Drinking The Purple Kool Aid

The Worst Case Scenario in Pittsburgh August 16, 2010

The Pittsburgh fan is a unique breed. The kind of cyclic delusion that causes one to believe rolling a two on a roulette wheel increases the chances of rolling another one. So when they are forced to play the first four weeks of the season without bathroom tourist Ben Roethlisberger, they’re not only calm, but confident. Message boards are teeming with various incarnations of ‘Don’t sleep on the Steelers! We’ve won six rings, which cosmically means we always have a better chance to win another!’ The die-hards in Pittsburgh and band-wagoners across the globe foresee positive results in the four games without Ben.

But what if they’re right?

Just ask the Ravens, Jaguars, Giants, Chargers and most of the teams in the league: you can’t win without a quarterback. Only once has a team won in spite of their field general, but he was mediocre, not wretched. The construct of the Pittsburgh roster is not to play hard-nosed, pound-the-rock football, but to chuck it around. It’s like a golfer suddenly deciding he’s going to make all of his putts.

If the Steelers break even, win three or, god forbid, sweep their Ben-less games, it’ll create a true worst case scenario in the Steel City. How is winning bad?

If they win, it’ll be because of Dennis Dixon. He’s fast, he’s surprisingly accurate, and throws a better deep ball than other players in his category of ‘mobile backup.’ He nearly led the Steelers to victory in Baltimore last season. Three of their four opponents finished in the top ten against the run last year, and ALL made upgrades to their defensive fronts: Baltimore (5 vs run) added Terrence Cody, Atlanta (10t) got Sean Witherspoon and Peria Jerry back from injury, Tennessee (10t) now have Derrick Morgan, and the Bucs bolstered their dead-last rating by nabbing two massive defensive tackles in Gerald McCoy and Brian Price. Pittsburgh has to throw to beat these teams.

Scratch that: Dixon has to throw.

If you have two starting quarterbacks, you have zero. If Dixon plays out of his mind, do you really go back to Ben? He’ll be rusty, he always has a bit of a turnover problem, and he also has a $100 million contract that is in jeopardy every time he has a couple Incredible Hulks with college girls.

Every quarterback gets benched eventually. That’s how Ben got the job in the first place.