Media Savvy
Sticking To My Guns
By Alby Oxenreiter

I fully intend to stand by my words. Even to the point of looking foolish or worse, being wrong.

The Steelers, as I penned in September, will not win the Super Bowl.

In the September issue of this publication, I composed the following: "Super Bowl XXXVII is still five months away, but I'm here to tell that the Steelers won't be there. I like this team and its proven talent and strong personalities. They're a group of good guys who deserve to win a championship. But I don't believe they will." And yes, I'm sticking with that argument. I have no choice.

In many ways, the season has gone exactly as I said it would. The good guys who deserve to win a championship have already fallen well short of expectations. A solid post-season run would make everyone forget about what's happened up to this point, but it remains to be seen if this team is capable of stringing together the three or four playoff victories necessary to win a Super Bowl.

The schedule, as I wrote in September, is soft. Some teams in the Big 12 play tougher schedules. That may actually be the only thing that saves this year's Steelers. After embarrassing losses to New England and Oakland, the Steelers were dangerously close to starting 0-3 and maybe even 0-4. Had it not been for a fluke, overtime thriller against the Browns, their dreams and their season would have spiraled downward.

To their credit, and thanks to that schedule, the Steelers rebounded. After a loss to New Orleans, they won on the road at Cincinnati and pulled to .500 with an impressive Monday night win over Indianapolis. The Steelers beat Baltimore on the road, won a road game at Cleveland but blew a lead and tied Atlanta at home. Then in Tennessee, they lost their starting quarterback and a crucial game to the Titans.

But that's when easy schedules come in handy. When they needed it most, the Steelers rattled off wins against the pathetic Bengals and struggling Jaguars, and even a disgraceful loss to the expansion Texans, in a game thoroughly dominated by Pittsburgh, couldn't kill this team's hopes.

So here we are. I wondered in the September issue if Jerome Bettis could stay healthy, and if the running game could "jump to the high bar that's been set?" Bettis could not and the running game was, in many ways, abandoned. Amos Zereoue was solid as a backup, but the play calling took the Steelers to the air and away from their bread and butter. A championship team, as the rejuvenated and recovered Tommy Maddox later told me, has to have "a balanced attack." A team cannot live on passing alone.

That's especially true with an inconsistent defense, and despite a late-season rally, the Steelers defense has been up and down—more Swiss Cheese than Swiss Guard. The defense, as suggested in our pre-season issue, would miss Earl Holmes more than anyone imagined.

On the subject of special teams, I wrote: "Can a new special teams coach really make a difference?" Well, with a few months of hindsight, and despite a great effort by new kicker Jeff Reed, some problems remain. Even strong teams, as I noted, "have weaknesses." The Steelers would have to "negotiate the curves in the road that every team faces over the course of a long season."

Well, the curves in this season have been complicated. The fans have suffered through another quarterback controversy, a running back debate and a new website pushing for the firing of the head coach. To paraphrase President John F. Kennedy, "Success has a thousand fathers. Defeat is but an orphan." Maddox has shown signs of greatness and Stewart turned in the greatest relief job in Pittsburgh since Elroy Face. The receivers have been, for the most part, spectacular, but the fate of this year's Steelers remains to be seen.

Frankly, a Super Bowl run by the Steelers would make my job more interesting, but in the words of the great sports enthusiast Doris Day, "que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be." If my observations are on the mark, you read it here first. If I'm wrong, then forget where you read it. I'll end this rant the same way I did in September. San Diego or bust. And Happy Holidays.