Suisham Kicks Steelers to OT Win Over Bills

Anybody out there still questioning the Steelers decision to fire Jeff Reed?

Yeah. Didn't think so.

See Ya Skippy And Thanks for All the Classy Memories

The Steelers signed Shaun Suisham and cut kicker Jeff Reed today (expect him to turn up on Cincinnati's roster any second), but I thought I'd post an homage to our recently departed Skippy in pictures. Enjoy.





Why, here he is demonstrating just how he 'holds it' when he has to pee during a game, but can't sneak around to the outside of a nearby bar to relieve himself.



And here he is doing some community service by posing for a retirement home's watercolor class. Always giving back to the people, our Skippy.



"Don't make this symbol, dude. Somebody will put a cap in your ass!"



"It's complicated. First, you mix up the bleach and then you take the foil ..."



"If this kicking gig doesn't work, I'm thinking of becoming a hairdresser."

Accompanying text message: "I'd like to do the bathroom in a bolder color, so please think it over and text me with your ideas. Yours, Jeff."

To Boot Skippy Or Not to Boot Him?

Jeff Reed is endearing himself to everybody these days. After he turned in another terrible game against the Patriots, he called out the fans. Per the Post-Gazette:

'Reed's short miss came late in the third quarter with the Steelers behind 17-3. When he next kicked, an extra point following a touchdown early in the fourth quarter, fans in Heinz Field let out a loud, seemingly mock cheer.

Did he notice that reaction from the fans?

"I don't really know what you're talking about, but it doesn't surprise me. If you're not perfect in this city, man, then you're going to hear about it. It's been like that for nine years, and why would they stop now?

"Like I said there's 95 percent of those fans that got my back totally and then 5 percent you always hear. They're right by the kicking net, they were bashing me, but that's life, man, you got to move on. The worst thing for me to do would be to fight back at them.

"They started before the game even started. You know, like I said, they buy tickets just to bash me and Dan [Sepulveda] and Greg [Warren]. It's more me because points come off my foot."'

Really, Jeff? You think the fans were booing the holder and the snapper? He is living in a world of delusion if he thinks: (a) only 5% of the fans are sick of his shit and (2) that anybody in their right mind was booing Sepulveda (or Warren, for that matter.)

Now, he's endearing himself to the grounds crew at Heinz Field, to say nothing of the Steelers front office. Per ESPN:

'After the loss, Reed called into question the quality of the turf at Heinz Field.

"I'm not one to make excuses," Reed was quoted as saying in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "I'll take the credit for the miss. It was a great snap, a great hold, great protection. It's kind of hard when you plant your foot and the hole -- a piece of ground moves where the ball's under the holder. I almost missed the ball completely.

"I'm not going to make excuses. If you've played any kind of sports in your life, you realize that what we play on is not very good turf. It happens."'

When our little thunder thighs first came to Pittsburgh, one of his greatest strengths was that he was oblivious to just about everything around him - crowd noise, pressure, rain, field conditions, wind, opponent -- didn't matter. He just went out and kicked.

He won big, big games for the Steelers. Like this one in 2007 versus the Dolphins (at right). I don't know that I've ever seen worse conditions, particularly not worse for a kicker. And yet in a tremendously important game, he hit one of the most unlikely field goals in team history.

He could kick at Heinz Field! Nobody can kick there. He was unfazed by pressure, unbothered by opposing coaches trying to ice him, didn't care about the time on the clock or the game on the line. He went from baling hay to kicking for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Dude was a veritable folk hero around here.

Shortly after Super Bowl XL, I was at the Pitt-WVU basketball game at the Pete and a bunch of Steelers were there. Swear to God, Reed's hair was standing straight up(a good two inches) and he was wearing a thick headband. Also, he had on dark knee socks, into which his jeans were tucked. I think he was wearing shower sandals on his feet. Only our Skippy, right?**

Despite his obvious shortcomings - his hair, the photos of his junk, his clothing** -- we loved him for it. We did. The fans loved them some Skippy.

But it's all gone to hell now. Sadly. There was a time when I thought Jeff Reed was one of the three best kickers in the league (along with David Akers and Adam Vinatieri.) And, like any really great kicker, his greatest strength was his nerves. Nothing seemed to get to him.

He was money. Then, somehow, we didn't notice the shift, because it was subtle, but he was mostly money with a few misses. Still, nobody complained. You can't expect him to hit everything, particularly not at Heinz Field and the little hayseed with bad hair still enjoyed beloved kicker status. Then he turned into an erratic kicker, but one still capable of hitting some big kicks at least some of the time.

Now, he's just a kicker who is reliably unreliable. When the Steelers need a big kick, he shanks it like a golfer with the yips.

Reed is like a rotten potato in the vegetable crisper drawer. He makes the whole refrigerator stink.

This is the guy who wants to be the league's highest paid kicker? Get out of my face.

ESPN's Adam Schefter reports that the Steelers are auditioning kickers today at Heinz Field. I know it's a risk to switch kickers mid-season. I know it could blow up in the Steelers faces.

But it could also turn out as well as it did when Coach Cowher brought in an unknown named Jeff Reed. It's time, people. It's time.

That Was Unpleasant, Saints 20 - Steelers 10

In the words of the great, the one of a kind, the one and only Bugs Bunny, "Ain't I a stinker?"

Yup. It was that kind of night. A stinker.

You just knew Drew Brees was not going to play another error filled game after being humiliated by the Browns last week. You just knew Gregg Williams wanted out LeBeau Dick LeBeau's defense. And yet, that was very unpleasant, wasn't it? The Saints played great. I expect that was exactly the game they wanted to play. Even so, there's plenty of blame to go around on the other black and gold squad.

Through a turgid first half and third quarter, Bruce Arians was completely befuddled by the Saints defense; despite the fact that they were sending all out blitzes on just about every play, he didn't adjust his calls until the 4th quarter. There's slow, there's obtuse, and then there's Bruce Arians.

The offense's inability to get in with a 1st and goal at the 1 yard line. Kudos to the Saints defense for a great stand there, but when you leave four points on the field like that, nine times out of ten, it's going to come back to bite you in the ass. [Of course, the Steelers D basically got those 4 points back when they put on their own amazing goal line stand denying the Saints with a 1st and goal at the 1 yard line, too.]

Pig Ben looked like ass through much of the first half; his throws were into the turf and/or way off target. He seemed to shake that off as the game went on, but he and Hines Ward have been playing together long enough that you'd think they'd have some hot reads down pat when defenses bring that kind of pressure; they didn't and that was perhaps the most discouraging element of last night's loss.

Coach Tomlin made a couple of strange decisions, the strangest of which was sending that moronic hayseed of a kicker in to attempt a 51 yard field goal late in the 2nd quarter. I knew Skippy was going to pull that kick, you knew Skippy was going to pull that kick, all 70,011 costume wearing, besotted spectators at the Superdome knew Skippy was going to pull that kick, so why didn't Tomlin? [Now seems like an appropriate time to mention that I have gone off the reservation in my loathing of Jeff Reed. His inability to hit anything but the chippiest of chip shots, combined with his short kick offs and palpable apathy on coverage units -- I can't even look at the guy anymore. Can they please start auditioning kickers today? Please?!] The end result was that the Saints got the ball at their own 41 and moved easily to get a field goal to close out the first half.

Emmanuel Sanders essentially broke up a perfect pass to Hines Ward which would have given the Steelers a huge 1st down. And it came on what seemed like one of the few perfect hot reads the Steelers made all night. Ouch. C'mon Rook. Get your head in the game.

There's lots of blame to go around, but even with all of the above and more that I haven't mentioned (like Brees playing Polamalu like a fiddle on one occasion), the game really comes down to the Heath Miller fumble.Everything was going the Steelers way. Rashard (no longer Suspect) Mendenhall, had ripped off a huge touchdown run to close the gap to 3 points. B-Mac caused a fumble on a corner blitz and the Steelers were driving for the go-ahead score. Then Miller coughed it up and the game was over because the Saints did what good teams do -- turned a great break into a touchdown. That was some kind of catch by Lance Moore. That he went up for it and held onto it with Troy and B-Mac crunching him (legally, mind you, in the torso area), was a spectacular play. You make plays like that, you deserve to win, as far as I'm concerned.

I think what's frustrating is that we know the Steelers are capable of playing better than that. Still, all hail the Saints, who played the game they needed to play, when they needed it most.

Trying to Quantify the Jeff Reed Issue

There have been no kickoffs returned for touchdowns through the first four games of 2010, no return to the return game horrors of 2009 or chances for Jeff Reed to indifferently flail as a runner goes whizzing by him, of which I think can safely saw we all saw enough last season. Still, with all the talk of Reed’s culpability for the Steelers loss on Sunday, I thought I should take a look at his numbers through the years. I started off with the assumption that last year and the first four games of this year were probably the worst stretch we’ve seen from him since he was hired in 2002, but I wanted to see how the stats actually graded out.

Kickers are hard to break down. Not the field goals, so much, but even there, what is a gimme in a dome or a warm dry stadium like, San Diego, is not necessarily easy at Heinz Field or Soldier Field. And of course, it varies from end to end at Heinz Field and what’s makeable in September is less so in December.

Then, there are the kick off returns, which are complicated because there are or can be mitigating coverage issues. Not every kick off returned for a touchdown is the kicker's fault. Although, off the top of my head, I can think of two times when I’d say that returned kicks were Skippy’s fault last year. Giving up four kick off returned for touchdowns was twice as many as any other NFL team. Putrid.

ESPN and NFL.com keep stats on return yards, but not on the kickoffs themselves, so trying to figure out where his k.o.’s were coming down - in the endzone or at the 15 - means culling through the game books for eight seasons. Yeah ... I'm thinking about that. If any elves out there want to join in the effort, I’ll give you a box of swedish fish.

So, what follows is a quick look at the average yards per kick return and any touchdowns allowed. Then taking a look at field goals. I'm grading on your grade school A+ to F- model. (I was going to use my own scale of marvelous to appalling, but that got adjectively cumbersome.)

I’m going to give him a grade for kickoff returns and one for field goals. I think an argument could be made that his primary role is to kick figgies, that if the Tomlin had a gun to his head and had to choose: either the guy can boom the ball on kickoffs OR he can be a reliable field goal kicker, he'd chose the latter. So, I’m going to weigh the field goal grade twice as much as the kickoff grade (2/3-1/3). I know what you’re saying, I didn’t know there’d be math, but stick with it.

2010:
Through four games, the Steelers rank in the cluster of 25 teams who have not yet allowed a TD on a kick return and they have allowed an average of 21.9 yards per kick return, good for 10th in the NFL. Those are both really good numbers. We should all be pleased.
Kickoff grade: B+
Reed has made only two-thirds of his field goals. Only two other kickers in the league have worse percentages. That stinks, but he is 7 for 7 at distances of up to 40 yards, but he's 0-fer between 40 and 49 yards. Now, Heinz Field is a hard place to kick and one of his four misses was a 55 yard attempt (what was Tomlin thinking?), but still, this is a failing grade. Not quite an F, but
Field Goal grade: D
Average grade for 2010: C-

2009:
I don’t even have to look at the stats to tell you what grade the kickoff game is getting, but for purposes of clarity, they ranked 27th in average yards per return and gave up four touchdowns, worst in the league by a long shot.
Kickoff game: F-
Skippy made 87% of his figgies last year, good for 9th in the league, plus he hit 4 of 5 between 40-49 yards. Those are good marks, not perfect, but very good.
Field Goal grade: A-
Average Grade for 2009: C+

2008:
Ah, the salad days: zero kicks returned for touchdowns and an average of just 19.1 yards per return, good for first in the league.
Kickoff grade: A+
Skippy was 14th in field goal percentage at 87.1% (same as 2009) and was 9 of 12 over 40 yards, one of those being longer than 50.
Field Goal grade: B+
Average Grade for 2008: A

2007:
The kick return game allowed one touchdown and ranked 16th in average yards per return.
Kickoff grade: C
Skippy had the best field goal percentage in the league. Nuff said as far as I’m concerned.
Field Goal grade: A+
Average Grade for 2007: B+

2006:
Kickoff return yards averaged 22.4, 18th in the league; they yielded one touchdown, but only two teams in the league gave up more. This is a pretty fair to middling grade, but on the lower end of fair to middling.
Kickoff grade: D+
Skippy also had a terrible year hitting figgies, good just 74.1% of the time, or 26th in the league. Ouch. And he had misses inside the 30 and inside the 40. Double ouch.
Field Goal grade: F
Average Grade for 2006: D

2005:
Zero touchdowns and they ranked 18th in average yards returned. That’s pretty good.
Kickoff grade: B+
Reed hit 82.8% of his field goals and was perfect inside of 40 yards. That’s a good year. Not a great year, but a good year.
Field Goal grade: B+
Average Grade for 2005: B+

2004:
15th in the league in average return yards, with one touchdown.
Kickoff grade: B
Reed hit nearly 85% of his FGs (10th overall), but gets some demerits. He missed one inside 30 and one inside 40.
Field Goal grade: C+
Average Grade for 2004: B-

2003:
They were in the top 10 for average return yards, but they gave up one touchdown.
Kickoff grade: B+
This was a bad year for Reed, who hit just 71.9% of his figgies. Moreover, he missed three inside the 30.
Field Goal grade: F
Average grade for 2003: D

So there you have it. Skippy’s best and worst years. Clearly, he had a monster year in 2008, coincidentally when the Steelers won the Super Bowl and in 2005, also coincidentally when the Steelers won the Super Bowl. I don’t know if there’s a cause and effect thing going on or if his performance just mirrors the rest of the team, i.e., the whole team was appalling in 2003 and so was Reed; the whole team was great in 2008 and so was Reed.

Also, try to grade him out yourself. My method, as you can see is highly scientific ...

But consider this, every time he graded out lower than a B-, he had a bounce back year the next year. Terrible season in 2003, followed by good one in 2004. Awful performance in 2006 and a really solid year in 2007. What is troubling me now is that last year he graded out with a C+ and this year he’s sitting on a C-, the only time he’s turned in C or lower grades in back to back years.

Is it the beginning of the end of Reed's productivity? Is he less than fully committed because he’s miffed about his contract? The franchise tag? His deep-seated, pathological hatred of paper towel dispensers? Who knows what goes on in the mind of Jeff Reed?

Ravens 17, Steelers 14, Post-Mortem

Five photos that sum up the loss yesterday.

The Ravens O Line played great and despite the defense's efforts to get to Flacco, they always seemed to be a split second late. Flacco himself got rid of the ball quickly and efficiently. He has come under some heat in Baltimore, but yesterday should shut up those critics. At least for a while. On the last drive of the game, he was perfect and his touchdown pass to TJ Whoseyourmama is the kind that great quarterbacks build careers on.

Bruce Arians' insistence on calling slow developing, deep pass plays when a dink and dunk approach might have worked better, kept the Steelers defense off the field and, you know, picked up first downs.

11 penalties for 88 yards. Ed Hochuli and his crew had awfully quick trigger fingers with the yellow hankies, and I personally believe that Hochuli loves getting face time and showing off his amazing pythons on national tee vee. That said, 11 penalties are going to kill you. Every time.

These penalties deserve their own category. After an amazing defensive stop by the Steelers, just an awesome goal-line stand, Matt "a Draft Pick is a Terrible Thing to Waste" Spaeth and Chris Kemoeatu each jumped on the following series. Who knows? The Steelers may not have been able to pick up a victory ensuring first down there, but those penalties made sure they didn't. And why the hell was Spaeth even out there blocking? He's a terrible blocker. Well, he's pretty much terrible at everything, come to think of it. Off-sides? On home turf? In the waning moments of the game? Be serious.

Of course, dipshit pulled one kick right and then the second one left.


The guy has one job to do. Just one. Were this a new phenomena -- Skippy missing make-able kicks in tight games -- I might just chalk it up to a bad day. Everybody has bad days. I can live with that. But Reed started to deteriorate last year in Chicago and in Cincinnati. This year, he's back to that 2009 form, missing an easy game winner against the Falcons and then yesterday's execrable performance.
Does anybody remember how Reed got the job? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

Todd Peterson blew some very make-able kicks and Bill Cowher finally got fed up, brought in a bunch of kickers on rainy day and tried them all out. By the end of that week, Peterson was out of a job and Steelers fans had a new kicker. Food for thought, coach Tomlin, food for thought.

Jeff Reed Chokes and Blows a Winnable Game for the Steelers

Perhaps, like me, you're the kind of person who turns Steelers losses over and over in your head, unable to shake the malaise that sets in after after the pain of losing, particularly in such dramatic fashion as was seen Sunday at Heinz Field. Perhaps, you too will lay in bed late this Sunday night, flashing on every missed opportunity, every miscue, every momentum shifting mistake leading to the disappointing loss.

Tonight, I will find no refuge in sleep.

Intrusive will be the thoughts of Charlie not seeing a wide open Hines Ward over the middle and instead going incomplete to Heath Miller.

I may never find the answer to the question of what on earth could have been going through Bruce Arians' mind with 0:45 left in the 3rd quarter when he called a deep pass to Mike Wallace on 3rd and 4 from the Baltimore 27. Why not run the ball there? Or at least throw a short pass to Hines over the middle and try to just pick up the 1st down instead of going for the deep ball? The guy calls his offense like a 13 year old boy playing Madden 2010.

Certainly, 11 penalties for 88 yards will ruin a good night's sleep and even the best teams aren't going to win many with that much laundry on the field.

Ike Taylor actually caught and interception and William Gay has grown up before our eyes. He played another great game. Both wasted. As were all the times that Charlie pulled the Ravens off-sides on a hard count. Well done, Chaz, but that wily veteran effort was wasted, too.

But nothing more than this one single thought will keep me up through the night.Thanks a lot, Skippy. I can almost forgive the first miss, but the second one? That sound you heard was your contract demands going up in flames. Your contract with the actual business operation that is the Pittsburgh Steelers may not expire until the end of the season, but consider your relationship with SteelersNation terminated as of now. You might want to spend less time f*cken' with your hair, f*cken' with your beard and taking pictures of your junk and more time practicing kicking.

Now get out of my face, ya drunk hayseed.

At least UConn Fan brought cupcakes from Vanilla and my roasted tomato salsa was slammin.

Five Things the Steelers Can Do to Survive Week 1 of the 2010 Season

Pig Ben, out for four games. Byron Leftwich, out with a knee sprain. Willie Colon, out for the year. Chris Kemoeatu sprained his ankle this week in practice (but will go on Sunday, according to reports from the Steelers.) And the Steelers open the season, at home, as 2.5 point 'dogs.

Here are five things they can do to hang in there to open the season:

1. Heath Miller. Short crossing routes might be the easiest things for Dennis Dixon to hit. Plus, Miller is one of the most reliable targets they have. The Steelers and Steelers fans recognize Miller's greatness, but I'm not sure the rest of the league does. Put the ball in his hands at least minimum five times on Sunday.

2. Double D using his legs. If I'm Bruce Arians, I'm telling Dixon to take off if he doesn't see anything he likes downfield. And take off right away. The way I figure it, if the Falcons are smart, they'll stack the box to try to take away the running game. If they do that, and if Dixon breaks contain, there's not much between him and a big gain except a couple of DB's who will likely have their backs turned away from Dixon in coverage. Dixon can fly like a gazelle, so I say use it. I know, I know, a QB can't run like that and survive the NFL, but I think he can survive four games.

3. Run behind Hotel Flozell. Hotel's footwork on passing plays is awkward, painful to watch really. And he makes up for his clumsiness with his slowness. But the guy can still knock people out run blocking. If the Steelers have any chance of establishing a running game (and that's questionable), I think it's by running right behind the Hotel (using both Issac Redman and Suspect Mendenhall) all day long.

4. Cover some kick offs, people. The Steelers have lost games to bad teams and I mean terrible, bad stinky, putrid, unfocused teams because of kick coverage failures. And I know that the kickoffs themselves are woefully short, but without Pig Ben, the Steelers offense cannot dig itself out of a hole created by the historically appalling special teams coverage units. I don't care how they do it, but they absolutely have to provide tight coverage and not give up a score or set the defense up to defend a short field. I probably should have made this bullet point 1.

5. Put the game on Matt Ryan. I know, he's good. I like the kid. I liked him when he was at BC. He doesn't throw many bad picks. He's smart and he's got a good arm. In short, the Falcons have the right quarterback in the right system.

But, but, still ... Michael Turner scares me more. He had a subpar year last year due to injuries, but the guy is nearly unstoppable when healthy. He has never averaged less than 4.5 yards per carry in his career and he's always good for a handful of really long touchdown runs per season. The first thing the Steelers defense has to do is take Turner away. Then they still have their hands full, but I like their chances if they can keep Turner under 90 yards on the day and keep him from breaking off anything big.

It's football season and it is good.

Special Teams Prayer Answered. Finally.

Some people worry about the deficit and some disingenuously worry about the deficit (and you know who you are); some people worry about H1N1, ebola or various other possible pandemics; some worry about helicopter parents and others are helicopter parents; some people fret about gas mileage and heating and cooling bills and, with training camp in full swing, a large percentage of Steelers Nation is concerned about the quarterback situation. Understandably so. I have even heard of a new breed of young mothers who fret about something called 'tummy time.' Whatever the hell that is.

Me? I don't worry about 'tummy time,' I worry about hang time, particularly speaking, the hangtime on kick offs. I worry about special teams. Only a special, pathetic sort of person spends the lion's share of football season wondering just when the special teams are going to screw the pooch, certain, deep in my heart of hearts, that they will. I torture myself with wild imaginings of all the various permutations and possibilities for special teams putridity. Fumbled punt returns, blown coverage, Jeff Reed standing statuesque as a returner blows by him, emboldened by the low angle and shortness of Reed's kick.

Yearly, I intoned, Why can't he kick off? Why can't they find somebody else to kick off for him!?

Then, this, courtesy of Steelers.com:

Sepulveda got a chance to kick off, and he showed himself to be quite accomplished at it. On four kickoffs, Sepulveda’s hang-times were 4.07, 3.93, 3.87 and 3.70. The 4.07 kick also carried 2 yards deep in the end zone, and earlier in the evening, one of his mis-hits went 8 yards deep in the end zone.

In recent years, Reed's kick offs have been both short in time and short in length, a problem that I hope for his sake doesn't apply to the bedroom as well as the kick off tee. Not to belittle what he does. It's hard. (Somebody stop me.) At any rate, it takes a certain physical ability and also, a certain mental equanimity, to kick field goals in pressure packed situation on the sandbox they call Heinz Field. If it were easy, everybody would do it.

And yet, at the end of the day, the guy has two jobs. Just two. Kick field goals (at which he is tremendously adept) and kick off (at which he sucks.)

Consider the multitude of responsibilities other players have.

James Farrior calls complicated defenses, reads offenses, adjusts on the fly, and then, after all that, he has to fight through blockers, clog lanes and make tackles. Sometimes, he has to cover tight ends in pass patterns.

The quarterback, be it Ben, Double D or Leftwich, has similar responsibilities, only even more complicated. He's responsible, too, for getting the snap off in time, getting hand offs to the backs cleanly, dropping back with precise footwork, throwing timing patterns with perfect timing, shedding defensive linemen or blitzing linebackers.

Reed has to do two things and as good as he is at one of those things, he's equally as bad at the other one.

It started, almost innocently enough, back in 2001 before the arrival of the little hayseed with thunder thighs from North Carolina. (It isn't entirely Reed's fault.)

It was January, 2002. The Steelers were hosting the upstart Patriots in the AFC Championship game. (I cringed just typing that.) Thanks to a Troy Edwards penalty, the punt coverage unit gave up a touchdown return in the 1st quarter and the field goal unit allowed a blocked kick to be returned for a touchdown in the 3rd quarter and Evil Hoodie and the Patriots went on their reign of insolent terror.

It was a fluke, right. Just one of those wacky days when the ball bounces the wrong way. Friends claimed that the Steelers were still the better team and deserved to win. I thought it was an object lesson in the importance of special teams. I also thought that the Steelers would, themselves, see this as an object lesson in the importance of special teams.

Wrong.

Instead, they tortured us with shoddy, spotty special teams play. And it's been more of the same ever since. The 96 yard touchdown return against the Raiders in 2002 and the roughing the kicker call in Tennessee that ended that season. Dante Hall's 100 yard kickoff return in 2003. Last year's 97 yard touchdown in Kansas City. (What is it about the Steelers and the Chiefs? Are the Steelers spellbound, somehow dazzled by the bright red helmets, rendered unable to tackle KC kick off returners? I don't get it.)

Over the years we've cheered some wonderful wins and endured some painful losses. But every time the Steelers have a disappointing season, you can point to at least one game that the special teams blew.

Last year, the defense collapsed and we have no idea how that aged unit is going to perform this year. There are large, fat, slow, completely unknown and obtrusive question marks along the O Line, at quarterback, at running back, even at wide receiver. With so much promise, but so much that is tenuous, the very last thing the Steelers can afford to do is give up a game losing kickoff return for a touchdown. Or a momentum changing huge return that sets up a touchdown. They need help, luck and a little bit of magic. They need to be bold where they can be. This is the area. This is the time. Sepulveda is the guy.

One last thought, Mike Tomlin is taking all the Steelers to Canton to be there for Coach LeBeau's long-overdue induction into the Hall of Fame. It warmed my wee little Grinchy heart.