Commiseration II

The price I pay for daring to flaunt my colors in Boston is the inevitable, incessant posing of the question, "What's wrong with your team, kid?"

At least, after today, I've finally come up with a concise, reasonable assessment of what exactly is wrong with the Steelers this season, rather than trying to stumble through explaining to people who aren't well versed in football the intricacies of precisely what's going wrong. Now I just simply respond, "Murphy's Law."

In today's case, Murphy's Law comes under the pseudonym "losing three fumbles inside your own thirty yard line." How else do your quarterbacks throw for a combined 433 yards and 5 touchdowns and you still lose? You put the ball on the ground three times well within your own half.

Yeah, the defense got soft at the wrong times. I apologize on behalf of the entire Steelers organization that we are responsible for the ass-kissing Mike Vick will undoubtedly receive in the media in the upcoming days. But if Santonio Holmes just catches a freaking punt, Ben Roethlisberger doesn't mishandle that snap, things they do 99 times out of 100, we're not even having this conversation.

Then, of course, there are the little things like a receiver lining up in the wrong place during a spike that should have led to a game-winning field goal attempt with time expiring. The few inches that allowed Vick to escape and make conversions on two separate third-down plays during the Falcons drive in overtime. It's just frustrating when your team is as talented as the Steelers (and please don't even attempt to argue that the Steelers don't have at the very least a playoff level of talent - they're arguably better than they were last year, and they were the champions last year) and you pile up stupid losses.

The Steelers are 2-4, and the next person to read me a eulogy using that as evidence is going to get punched in the mouth. I didn't realize the football schedule had been pared to just six games. Oh, it hasn't? There are ten more? Well, then. I'm not going to give up on the season until the Steelers are mathematically no longer in playoff contention. There's almost no margin for error right now, but it's not like a 9-1 run would be completely unprecedented, and 10-6 might even earn us the sixth seed again, although I would definitely not count on it.

It sounds extremely homeristic to say this, but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the Steelers. We're outplaying some good teams the vast majority of the game, and then letting a few lapses cost us the win. And that's what's so frustrating about this season.