Patriot fans still can't let it go

Look at that stud of a man. John Molori. Looking as badass as ever. From that picture you may think that he is a Secret Service agent or possibly works in the Jet Propulsion Lab mixing dangerous chemicals with his bare hands. But you'd be wrong. The guy's main job is to cry about the Steelers being cheap shot artists and get the usual band of New England retahhhds to put their Guinness hats on and stumble out of the wordwork.



Carson Palmer knows it, so does Tom Brady and Matt Hasselbeck. Now, Willis McGahee knows it too. The Pittsburgh Steelers are cheap shot artists, plain and simple. They have been since Bill Cowher became their head coach in 1992, and they remain so with Mike Tomlin at the helm.

Aside from the obvious fact that you can't tear someone's ACL on command...when did a Steelers player ever cheap shot Matt Hasselbeck? Was it verbal? Did Larry Foote yell at him?



It is intrinsic in the game plan devised by defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau to take every opportunity to hurt the opposition whenever possible. Latter day Steeler football is all about blindside hits and helmet first shots. They rely on the consistent ignorance of NFL officials and the blind eye of the league to get away with it.

Please, back that up. Latter day Steeler football? Of course. Who can forget when Joseph Smith founded the team in 1837? Jeez. Lay Wes Welker out once while the ball is still in the air and get more panties in a bunch than in Oscar De La Hoya's laundry basket.



Steeler fans and the national media who seem to genuflect at the mere mention of this organization should stop sidestepping the issue and embrace what their team is, a band of thugs, no more, no less.

If this was your objective, to rile people up by saying idiotic things based on a hit that you didn't like, then +1 to you, good sir. You currently have one point. And who can forget Rodney Harrison making dirty hit after dirty hit from his perch across from Carnell Lake?




The media is especially guilty. In the wake of Ryan Clark’s dirty hit on Baltimore running back Willis McGahee late in Sunday’s AFC title game, announcers Jim Nantz and Phil Simms immediately exonerated Clark calling the hit perfectly legal. Their replays showed that Clark’s hit was clearly helmet-to-helmet, but Steeler love had taken over the broadcast booth. Clearly, this legendary team could never administer a dirty hit. Please.

That's a legal hit, you fucking moron. And that's what they said. First, and this is going based on actual NFL rules so you may be in the dark here, it is not illegal to go helmet to helmet on a runner with the ball. He wasn't a defenseless receiver. Second, just that, the players defending themselves, is what led to the "dirty" hit in question. Clark leads with his shoulder, McGahee puts his head down to brace for impact and their helmets collide. You can tell by the way Clark went down that he did not intend to hit McGahee like that. This stuff happens in football games, where bands of thugs run full speed to impress NFL teams and earn contracts to help them pay off all of their bail money and child support.



Then some guy named beisbolct steps in to further the argument.



It’s no surprise that Simms let Clark off the hook. He has, in the past, cowered, or shall I say, Cowher-ed similarly. In the first half of the 2002 AFC title game between the Steelers and New England, Simms failed to take a stand when Steelers linebacker Jason Gildon rolled over onto Tom Brady’s legs nearly injuring the Pats’ QB.

Yes. Phil Simms loves the Steelers. He'll admit it if you manage to sneak in a conversation with him after he's done blowing Ed Reed.

I'd also like to know how Jason Gildon "nearly injured" Tom Brady, and if he could have injured him, why didn't he? He probably couldn't do any more damage than Brady's surgeon has already done. I feel bad for New England fans that Phil Simms doesn't immediately step to their defense when their football players get touched innappropriately, just like their young Catholic boys.




Later in the half, when Lee Flowers delivered his infamous dirty hit to Brady’s leg knocking him out of the game, Simms was again mum.

Infamous? Maybe it's still talked about at Boston area kid-molesting parties, but that's about it.




In the second half of that game, New England’s Ty Law shoved Hines Ward while the two were out of bounds. Referee Ed Hochuli tagged Law for unnecessary roughness, but failed to call Ward for a blatant facemask.

Last year, Vince Wilfork gouged out a lineman's eyes in the regular season game against the Giants last year. He was also fined for delivering an unquestionably cheap shot to JP Losman's legs and almost suspended after a hit on Jay Cutler. He's one of the thuggiest players in the NFL. Do you people not get your own games on TV up there?




CBS showed several replays of the call, and not once did Simms remark on the obvious facemask. But this is Steeler football, baby. Smile to the cameras. Hire a coach that sucks up to the media and loves to be on TV, and you can get away with anything.

Damn it, Phil Simms! Come to our defenses! Be our obviously Steeler-biased knight in shining armor! At least all the Steelers were doing with cameras over the past 8 years was smiling at them.




Monday, on SIRIUS NFL Radio, Randy Cross and Solomon Wilcots also defended Clark’s hit on McGahee. Wilcots said that there was a little helmet to helmet contact, but stood up for the Steelers. Cross actually said that helmet to helmet hits on a runner do not exist, whatever that means. The pair then chuckled about Willis McGahee being “liquified.” Yeah guys, seeing a player carried off on a stretcher always tickles my funny bone. Later in the show, Cross and Wilcots seemed more concerned about the health and state of Clark than McGahee.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ALL OF YOU, THE MEDIA?!?! WHY CAN NONE OF YOU SEE THE TRUTH?!?!?

If you don't know "whatever that means" that helmet-to-helmet hits on a runner don't exist, read above. It can be explained in one sentence. You guys are obviously huge fans of the sport.

Later in the evening, Solomon Wilcots was spotted inside of Willis McGahee's hospital room wearing a Norm Johnson jersey and urinating directly into McGahee's feeding tube.




Pittsburgh’s recent history of cheap shots is the stuff of which championships are made. The Steelers’ only Super Bowl title since the Reagan administration was a direct result of perhaps the most fiendish hit in recent memory.

The Steelers only title in the past twenty years in a league of 32 teams? Also, Wilfork's hit on Losman was orders of magnitude cheaper than Von Oelhoffen's hit on Palmer. Again, they sacked Peyton Manning like 5 times the next week. Why didn't they take him out?




Flash back to the 2005 NFL Wild Card playoffs, Pittsburgh at Cincinnati. The Bengals had finally put together a great season led by quarterback Carson Palmer. They looked every bit the championship team until Pittsburgh’s Kimo von Oelhoffen delivered a vile hit damaging Palmer’s ACL, MCL and PCL. The cheap shot ended the Bengals title hopes and changed the balance of power in the AFC North for the rest of the decade.

They looked every bit the championship team for the 2 plays of the game that happened before that hit.




Once again, the Steeler apologists immediately absolved von Oelhoffen of any wrongdoing. In true Steeler fashion, von Oelhoffen said he did not mean to hurt Palmer, the same way Ryan Clark sat on the Pittsburgh bench Sunday night seemingly remorseful about his hatchet job on McGahee. Sorry guys, in both cases, the damage had already been done. Palmer has never truly recovered from that hit, and has battled other injuries ever since.

True Steeler fashion, right there. On any other team, Clark would have came out lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills earmarked for Darfur, jacking off on stage while discussing how he intended to paralyze Willis McGahee.

Also, blaming Von Oelhoffen's hit for Carson Palmer's current shoulder injury would be like blaming the 50 Cent-Ja Rule beef for the civil war in Rwanda.

The beloved Steelers of course went on to win the Super Bowl against Seattle in one of the worst officiated games in Super Bowl history. Most of the bad calls, of course, went in favor of Pittsburgh. First time Super Bowl referee Bill Leavy and his crew negatively affected the outcome of the game in embarrassing fashion.

They missed several offside calls against Pittsburgh, called a phantom hold on Seahawk Sean Locklear nullifying a big reception by Jerramy Stevens and called a bogus block below the waist on Seattle QB Matt Hasselbeck.

Several offsides calls? Never heard that one. Also, the phantom hold was easily confirmed up by replay as a hold and the bogus block below the waist on Hasselbeck was a block below the waist that you are not allowed to do and was by no means a game changing penalty. The interception had already occurred. But feel free to continue making stuff up, it gives me things to write about.

A called fumble by Hasselbeck was correctly overturned by replay, but a clear helmet first hit by Deshea Townsend on Hasselbeck with 6:20 left in the game went ignored. Another dirty Steeler hit, another non-call by officials, another bogus Steeler victory.

Another bogus Steeler victory marred by a brutal Deshea Townsend hit.

Watch the video. The hit happens about 8 minutes into it. The fact that this guy considers that a clear helmet-first dirty cheap hit undermines everything he's ever written in his life, including grocery lists and post-it notes reminding him that sharing needles can lead to HIV.

The Steelers are not only dirty, they are gutless. At least the Raiders of the 1970s accepted what they were. Jack Tatum, George Atkinson and the gang admitted that they were out to injure and maim. The Cowher-Tomlin Steelers seem to want it all. They want to be respected as a hard-hitting football team that does things the right way, yet on the field, their record of questionable actions speaks for itself.

You are now comparing the Deshea Townsend hit linked to above to Jack Tatum. Join our writer next week as he describes the similarities between Dick LeBeau's zone blitz packages and the Holocaust.

The towel waving Steeler fools and the merry band of Black and Gold boosters in the media can try to cloak the cheap shots in fabled glory. Bill Cowher can sit at the CBS anchor desk flapping his chin about hard nosed football, and Mike Tomlin can feign concern for victims of his brand of football. Their words are meaningless. On February 1, the Pittsburgh Steelers may in fact be crowned the NFL’s champs. In truth, they are nothing more than a bunch of chumps.

New England fans like to say that we can't get them out of our head yet they continue to come up with stuff like this to discredit the Steelers at every opportunity. I just don't get how a team that is supposedly so dominant over another in the playoffs can have such an inferiority complex. I didn't know if carried over from their baseball hystrionics. While Pittsburgh is the dirtiest team in the league according to New Englanders, New England is the dirtiest team in the league according to actual video. And I'll trust the video. A picture is worth 1,000 words, or, in the case of Vince Wilfork, about $15,000.

Addition - A good quote from a friend who I consider to have a Ph. D. on this subject:

This really is the most retarded part of it all isn't it. Dude is condemning Cross (Randy Cross is another guy who LOVES him some Stillers by the way) for saying that there's no penalty for helmet to helmet on a ball carrier by doing not an ounce of research to understand the rules and simply writing "whatever that means"?

Furthermore...Tedy Bruschi banged up Duce Staley's knee in a pile in 2004. Richard Seymour kicked a defender in the head when he was lying on the ground after a whistle and Simms said nothing. Simms watched this dirty ass play by Vrabel and responded with WHAT A SPIN MOVE!!! I mean, is there any scenario whereby a Steeler does that and nobody says a fucking word?

Absolutely not. WHAT THE FUCK, SIMMS?!?!?