Pittsburgh Steelers General Thread

[HaywoodZarathustra]

I read that book @sport historian. Tatum bragged that he was a nice guy whom everyone called "The Reverend" off the field, but he was proud of injuring people on the field. He felt he had done his job if the opposing player woke up on the sideline with train whistles blowing in his head.

The Raiders had several db's like him, such as George Atkinson and Lester Hayes. The Chargers had a field goal kicker named Rolf Benirschke who suffered from Crohn's Disease, a serious intestinal ailment. Hayes speared him in the stomach with his helmet and took him out of a game.

To finish, though, the Immaculate Reception may never have happened had Tatum gone for a tackle or interception rather than trying to injure Fuqua. A great player and decent human being made him pay for that.

 

[Carolina Speed]

Wow, being a lifelong Cowboys fan up until just a few years ago I always sort of hated the Steelers and especially back in the 70's but this is sad news to me. I was watching the Immaculate Reception game by myself in my grandmother's house on one end of the home with the family on the other end watching something else. I was amazed that day and I still believe it was a catch. 72 seems young to me and I know the question that's in my mind as it probably is in most of yours. Does anyone know if he did or not? It doesn't matter now but if he did it's just one more taken down by the ruling Elites before his time. Sad indeed in my opinion. RIP

Same here BFU on the Cowboys comment, but never really hated the Steelers. I respected them. Just hated that they beat up my Cowboys in the 70's. I just couldn't understand how Bradshaw could beat Staubach as I still think Staubach was the better QB. Especially the 79' SB. A Jackie Smith dropped pass in the end zone cost Dallas that SB.
Yes, a sad day as I remember Harris very well. RIP. BTW, the Steelers also had a pretty good white Safety in those days, Mike Wagner? I believe once led the league in INT's.

 

[white lightning]

There was a lot of head scratching in Pittsburgh after the Steelers took Franco as the 13th overall pick in '72, but he was a great back from the get-go. Mitchell went to the Baltimore Colts in the second round a year earlier and had a nice NFL career of his own, going over 1,000 yards three different times and finishing with 6,534 rushing yards over nine seasons. Franco was definitely the less heralded of the two at Penn State.

He was a very talented power running back that defenses feared. A human wrecking ball. May he rest in peace. I hate to post this picture but
all of the ones we look up to do as they are told.

 

[BeyondFedUp]

Hey WL, I am supposing that is a cut and paste photo and obit announcement? Surely the AP wouldn't put the announcement of his death under a pic of his push for the clot shot. Correct?

 

[BeyondFedUp]

Same here BFU on the Cowboys comment, but never really hated the Steelers. I respected them. Just hated that they beat up my Cowboys in the 70's. I just couldn't understand how Bradshaw could beat Staubach as I still think Staubach was the better QB. Especially the 79' SB. A Jackie Smith dropped pass in the end zone cost Dallas that SB.
Yes, a sad day as I remember Harris very well. RIP. BTW, the Steelers also had a pretty good white Safety in those days, Mike Wagner? I believe once led the league in INT's.

Hey CS, Yes, sorry I didn't clarify. I didn't hate the Steelers until they beat Dallas in the SB, and then again. When the Immaculate Reception happened they hadn't made a run yet as a franchise and I loved the Steelers on that day and it was special. On the same day Dallas also beat SF out in Candlestick in a great comeback win engineered by Staubach! It was a great day for me.

 

[white lightning]

Hey WL, I am supposing that is a cut and paste photo and obit announcement? Surely the AP wouldn't put the announcement of his death under a pic of his push for the clot shot. Correct?

It's off the CDC Website Social Media. To be honest as it says in the Bible, for what good is it to gain the whole world but lose your own soul. I'm not saying who is saved and who isn't. That is up to God. All I'm saying is to all the sports stars, movie stars, music stars, politicians, etc.,etc I wouldn't want to have to stand judgement someday for pushing something that many if not most of them knew was going to harm, sicken and kill people around the world. There are a few stars that wouldn't do it. I mean very few. Kirstie Alley was one who died just recently too but she would not push the vaccine from everything I've read. There are others but it's very few. Just sad times to live in. I loved watching Franco Harris as a very little kid. He was a legend. I just hate how so many people do things for money. It's not worth your soul. Just my opinion but as it says in the Bible, we should not make idols of anyone. It's ok to root for stars but never idolize them. Easier said than done.

 

[white is right]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1605551670976397319

Probably a day of mourning for the Steelers' faithful. I actually watched that game on our tube TV, and was totally perplexed to what I had just watched. You know the game.

I was going to mention his death before I ran around the city. It looks like his death was a shock as he was to be honored on Saturday.

Csonka, Riggins and Harris were the last wave of hall of fame fullbacks in NFL history. At the time of the early days of the Steelers dynasty the seismic shift of run first football and stacking the front 7 against between the tackle running versus passing setting up the run seemed like it was decades away. Many football historians felt that the success of the Dolphins, Steelers and to a lesser extent the Raiders hastened the demise of this offense as the game became too deliberate and too brutal and all of these teams exploited the rules to maximize their advantages.

Sad news, Dio ti benedica Franco.

PS to further emphasize the point the Mad Dog stated he just interviewed Harris within a 24 hour window of his sudden death and he sounded healthy and cerebral, so this is a total shock.

 

[Leonardfan]

Just wanted to add my .02 to Franco Harris passing:

By all accounts he was a very decent, affable, fan friendly person. He was also a very good football player that made one of the most memorable plays in NFL history. May he RIP.


It seems that many of the older "boomers" on the site have a very different view of Harris and his impact. Perhaps you are all viewing him through the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia and childhood naivety which is fine and understandable. My perspective is a little different as a "millennial". I can recall coming home from high school and watching the NFL Films segments on BSPN in the late 90s/early 2000s and remember watching a segment on the 70s Steelers. I remember finding the "Franco's Italian Army" group of fans fairly pathetic as I being partially of Italian heritage found nothing Italian about Harris. Perhaps this group of Yinzers was one of the first to really sell out their own heritage, pride and ethnicity. Harris was also a product of miscegnation ie. White replacement. 50 years on and we see alot more half breeds out there that embrace their blackness and another family's White genes get eliminated from the gene pool. Now we see plenty of half blacks getting adulation, credit and the benefits of being "black" when it comes to athletics. We also get to see many of them benefit in society with greater privilege than us Whites that are being replaced.

 

[white is right]

Just wanted to add my .02 to Franco Harris passing:

By all accounts he was a very decent, affable, fan friendly person. He was also a very good football player that made one of the most memorable plays in NFL history. May he RIP.


It seems that many of the older "boomers" on the site have a very different view of Harris and his impact. Perhaps you are all viewing him through the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia and childhood naivety which is fine and understandable. My perspective is a little different as a "millennial". I can recall coming home from high school and watching the NFL Films segments on BSPN in the late 90s/early 2000s and remember watching a segment on the 70s Steelers. I remember finding the "Franco's Italian Army" group of fans fairly pathetic as I being partially of Italian heritage found nothing Italian about Harris. Perhaps this group of Yinzers was one of the first to really sell out their own heritage, pride and ethnicity. Harris was also a product of miscegnation ie. White replacement. 50 years on and we see alot more half breeds out there that embrace their blackness and another family's White genes get eliminated from the gene pool. Now we see plenty of half blacks getting adulation, credit and the benefits of being "black" when it comes to athletics. We also get to see many of them benefit in society with greater privilege than us Whites that are being replaced.

I think Harris was unique because he was a Mulatto from a working class background who was half an ethnicity which about a generation before that were still treated like a distinct minority group. There have been Mulatto people in the United States for centuries but most were the elite of the Black communities and were the first politicians, intellectuals, scientists, administrators etc in their community.

Now as you say people that are half White and Black are a dime dozen in sports but back then he was unique and from an ethnic group that still had strong cultural ties to the old country.

 

[wile]

Nostalgia you got it. That said it is time to let the Gay American Empire die and start anew, if that meant no more NFL BS so be it.

 

[Don Wassall]

I remember finding the "Franco's Italian Army" group of fans fairly pathetic as I being partially of Italian heritage found nothing Italian about Harris. Perhaps this group of Yinzers was one of the first to really sell out their own heritage, pride and ethnicity. Harris was also a product of miscegnation ie. White replacement.

I lived through it and can assure you that "Franco's Italian Army" was very much tongue in cheek. It was done as a joke as Harris looked Black and said that he identified as Black, which made his "Italian Army" that much funnier.

The "Army" was a takeoff on his first name of Franco. He had a brother who played for Penn State named Pete. If Franco had been named Pete or Joe or Bill there likely wouldn't have been an Italian Army. Frank Sinatra was named an honorary Brigadier General. It was all done in fun, it wasn't in any way a selling out of Italian heritage.

There was just a lot more fun and spontaneity back then, unlike today's humorless, rigidly conformist communist environment. The Steelers' kicker at the time was a flaky guy named Roy Gerela. He had his own rooting section called "Gerela's Gorillas." Not sure where the Gorillas part came from other than the semi-alliteration of both words starting with a G though one was a soft G the other a hard G. Steelers home games were filled with various banners and fan clubs like Franco's Italian Army and Gerela's Gorillas. No one took any of it seriously.

 

[white is right]

I lived through it and can assure you that "Franco's Italian Army" was very much tongue in cheek. It was done as a joke as Harris looked Black and said that he identified as Black, which made his "Italian Army" that much funnier.

The "Army" was a takeoff on his first name of Franco. He had a brother who played for Penn State named Pete. If Franco had been named Pete or Joe or Bill there likely wouldn't have been an Italian Army. Frank Sinatra was named an honorary Brigadier General. It was all done in fun, it wasn't in any way a selling out of Italian heritage.

There was just a lot more fun and spontaneity back then, unlike today's humorless, rigidly conformist communist environment. The Steelers' kicker at the time was a flaky guy named Roy Gerela. He had his own rooting section called "Gerela's Gorillas." Not sure where the Gorillas part came from other than the semi-alliteration of both words starting with a G though one was a soft G the other a hard G. Steelers home games were filled with various banners and fan clubs like Franco's Italian Army and Gerela's Gorillas. No one took any of it seriously.

I always thought the Army was a take on the Spanish dictator Franco and I do remember seeing Sinatra in publicity photos with a uniform and helmet with Harris. I think all of the star player had their own rooting sections. Also maybe the D-line and linebackers had their own rooting sections too.

I remember around SB XIII the Terrible Towels seemed to replace the fan clubs and they have been waved through the Big Ben era.

 

[sport historian]

I lived through it and can assure you that "Franco's Italian Army" was very much tongue in cheek. It was done as a joke as Harris looked Black and said that he identified as Black, which made his "Italian Army" that much funnier.

The "Army" was a takeoff on his first name of Franco. He had a brother who played for Penn State named Pete. If Franco had been named Pete or Joe or Bill there likely wouldn't have been an Italian Army. Frank Sinatra was named an honorary Brigadier General. It was all done in fun, it wasn't in any way a selling out of Italian heritage.

There was just a lot more fun and spontaneity back then, unlike today's humorless, rigidly conformist communist environment. The Steelers' kicker at the time was a flaky guy named Roy Gerela. He had his own rooting section called "Gerela's Gorillas." Not sure where the Gorillas part came from other than the semi-alliteration of both words starting with a G though one was a soft G the other a hard G. Steelers home games were filled with various banners and fan clubs like Franco's Italian Army and Gerela's Gorillas. No one took any of it seriously.

Yes, that's how it was then. I recall a banner titled "Rocky's Flying Squirrels."

The game tonight and presumably the ceremony will be in sub-freezing weather. In the 1970s the NFL didn't schedule games in cold weather areas at night. They were in the daytime around noon if at all possible. The Immaculate Reception game in 1972 was the "early" game. The second playoff game was in San Francisco. Ironically, Roger Staubach led one of his most famous comebacks the same day.

Of course now, the NFL wants more prime time games for more TV money, as if they didn't already have untold millions.

 

[Don Wassall]

Yes, that's how it was then. I recall a banner titled "Rocky's Flying Squirrels."

The game tonight and presumably the ceremony will be in sub-freezing weather. In the 1970s the NFL didn't schedule games in cold weather areas at night. They were in the daytime around noon if at all possible. The Immaculate Reception game in 1972 was the "early" game. The second playoff game was in San Francisco. Ironically, Roger Staubach led one of his most famous comebacks the same day.

Of course now, the NFL wants more prime time games for more TV money, as if they didn't already have untold millions.

I've heard speculation locally on what the turnout will be, as opposed to the number of tickets sold, which is how the NFL instructs its clubs to announce attendance figures. The Steelers have sold out every game since that 1972 season of the Immaculate Reception, but given the weather the stadium might only be half filled at best. Like a lot of the country we were smashed by the so-called "bomb cyclone" yesterday, with actual temps below zero all day with winds up to 50 mph and more. It's going to "moderate" a bit today but will still be around 10 F or so at kickoff with strong winds. The wind will make sitting in place watching a game pretty unbearable except maybe for the very well lubricated fans. Also, it's turned into a depressing event rather than a celebration, about as untimely a death as can be imagined.

BTW, I lost power for eight hours yesterday when the storm moved through. When it was restored it was 38 degrees in my house and took six hours to get back to 70.

 

[Carolina Speed]

I've heard speculation locally on what the turnout will be, as opposed to the number of tickets sold, which is how the NFL instructs its clubs to announce attendance figures. The Steelers have sold out every game since that 1972 season of the Immaculate Reception, but given the weather the stadium might only be half filled at best. Like a lot of the country we were smashed by the so-called "bomb cyclone" yesterday, with actual temps below zero all day with winds up to 50 mph and more. It's going to "moderate" a bit today but will still be around 10 F or so at kickoff with strong winds. The wind will make sitting in place watching a game pretty unbearable except maybe for the very well lubricated fans. Also, it's turned into a depressing event rather than a celebration, about as untimely a death as can be imagined.

BTW, I lost power for eight hours yesterday when the storm moved through. When it was restored it was 38 degrees in my house and took six hours to get back to 70.

Don, happy to hear you're ok. Hopefully everyone else here, that's up your way is ok as well? It got down to below 0 with the wind chill here last night and was still 7 degrees when I got up. Only the NC mountains got snow/ice. Sunny here for the Panthers game.
Just FYI, I bought a new heat pump/air conditioning system last year and I am saving between $75-100 per month.
Also, I'm guessing Pickett will be back in the starting lineup tonight?

 

[Don Wassall]

Yes, Pickett has been announced as the starter. I don't know what's gonna happen with Trubisky after this season. The Steelers would like to keep him as a backup but he's played pretty well and would still like to start somewhere. Unlike Pickett he pushes the ball down the field when he's "allowed" to as they prefer he be a game manager which means throttling his throwing and running ability. However after the number the media has done on Trubisky almost since the day he was drafted by the Bears he likely doesn't have a lot of options when it comes to starting for another team.

 

[Bucky]

38 degrees?! Brr! I thought it was bad when I woke up to no power and 52 degrees!

 

[footballenthusiast]

UPDATE: Steelers are retaining Matt Canada for 2023

The Pittsburgh Steelers are reportedly planning on retaining Matt Canada as offensive coordinator.

www.behindthesteelcurtain.com

"What may have bought Matt Canada another season with the Steelers is the improvements in the offense since the bye week. In looking at just the last nine games of the regular season for every NFL team, the Pittsburgh Steelers offense lands in the middle of the NFL in yardage where they are ranked 16th with their points per game at 17th with 20.9 since their bye week. The Steelers rushing attack was the 8th best in the NFL over their last nine games with an average of 146.4 yards per game. As for the passing attack, there was not much difference as the Steelers finished 23rd in the NFL over the last nine games averaging just under 200 yards per game.

Another key statistic comes with the Steelers ability to protect the quarterback and take care of the football. Through the first eight games, the Steelers surrendered 21 sacks while cutting the number down to 17 over the last nine games. More significantly, the Steelers 14 turnovers in their first eight games was cut to only five since their bye week."

 

[Don Wassall]

Canada has been the scapegoat of the DWFs all season for the organization's failures, this is great news

 

[footballenthusiast]

Schefter: Brian Flores Accepting Job To Become Minnesota Vikings Defensive Coordinator - Steelers Depot

Brian Flores’ stay in Pittsburgh will last only one year. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, he’s taking the Minnesota Vikings’ defensive coordinator job. Steelers’ assistant coach Brian Flores is accepting the Vikings’ defensive coordinator job, per source. — Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter)...

steelersdepot.com

 

[Don Wassall]

The Steelers' offensive scheme kept Kenny Pickett bottled up in his rookie season but he and the offense should take several steps forward in '23:

Kenny Pickett showing off the accuracy in workout video

The Pittsburgh Steelers rookie quarterback was showing off his accuracy, and what might be a new physique, in a workout video from Florida.

www.behindthesteelcurtain.com

 

[Don Wassall]

If the Steelers start him, as they certainly should (haven't seen contract terms yet), this is a pretty good landing spot for Holcomb with Spillane signing with the Raiders. He's still young and is a proven tackling machine but I'm always wary of anything concerning Mike Tomlin and his ways.

Steelers signed LB Cole Holcomb, formerly of the Commanders, to a three-year contract.​

Holcomb, 26, has started 48 games for Washington over the past four seasons. His career year came in 2021, when Holcomb recorded 145 tackles. He has 4.5 sacks in his NFL career and will join a Steelers defensive making free agency moves to improve for 2023 and beyond.

 

[Leonardfan]

Lb Myles Jack cut after one year. Perennially overrated since coming into the league.

 

[Don Wassall]

Lb Myles Jack cut after one year. Perennially overrated since coming into the league.

Which is good news for recently signed Cole Holcomb. Steelers also signed Elandon Roberts who is a mediocre linebacker and are letting colossal bust Devin Bush leave as a FA. Holcomb and Watt should be the stars of the defense this season if Cole isn't screwed over.

 

[jphoss]

Which is good news for recently signed Cole Holcomb. Steelers also signed Elandon Roberts who is a mediocre linebacker and are letting colossal bust Devin Bush leave as a FA. Holcomb and Watt should be the stars of the defense this season if Cole isn't screwed over.

Unbelievable how overhyped devin bush was I looked back at his stats and his last year at michigan he had 66 tackles and 4 sacks. With such great production the steelers took him 10th lmfao. Guess his upside didn’t pan out