My original title for this post was going to be "Bring Back Bucco Bruce!" But out of respect for fellow NFL
fan Web author Denis Crawford, I changed it, but my sentiment is still the same. So far, I think I've seen five retro
uniforms in the NFL this season. So I figured, why not rank them? Then as I see more of them, I'll update the rankings.
Now the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would shoot to the top of the rankings if they ever brought back their Creamsicle-colored
unis with the Bucco Bruce logo on the helmet. But we probably won't see those, since they stand for a woeful era in the
team's history. Oh, well.
So here are my rankings:
1. Steelers: This isn't
because I'm a Steelers fan. The black jerseys with the gold numbers and helmets are much better than the throwback uniforms
they wore in 1994, with the hideous triangular logo on the chest. I thought that's what I was going to see when the played
the Bills. But the ones they wore were pretty sharp. They're going to wear them again on Nov. 5 against the Ravens.
2. Redskins: I mentioned this in my power rankings. The 'R' on the helmet is a lot less offensive
than the image of the Native American on their regular helmets.
3. Chargers: It's still unclear
whether the uniforms they've been wearing are throwbacks. It looks like the white helmets might be part of their new uniform.
Speaking of the Chargers, I never was as enamored with their powder-blue jerseys with the numbered helmets as everyone else
was. Not bad, but a little overrated.
4. 49ers: The unis they wore on that Monday night game against
the Cardinals barely qualify as throwbacks. All they did was take away the shadow on the numbers.
5. Eagles:
WTF? When I saw those uniforms on the TV screen at Sports Page, I thought it was still Saturday and I was watching some obscure
college game.
One last note on retro uniforms. my all-time dream retro uniform matchup in any sport would be the
Cleveland Indians wearing their burgundy "blood clot" jerseys from the late 1970s vs. the Houston Astros wearing
their "Reese's Peanut Butter Cup" jerseys, which they sported until the mid-1990s. Don't they both train
in Florida? They should break those out during a spring training game.
OK, I'm going to try one last time to include brief comments for each team with my weekly NFL power rankings. That
will probably mean that I won't get them out until Wednesday, because I'll need more time for research. After all,
I'm just one man!
Here's where some of the other major media outlets are ranking the Steelers (What? Steelahs.com
isn't a major media outlet? C'mon!):
SI.com: 4 ESPN.com: 4 MSNBC: 3 Fox Sports: 3 USA
Today: 4 CBS Sports: 4
I'll have my power rankings for this week hopefully by tomorrow morning, or at the latest tomorrow afternoon. I
participated in Ed Bouchette's chat on Post-Gazette.com. He had to leave in the middle to go to an interview. Hope it wasn't a job interview.
Now I need to go work
out, because if I spend too much time sitting on my ass in front of the computer working on this site, I'm going to have
the body of Casey Hampton, with much less muscle.
I will, however, give you a sneak preview of the rankings. The
Steelers are No. 3. The Chargers no longer belong in the same company as the Patriots and Colts. The Big Three is now the
Big Two, the Patriots and Colts, and I think at the moment, the Steelers are the best of the rest.
So the rankings
are coming soon. Thanks for the traffic.
A heads up to my loyal Steelahs.com readers. My weekly columns for each game will be posted on the site by Monday morning.
I saw there was some traffic on Sunday after the Steelers game, and I'm sorry I didn't have my column on the 49ers-Steelers
game at that time.
My girlfriend has been absolutely great about letting me go to Sports Page, where they have
DirecTV, to watch the Steelers. She's gotten into baseball since we've been together. But football? That's a much
more acquired taste. She watched part of the Bills game with me last week, but she was without my company on Sunday
afternoon. So after the games, I go home and try to spend the rest of my Sunday with Sara, then when she goes to bed,
I hit the keyboard. My goal is to have my columns to you by the time you wake up Monday morning.
So spend Sunday
night reading about the game on the Post-Gazette or the Tribune-Review. Then on Monday give Steelahs.com a try. Believe me,
I have a unique perspective you won't get anywhere else.
I thought about including a brief comment for each team with my weekly power rankings. But I spend so much time trying to
keep up on the Steelers, I wouldn't have time to read enough about every team to come up with a nugget for each one. So
I'm just going to explain my general though process in putting together my rankings.
The Patriots, Colts and
Chargers are the Big Three. They're in a league of their own. If the Chargers were routed by anyone other than the Patriots,
then they'd drop out of the top three, but until then, they're still a damn good team.
The Cowboys and
Bears are at 4 and 5 because they haven't done anything to warrant a drop from their preseason rankings. I have the Steelers
behind them because the Steelers really haven't beaten a decent team yet, and the Cowboys with their offense and the Bears
with their defense are the class of the NFC so far. The Steelers have to show me a little more to move ahead of them.
The next three teams all held their positions. The 49ers at seven (speaking of them, did anyone catch the mistake ESPN made
a week ago Monday during the Cardinals-49ers telecast? In a graphic, the 49ers were referred to as the 48ers. I'm not
kidding. I saw it with my own eyes) and the Broncos at 9 both have won two close games. Winning close games is the mark of
a good team.
The Seahawks dropped to 10 after their loss to the Cardinals, and the Titans moved up three spots
to 11 despite a loss. That loss was by two points to the defending Super Bowl champions.
Then I had to get all
the surprising 2-0 teams out of the way. In order, it's the Packers, Texans, Lions and Redskins. They can't all be
the real deal, but at least a couple of them might surprise some people this year.
The Cardinals moved up three
spots to No. 17. This is the only case I can think of where a team is behind a team that it beat. The Cardinals beat the Seahawks,
but I still think the Seahawks are better.
The Jaguars fell three spots after an unimpressive win against the team
I think is the worst in the league. The next four teams are arranged according to Week 2 upsets. The Browns make the biggest
rise of the week, 13 spots from dead last to No. 19. Maybe they shouldn't be that high, but they're higher than the
Bengals because they beat the Bengals, who CAN'T STOP ANYBODY. Then the Bucs move from 30 to 21, one spot ahead of the
team they just beat, the Saints, who are the league's biggest disappointment so far. The Vikings at No. 23 are the last
1-1 team.
After that, it's all 0-2 teams, led by the Eagles at No. 24. The Eagles are the lowest ranked team
that I can still see making the playoffs. And they're the last team worth mentioning.
My Steelers Sunday started a little early for Week 2. I was up at 9 a.m. listening to Mike Francesa's NFL Now show
on WFAN.
I entered a contest in which winners spend five minutes on the air talking about their favorite NFL team.
Last week, it was the Steelers (it's the Cowboys this week). You had to explain in two sentences why you're the best
person to be talking about the Steelers. In my sentences, I talked about the plight of the Steelers fan in New England and
my Web site. It wasn't enough.
Craig from Middletown was the winner. He wrote about Steelers heartbreak and
invoked the name of Alfred Pupunu. Damn, that Craig from Middletown's good.
Alfred Pupunu (pronounced Pa-POO-new)
is a name that pops into my head every now and then. Pupunu, who was a tight end from Tonga, caught a touchdown pass from
Stan Humphries for the Chargers in the 1994 AFC championship game against the Steelers. I'm still haunted by the image
of his touchdown celebration, in which he pretended to blow on the football as if it were some kind of Tongan horn. Before
that, the Steelers led 13-3 and thought they could keep running the football to take time off the clock. But that touchdown
showed that the Chargers weren't going away. In the fourth quarter, Tony Martin beat Tim McKyer for the game-winning touchdown,
the Chargers won 17-13, and the disappointment of the Cowher Era had officially commenced.
In my column on the
Bills game, I alluded to the similarities between the fortunes of the Steelers and Red Sox. Pupunu triggers the same reactions
in Steelers fans that Bucky "Bleeping" Dent and Aaron "Bleeping" Boone trigger in Red Sox fans.
That image of Pupunu blowing his horn will forever send a chill up my spine.
So the Patriots have been caught and penalized for videotaping opposing coaches, with players and coaches around the league
saying they've suspected the Patriots of doing this for a number of years.
As Steelers fans, we can't help
but wonder if the Patriots were cheating when they beat the Steelers in the 2001 and 2004 AFC championship games. The Steelers
lost the 2001 game because of two major special teams blunders. But now I'm a little suspicious of the way Drew Bledsoe
played when he came off the bench after Tom Brady was hurt. Bledsoe was on the shelf for weeks, but he came in and looked
like he hadn't missed a beat, leading the Patriots on a touchdown drive late in the second quarter. Hmmmm.
In
2004, Ben Roethlisberger was shaky heading into the AFC championship game, and the Pats were able to take advantage of it.
A big factor in the Steelers' loss in that game was the fact that Roethlisberger was a rookie. He wasn't a rookie
because the Patriots cheated. Of course, Steelers fans can't get too worked up about the Patriots possibly cheating to
beat the Steelers in the AFC title game. Remember, the Steelers were lucky to beat the Jets the week before, when Big Ben
was stinking up the joint and the Jets missed those two field goals.
I wonder about the Patriots in 2005, when
they were basically a .500 team with a decimated secondary but all of a sudden got better. They'd have faced the
Steelers in the AFC championship game if it weren't for a turnover-riddled performance in Denver.
Well, now
everything's on the level, hopefully. We'll see the Patriots on Dec. 9. Check your cameras at the door.
What better way to kick off my blog than to talk about Bob Hyland's Sports Page, where I saw the Steelers season opener
on Sunday.
As loyal Steelahs.com followers may know, I needed to find a place to watch the Steelers after Finn
McCool's closed. I knew about Sports Page, but I wasn't expecting much. It's part of the White Plains Mall, which
I hear was the cool place to hang out in the 1970s. But since then, "The Westchester" has gone up in all its glitz
and glamor, and the WP Mall looks dinky by comparison.
But Sports Page is anything but dinky. I got there at about
12:30 and the place was already packed. The Steelers were on at least four of their 45 TVs, 10 of which are plasma TVs.
Among the memorabilia festooning the walls is a huge ABC Wide World of Sports banner. An old Larry Bird poster and
autographed mini-helmets. And that'; just the tip of the iceberg. I could add items with every post this season and still
not cover everything.
The whole experience extends to the bathroom, where audio for the TV broadcast of the Jets
game was piped in. I happened to be relieving myself when Chad Pennington got hurt. I heard groans, then more groans when
they showed the replay. Not that Pennington's injury was a good thing, but it just demonstrates the atmosphere.
Of course, it's always fun to see how many teams are represented at a sports bar on opening day of the NFL season. Besides
Jets and Giants gear, I saw Cowboys, Rams, Eagles, Vikings, Seahawks, Colts, Titans, Redskins, Chiefs, Panthers, Packers,
and yes, Steelers gear. There was one faithful Browns fan, but the closest he came to flying the colors was a brown Billabong
shirt.
There were some old faces from Finn's, and then of course there was trio of Steelers fans
who let me sit at their table. Hope you enjoyed my site. To them and everyone else reading this, welcome to my blog and to
Steelahs.com. It's going to be a fun season.
