Todd Haley Is Wrong*

On Thursday, Dustin Dopirak of DK Pittsburgh Sports (subscription required) wrote an article about Todd Haley and Keith Butler, offensive and defensive coordinators of the Pittsburgh Steelers respectively, discussing Monday night's football game against the Washington Redskins. This part of the article jumped out to me:

[Haley] said road environments make it more difficult to run the no-huddle, but said that doesn’t mean the Steelers won’t do it.

“There’s a lot of factors that go into it,” Haley said. “That’s one of them, at times. I believe in our group. Last year at Seattle, I thought we went out there and had a very good operation. That was a big test for us. We’ve challenged the guys to be able to handle any environment and go out and run our offense. It will definitely be loud there.”

Ha! Haley obviously wasn't with the Steelers the last time the team played in Washington in November 2008. During that game, Washington was forced to use a silent count - AT HOME - because of the crowd noise by Steelers fans.

DC area media are already discussing the amount of black and gold that will be at the game. Rich Tandler of CSN Mid-Atlantic wrote that he "will not be surprised if somewhere from a fourth (about 20,000) to a third (around 26,000) of the fans in attendance are pulling for the visiting team." He's probably about right, but not because of many Steelers fans driving in from Western Pennsylvania. Instead, it's the thousands of Steelers fans that live in the DC-Baltimore Metro area.

I would write that I'm excited to part of the Steelers fans at FedEx Field, but it's a pain to get to and tickets are expensive. And it's a school night. Go Steelers!


* The original title of this post was Todd Haley Is On Drugs. However, seeing that Le'Veon Bell and Martavis Bryant have both been suspended because of drugs, Todd Haley is probably not on drugs.

Steelers-Chiefs (PIttsburgh Midwest?) LiveBlog

What better way to conclude the Thanksgiving weekend than joining us for the Steelers-Chiefs game. Everyone rightly refers to the Arizona Cardinals as Pittsburgh West; however, no one talks about Kansas City being Pittsburgh Midwest. Former Pitt Panther QB Tyler Palko starts for the Chiefs tonight while wide receiver Jon Baldwin also attended Pitt and Steve Breaston is a fellow Woodland Hills High School graduate. Coach Todd Haley is the son of former Steelers Director of Player Personnel Dick Haley and served as a ball boy for the Steelers as a kid. Um, Kendrell Bell and Steve Bono both played for the Steelers and Chiefs. I think that’s all I got. Go Steelers!

Sunday Notes (Steelers-Browns Recap)

I know that you get your Steelers coverage from major media outlets and blogs dedicated to the Steelers. That’s why I give you other items that you can’t get anywhere else.

I’m not going to get into Ben Roethlisberger’s off-field activities. Simply from a football perspective, it was great seeing him on the field yesterday. The Steelers are clearly a better offensive team with Roethlisberger in the line-up, and with three touchdown passes, he showed again that he is one of the elite NFL quarterbacks.

While 27 is a lot of carries for 84 rushing yards, what stood out for me about Rashard Mendenhall’s performance was his excellent blocking in passing situations.

Yes, he got injured in the second quarter, but the defense and special teams did a nice job containing Steeler-killer Joshua Cribbs when he played.

James Harrison (11 tackles, 1.5 sacks) and Lawrence Timmons (11 tackles, 2 sacks) continue to dominate. There’s not a better LB combination in football.

The Browns may have finally found a franchise quarterback. Despite his two interceptions, Colt McCoy didn’t look rattled in his first NFL start. 23 for 33 for 281 yards, a touchdown and 22 yards rushing is a nice debut.

I get that NFL coaches aren’t going to wear suits anymore, but there has to be some type of professionalism. Kansas City Chiefs coach Todd Haley wore a T-shirt during yesterday’s game against the Houston Texans. Haley couldn’t get away with wearing this shirt in 90% of the offices around the country.



I’d like to know the cost of all of the pink towels, hats, shoes, goal post pads, wrist bands, pom-poms, etc. displayed during NFL games to promote breast cancer awareness. It has to be in the tens of thousands, right? Who is paying for all of the pink equipment? The NFL? The individual teams? I hope that the NFL is donating at least the amount of money they are spending on the pink stuff to breast cancer charities.

I’m happy that Hiro of Heroes (Masi Oka) is getting some work in Hawaii Five-0.



Did you happen to see that DirecTV commercial that aired approximately 7,000 times yesterday where a guy steals films by shooting the employee with a blow dart? After the guy missed with his initial shot, shouldn’t the employee have tried to run? He just sat there as the attacker reloaded the second blow dart. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out the “See It Before It’s On Netflix” video on the “What To Watch” section of the DirecTV website.

Next week in South Florida!