sauntered out onto the field, he was accompanied by the standard Kordellian chorus of disapproval that all struggling Pittsburgh quarterbacks have come to know even in their dreams. But particularly sloshed fans also filled in the silences with one-liners that were aggressively vile and deeply personal. And they certainly can’t be replicated here.

What’s more concerning is that the boos came raining down in the midst of a solid game by Stull’s standards – 11-for-16 for 123 yards and two, count ‘em two touchdowns. That’s what the experts call game management.

Remember me? Not a game manager. Not even a game middle manager.

Come on, Pitt fans. This is your quarterback.

Stull is not some prep school transplant from California, he’s a local boy. Like Dan Marino, the Seton La-Salle grad was born in Pittsburgh and conquered the fields of the WPIAL before wearing the blue and gold. Unfortunately, Stull’s career has been marked by injuries and far from reminiscent of Dan the Man’s tenure in Oakland.

Stull’s meltdown in last year’s 3-0 Sun Bowl loss to Oregon State was preposterously epic. His 7-for-24, 52-yard, one interception performance was ripe for a YouTube montage, complete with a medley of cartoon sound effects – Zoinks! Whoop! Clonk!

After Stull stepped on that garden rake, Pitt fans tried to throw him under a PAT bus, but it was late, as usual. So instead they took to the message boards and talk radio airwaves to spew their hack-tooey tirades against the quarterback.

It’s easier to catch the H1N1 than to catch the 61A out of Oakland

Often, the voices on the other end of the line didn’t offer any gravitas – instead opting to fan the flames. Mark Madden branded Stull – who sports studded earrings and a highly questionable, non-ironic, non-playoff beard –  “the Mt. Lebanon gangster,” among other things, and insinuated that his teammates are tired of his prima donna attitude.

In a recent column, Madden suggested that Stull is fair game for the harsh criticism because he is “providing a service in exchange for a valuable commodity, a college education.”

Soft argument from the purported “super genius.”

Yes, Stull is enjoying a tuition-less education because of his athletic prowess, but nothing in this world is really free. College football is a full-time job. D-1 football players sacrifice an average of 40 hours or more per week for their sport.  While most college students nurse weekday hangovers with hazy Maury Povich marathons, Stull is putting in extra work.

After hours of practice, weight room reps, film study, flights, and (wait for it) media engagements, Stull still has to sit down in the classroom next to some of his harshest critics. Think the jeers fade after he leaves Heinz Field? He has to hear it in the halls, in the cafeteria, at parties.

“If you think the critics are tough on me, you should see how I am on myself,” Stull said. “You can’t say anything worse than I say to myself.”

Hear that, haters? Stull knows that he has underperformed. He doesn’t need fellow students, alumni and talk show hosts sniping at him after every game. Welcome to the new age of cathartic self-loathing. Instead of rooting for the local kid, you can almost hear the undercurrent of “Why wasn’t it me (or my kid)?” in every pot shot.

Boo birds have been around since they figured out how to lace up pigskin, but the mud being slung at Stull’s character and the verbal insults hurled toward his family members –who sit in the stands at every game – is a new kind of dirty.

It may be Your City. Your Panthers. But that ain’t your momma’, so please shut your mouth and enjoy the game.

As the upcoming G-20 Summit is evidence of, the innate ability of Pittsburghers to embrace change has helped the city escape the choke of mill soot and Iron City hangovers of yore for a blue sky future of service economy nerdery and Hofbrauhaus happy hours.

 
A South Side bartender wouldn’t be caught dead carrying a beer-amid in the 70s. Welcome to the New World Order.

Economically, new eras are great. In sports, they don’t always work out as planned.

Case in point: the Rashard Mendenhall era.

Like the Terry “Put In” Hanratty era of the 1970s, the Tim “Woops” Worley era of the early 90s, and the Kendrell “Don’t Call Me Boo” Bell era of the 2000s, the Rashard Mendenhall era was born of hype and hyperbole. Before he had even played an NFL pre-season game, many in Steelers Nation couldn’t wait to anoint Mendenhall as the next Adrian Peterson – an explosive, shifty runner destined to take the NFL by storm.

Judging solely from Mendenhall’s 214-yard performance against the vaunted USC defense in the 2008 Rose Bowl, there was certainly cause for delirium. Alas, after the Steelers drafted Mendenhall in the first round in 2008, Pittsburghers rummaged through their garages to find a shovel for the burial of Willie Parker, their decidedly over-the-hill two-time Pro Bowler.

Such is life in the ‘Burgh. One minute you’re Donny Iris, the next you’re Donny Osmond.

 
“I resent that.”

Now, just one year after the Mendenhall era was postponed in its infancy by a bone-crunching Ray Lewis hit that placed the rookie running back on injured reserve, Steelers fans are already wondering aloud if the former Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year is a bust.

To be fair, it’s not Mendenhall’s fault that Lewis separated his shoulder. Injuries happen. But the way he has shuddered at impending contact and gone down to the turf at first resistance during the pre-season is cause for concern. Behind the Steelers’ beleaguered offensive line, you need to be able to fight through contact, because if last season is any indication, running lanes will be tighter than distressed jeans on a Bloomfield hipster.

 
And boy, that’s tight.

So if Mendenhall isn’t ready to emerge as a reliable option in 2009, who will shoulder the other half of Willie Parker’s workload?

Here’s an idea: How about Willie Parker?

And just as you nearly spill Rolling Rock all over your keyboard trying to e-mail Pulling No Punches with the salient point that “Parker broke down in the middle of last season,” it is here that PNP says to you: Precisely.

Coach Mike Tomlin’s 2007 promise that the team would “ride Willie until the wheels fall off” turned out to be a prophecy. In back-to-back years, 2006 and 2007, Parker was given over 300 carries, the consensus “tipping point” for the durability of NFL running backs. Predictably, the undersized 5”10, 210 pound party-bus broke down last season and was sidelined for five regular season games.

But while Parker did flounder after returning from his knee injury in the second half of the season, his 146-yard, two touchdown jaunt through the San Diego Chargers defense in the AFC Divisional Playoffs is proof-positive that his race is far from run.

Ready to throw the dirt on Willie? Not so fast. They thought pro wrestling’s infamous Undertaker was buried alive, too. Parker will be back with purple gloves on in 2009.

If there is one quality Parker has shown in spades, it’s resiliency. This is a man who was effectively benched for the final three years of his college career at the University of North Carolina, who clawed his way onto an NFL team as an undrafted free agent, and who – in the span of one year - went from fourth-string tackling dummy at the Steelers’ South Side practice facility to scampering for the longest rushing touchdown in Super Bowl history.

Last year’s disappointing season may have been a blessing in disguise for Fast Willie, because his injury reduced his workload to a light 210 carries. Fully healthy, Parker is a very effective running back.

Not convinced? Very well then, let’s get studious and look at some statistics.

 
The proof is in the pudding pops.

Over the past four seasons, Willie Parker has rushed for 4,808 yards, averaging 4.3 yards per carry. On the ground, he has outperformed puffed up, Nike-sponsored peers like Clinton Portis and Steven Jackson. Jackson, two years Parker’s junior, has rushed for 200 less yards on roughly the same amount of carries. And 90 of his yards came from the greatest commercial in the history of the Western world.

Portis, considered a top 10 back, has gained 4,788 yards over the same span, but saw more carries than Parker. He averaged 4.2 yards per carry.

While Portis and Jackson pose bigger threats catching passes out of the backfield, it’s an erroneous point because the Steelers have always utilized a specialty third down running back this decade – from the sneakily productive Verron Haynes to the mercurial Mewelde Moore.

“Waltzing” Mewelde has passing situations covered. What the Steelers need is a capable runner for frigid late December games in the muck and the mire of Heinz Field when they will be forced to rely on ground-and-pound football. If Steelers fans are going into 2009 with doubts that Parker is the man for the job, the glint of his two Super Bowl rings should shine some light on the conundrum.

 
Shield your eyes, Baltimore.

If you’re still restless, just ask yourself, “How would I feel if Clinton Portis was the Steelers running back?” As a pure runner, Parker is actually more efficient.

Of course, all of this casually ignores the elephant in the room – the dreaded Red Zone. Over the past decade, the Steelers have vacillated from quirky to infuriating when they are knocking on their opponents’ doorstep. The last 10 yards always seem the hardest. Last season, offensive coordinator Bruce Arians seemed to have found an answer to the Red Zone dilemma by abandoning the traditional Pittsburgh dogma of “pack the hogs in tight and pound the ball in” for more spread out, unpredictable philosophy.

The Red Zone is where the versatile Mendenhall can make an immediate impact in 2009. In fact, he has the opportunity to become a touchdown thief on par with Jerome Bettis. But first, he needs to learn a lesson or two from his predecessor about resiliency and toughness.

The emerging crop of Mendenhall doubters like to point out that the former Fighting Illini star only had one great season in college, where he ran for over 1,000 yards. That’s true, and maybe in the end he will go the way of “Woops” Worley and countless other busts, but if I was Willie Parker, I would sit down next to the 22-year-old, put my arm around him and say…

“Know how many 1,000 yard seasons I had in college? Zero. Now start running like you’ve got bills to pay.”

Do you think Willie Parker is past his prime? How do you think Rashard Mendenhall looks in pre-season? We want to hear from Steelers Nation in the Comments section.