Well, it’s the beginning of football season again, but I’ve decided to give the NFL and the Steelers a one-year suspension due to the NFL’s intellectually insulting “investigation” of the Patriots’ games and Rooney’s almost equally insulting insistence that he knows with absolute certitude that the Patriots’ cheating had no role in the outcome of the AFC Championship Games we lost to them. That’ll show them, huh? Like I’ve written before, if that is the case then why do you even bother to send in defensive hand signals or, this year, even bother to put a speaker in your defensive player’s helmet? Just spell it out in plain English in large font on large cue cards what defense you are going to run if you are so damn sure that it doesn’t matter Dan. I hope I can keep myself to the one-year suspension, but that ain’t gonna be easy because I’ve watched every game for many years. The nationally televised game next week against Cleveland will be a huge test of my resolve on this matter. I got an emotional attachment to the Steelers and football in general and I still get goose bumps like a little kid when I see the black-and-gold run out into the field. It’s been bred into me because I’ve been following them closely since ’72 and I can still remember huddling around the radio and trying to envision how the Immaculate Reception came down and I remember the following week watching the Steelers-Dolphin game in a hotel room in Erie with friends and relatives. I remember Bradshaw fumbling the ball into the end zone and Gerry Mullins recovering it for a TD, Sieple’s run and Al Young making a nice reach back grab for a TD to draw us to within 21-17.

But, regardless, I will make some predictions and some observations about 2008. Because I have already begun my emotional detachment from the Steelers, I have the advantage of being more objective than I would be otherwise.

Outlook: There are so many unknowns in a football season, such as injuries, that all I’ll do is make a conditional statement. IF the Steelers get B-level production out of their OL AND IF they pass the ball 55% of the time or greater on first down AND IF they have no debilitating injuries to Ben and the DL, this team has enough talent to win the Super Bowl IF they get great coaching.

Coaching: Tomlin is a below average NFL head coach at this point. This will be the year that many of you pro-Tomlin fans will be forced to recognize this IMO. He had never been a head coach at any level prior to this job so he’s got lots of room to grow, but I have serious doubts that he will grow much because he has maturity issues and hasn’t shown that he learned much from last year. At this point, he almost always knows what to say, sometimes knows what needs to be done, but rarely knows how to do it.

As much as I’ve been hard on Arians in the past, he is not a bad OC and I would hardly be surprised if he takes it to a higher level. His problem in the past is that he gets tight in crunch time. At some point, you would think that he’ll stop getting tight because he has already lived through failure, paid the consequences for it and he’s still breathing … so what exactly is there to fear anymore? He’s knows the words but he can’t put together a coherent sentence come crunch time. He needs to work out a flow chart of what he’ll do in certain situations so that he can remove his emotions from his play calling; he needs to come better prepared than he has in the past. If and when he does, he will make a huge step towards becoming a top-notch OC … he’s not really that far away from it. But, his success is also dependent on his players and his OL may never give him the opportunity to be as successful this year as he is capable of. He’s a better OC than Tomlin is a head coach.

Zeirlien, on the other hand, can’t even spell the words and probably has to buy a couple of vowels just to spell his name. He will be gone after this season IMO.

Offensive Keys: Spread the field, throw on first down, rediscover the swing pass, get Willie Parker in space, throw to Miller deep down the middle every once in a while, utilize the slant pass more often, realize that you can open up the running game by establishing the passing game, go no-huddle more and figure out what is wrong with our screen passes. If we don’t come out spreading the field against Cleveland you will know the coaching staff is infested with idiots. However, I don’t think that they are that stupid.

Offensive Observations:

• They screwed up by not giving Starks a chance at the RT position. They screwed up by not giving Colon a shot at the RG position. And we’re going to find out how bad they screwed up by not playing Kemo over Simmons last year. I think they gave up on Willie Reid too quickly.

• Simmons and Colon are a disaster waiting to happen. It’s like looking for your tire valve cover cap on a busy highway in the middle of the night. Whatever you think that you are going to find with them isn’t worth the risk to Ben.

• Kemo will assert himself as a well-above average guard. Unfortunately, it appears that he is not amiable to staying beyond this year. He probably has little faith in the coaching staff after sitting all last year behind a guy that he knows that he is much better than.

• Hartwig ought to be a upgrade over Mahan. If he isn’t a significant upgrade, the Steelers and Ben are in big trouble.

Defensive Observations:

• Woodley can make a lot of difference. The key to his pass rushing ability: his hands. He’s got fast hands and gets them on the blocker before they get them on him. If he can become a force, our defense could be Top-5 material.

• Timmons accelerates like a cheetah and he’ll obviously be a fun player to watch this year.

• Ike has got upside from where he is at now and he already is a damn good CB IMO. He has the physical ability to be a All-Pro corner. Just catching the ball would go a long way towards realizing that upside. How does Ike drop so many balls? They go right through his hands. Why do they go right through his hands? Because he has them too far apart. Why are they too far apart? Because he runs with his arms wide. Why does he run with his arms wide? Because Ike used to be trained by his grandfather who had him chase chickens around their backyard to train for speed and agility. What the hell does that have to do with it? When people chase chickens they keep their arms wide because they don’t know where those crazy chickens are going to go and they try to round them up into their arms. Sounds crazy, huh? You watch tapes of Jerry Rice and you’ll see that he kept his arms tight when he ran his routes which made it an easier and quicker adjustment to get his hands in position to catch the ball. Ike’s arms are flailed out and he’s got more distance to cover and coordinate to catch the ball. I suspect that he’s going to finally catch with consistency and that he will end up with 7 or 8 interceptions. If he can do that, he ought to get 2 TDs. He’ll catch a bunch early in the year, he’ll drop 2 or 3 during mid-to-late season and then he’ll start catching the ball again.

• I’m glad to see that the coaching staff finally realized that Smith is not a centerfielding safety, he’s an attacking safety. If Troy has another lackluster year, they may want to dump Troy and have Smith take his spot. Smith has the best hands in our secondary.

That’s about it for me. Good luck … I hope they do good. I think this board has some very smart people and knowledgeable football fans on it … unfortunately, I also think that many of them are smarter than what we have in our front office and coaching staff.

Z