Monthly Archives: April 2016

Mocking the Draft: Round Three Finale—More Linebackers

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on the clockYou hopefully know the drill by now. (If you don’t, there’s a link to the rest of my draft posts at the end of the article.) Here are the third round prospects I’ve covered:

  • Charone Peake, WR (Kadar)
  • Kamalei Correa, OLB (PFF)
  • Sean Davis, FS (Invictus XI)
  • Vadal Alexander, OG/OT (Reuter)
  • Jordan Jenkins, OLB (Schmeltzer)
  • Jeremy Cash, S (SteelersWire)

And here are the final two contenders:

  • Scooby Wright, ILB (draftsite.com)
  • Deion Jones, OLB (Brown)

This isn’t like Dancing With the Stars—the order I took the players in was all about grouping them into like positions.

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My Two Cents. Cortez, the Draft and DeCastro Christmas.

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imageThis week finally brought some real football news and the draft is nearly upon us now, just eight days away. Thank you, Lord.

Cortez Allen, mercifully, is finally released.  I totally believe in our personnel people, but man, did we whiff on this one — twice. Colbert and company missed on the draft pick. Based on a handful of good games, somehow, they decided to give Allen a four year, $24.6 million contract at the beginning of the 2014 season. After the contract was signed, Cortez played in exactly nine games. According to overt heap.com, the contract was the 25th most lucrative contract of the 240 signed by cornerbacks at the time.

I usually don’t weigh in what we we need to draft and when we ought to do it, but I’m rooting for a good CB with a high floor (and hopefully a high ceiling) in the first round unless another DeCastro Christmas materializes.

I know you need to draft for value, but we need to get some talent back there.

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Dancing With the Stars: Can Antonio Keep Up the Momentum?

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Screen Shot 2016-04-18 at 11.46.13 PMLast week Antonio and partner Sharna wowed the judges with his jazz routine. Although perhaps “wowed” is the wrong word, as I got the feeling this was what they’ve been hoping for, and even expecting, from him all along.

This week the show has thrown a monkey wrench into things by switching everyone’s partner for a week. AB will now be dancing with Karina, who usually partners another of the NFL guys, ex-QB Doug Flutie.

But before we look at this week’s dances, let’s see how Hines Ward was doing at this point, back in 2011. As I wrote then:

Ward was, surprisingly, subject to performance anxiety throughout the competition. He even admitted that he often felt like throwing up before going onstage. He was especially nervous about the week five rumba, as it is a slower dance that requires more control.

So what did the judges have to say?

  • Bruno – “Ease of movement, musicality, and just the right amount of sensuality to make all the ladies swoon!
  • Well played.”
  • Len – “It’s not false – it has a naturalness, an ease and an elegance that is charming, and I think that’s probably your best dance.”
  • Carrie Ann – “You make it look so easy – I’m getting worried for you because you make it look so easy, but that’s a good thing.” Read more

Mocking the Draft: Round Three—Linebacker U

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The Round Three picks mocked to the Steelers fell into three distinct groups—offense, safeties, and linebackers. I covered the first two groups last week, and today we dive into the Middle Four, as I’ve never seen it called but seems logical to me.

If you missed the earlier two articles you can find links at the bottom of the page. But to bring you up to speed, I began with a fairly hefty list of guys, because unlike Round 1 there was not a single repeat player in the various mocks I looked at. I then culled the list using my own criteria:

  • Charone Peake, WR (Kadar)
  • Scooby Wright, ILB (draftsite.com)
  • Kamalei Correa, OLB (PFF)
  • Sean Davis, FS (Invictus XI)
  • Deion Jones, OLB (Brown)
  • Vadal Alexander, OG/OT (Reuter)
  • Jordan Jenkins, OLB (Schmeltzer)
  • Jeremy Cash, S (SteelersWire)

I added Su’a Cravens to the list because he was showing up in so many mocks in the second round, and I was glad I did. A very impressive young man! But now let’s look at two of OLBs: Read more

The Sunday Football-Related Music Post: You Too Can Play Heinz Field

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via steeline.com

The following notice caught my eye last Tuesday:

The Steeline, the drumline that performs at Steelers home games and special events, will be holding open auditions for new members.

Now this sounds pretty fine! Who doesn’t like to bang on things and get into Heinz Field on gameday for free? I’m sure many of you out there have paid vast sums to get into the game and then banged on whatever you could find—the back of the seat in front of you, your empty beer can, nearby Ravens fans…

Wouldn’t it be better to harness that aggression into a worthy channel?

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Mocking the Draft: Round Three—Back to the Future (Defense)

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via National Football Post

Thursday’s post covered the offensive players who made cut from the big list. Today we’re back to defense, and if the prospect visits are any indication, the Steelers going defense in the first three rounds would scarcely be a surprise.

As you may recall, there was quite a long list of players mocked to the Steelers in Round 3, which I culled for a certain amount of practicality and handsomeness, as follows:

  • Charone Peake, WR (Kadar)
  • Scooby Wright, ILB (draftsite.com)
  • Kamalei Correa, OLB (PFF)
  • Sean Davis, FS (Invictus XI)
  • Deion Jones, OLB (Brown)
  • Vadal Alexander, OG/OT (Reuter)
  • Jordan Jenkins, OLB (Schmeltzer)
  • Jeremy Cash, S (SteelersWire)

I covered Peake and Alexander in the first post.. Today we take a closer look at the safeties. I included one whose name keeps popping up lately as a possible second round pick, Su’a Cravens. Read more

Things Bigger Than Football: DeAngelo Williams

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Charles LeClaire photo: USA Today Sports

Perhaps the title should actually be “People Larger than Life,” because DeAngelo has certainly been making a lot of noise recently. Let me state up front how grateful I am to the Steelers for adding such a solid and yet interesting person to the roster. And that’s before you look at how well he played!

The first “noise” out of DeAngelo started two years ago, while he still played for Carolina. I’m talking, naturally, about off-field noise, because his play on the field speaks for itself, so much so that he was deemed by Pro Football Focus to be the fifth-best free agent signing in the league last season, Some national writers put him higher than that. The noise to which I refer is, of course, his campaign against breast cancer.

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Mocking the Draft: Round Three—Finally, Some Offense

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Brian Spurlock photo, USA Today Sports

It gets a lot harder to decide who to look at once you get below the first couple of rounds. Player stocks are fluctuating, and a guy purported to go in the third round a few months ago may have moved up into a higher strata, or a sure-fire high-round pick may have gotten himself arrested (hard to believe, but it happened this year) and thus drops precipitously.

Furthermore, all of the guys with first and second round grades are not going to be drafted in the first two rounds, meaning there are potential bargains to be had in the third round. And because of all the uncertainty, a lot of pundits don’t bother to draft beyond the first or second round.

But as always I am undeterred by difficulties, and continue to selflessly comb through the host of college studliness to find just the right guys for the Steelers.
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My Two Cents: Adios, amigo!

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imageNo matter who you are, how great your career, one day, the Turk will come for you. If you are unfamiliar with the Turk, he is football’s version of the Grim Reaper. One of the toughest things for fans to accept is when a long time Steeler favorite reaches the end of the road. Unless you retire on your own terms, à la Heath Miller, the Turk will come.

The player is often not the decision maker of when his time is up. Occasionally, the Steelers have engineered a peaceful end to the career of an iconic player. More often the “retirements” involve some measure of resistance and/or hard feelings. Rarely, do players perceive that the end is near.  With most highly competitive athletes, there’s always a rock solid belief that there is one more good season.

Often, the great ones can still play, but not at the level which justifies their compensation and its effect on the team’s salary cap.

Therefore, placid dignified retirements are rare. Heath’s departure was classy and low key. Ike Taylor’s farewell lacked drama too, though surely he saw the Turk approaching. The Bus had a fairytale ending.  He was fortunate; life rarely cedes a happily ever after.

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Dancing With the Stars Week 4: All That Jazz

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Week 4Things are getting a bit tense in Antonio’s world. The six o’clock news had a short segment yesterday evening showing some clips from rehearsal and asking some questions.

One of the questions—does he take the judges’ criticisms personally—was answered in the negative, with AB indicating that as long as Sharna is happy with what he’s doing he doesn’t worry too much about the judges.

But it sounded a bit like whistling in the dark to me, because after all it is the judges who ultimately make the decision. Steeler Nation may be turning out in force and making sure there isn’t an early exit for the couple, but in the end it is a judges’ decision. And you just know that it has to stick in AB’s craw, because he is such a fierce competitor. Whether he has been focusing his  legendary work ethic on the task at hand is a question, of course, and one I can’t answer. I noted he seems to have a lot of other things going on as well, and perhaps he overestimated how quickly he could learn. Or perhaps it’s just a lot harder than he thought.   Read more

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