Monthly Archives: November 2014

State of the Team Heading into the Bye

The Steelers are 7-4 heading into their bye week and currently occupy the sixth seed in the AFC playoffs if the season were to end right now. It is this point in the season that I personally find so exciting because I simply love the math and computations and all of it behind seeing who makes it into the elite 6 and makes the playoffs. There are just so many scenarios so for a math guy who is also a football guy this is bliss. One of my favorite sports websites is the NFL Yahoo Playoff Generator, whose time is nearly upon me to use it but not quite because you can only predict Week 13-17 and it is still Week 12, so while I can pick who I think the Steelers will win and lose to, I cannot accurately pick seedings and who will make it and who won’t because there is no surefire way to pick winners in Week 12. Check out the Playoff Generator for yourself! (You lucky Eagles fans, it actually has you guys in the 2 seed when you first go onto it).

I would say that I like where the team is right now even though it has the hardest remaining schedule in the AFC North, which is already tightly packed. The Steelers need to beat the Bengals both times they play them to basically secure a playoff spot with a AFC North Crown, and it would most likely be the third or fourth seed courtesy of thr New England Patriots and Denver Broncos. I would guess third seed because I do not think that the Indianapolis Colts, the future winners of the AFC South, will have a better record than us if we win the AFC North, and we own the tiebreaker against the Colts by virtue of the Steelers’ 51-34 win over them in Week 8.

The team recently released backup running back LeGarrette Blount in a very contradictory move that has left the depth chart for running backs behind Le’Veon Bell very small.Dri Archer, the speedy rookie drafted in the third round of the draft, is the only true running back who I would want to see out on the field if Bell were to have to sit out or (God forbid) got hurt.

Dri Archer, the Steelers' backup

Dri Archer, the Steelers’ backup

Le'Veon Bell, the Steelers' hopes and dreams with regard to the ground game.

Le’Veon Bell, the Steelers’ hopes and dreams with regard to the ground game.

Archer was injured earlier on in the season and is still a rookie with minimal experience so even he is not a very good option for tailback if Bell cannot perform. If Archer were to become our main source of running, then that would put a lot of offensive pressure back on Ben Roethlisberger who has, unfortunately, reached human level again and is no longer a TD-producing god. I think we have a solid chance of going to the playoffs and maybe even making it to the later rounds of the playoffs if we play like a complete team. Go ‘Lers.

Self-reflection on my TED Talk

I’m going to be one hundred percent, completely honest about how I did on my TED Talk: I don’t know how I did. It’s almost as though I have this condition where I remember the first five seconds of a presentation, relapse into memory loss, and then remember the last two seconds (this condition has a name: nerves). I felt as though I did not espouse a lot of confidence even though I practiced the talk extensively, simply because I had nerves. However, this just could me being hard on myself because I dislike the sound of my own voice (who doesn’t). I had a minor mishap with the visual aid in that I forgot to switch to my first (and least important) slide early on in the presentation, but I did well with the PowerPoint otherwise I feel, as I switched at times when I needed to be switching, and I did not base very much of my talk off the aid (emphasis on the fact that it was aiding my speech not doing it, which I have heard some people let it do).  I had a few stumbles here and there but did well overall because of the fact that I had practiced it so extensively, did research for it and my paradigm shift, and was interested in my topic. I felt I was in the middle of the pack with regard to the group I presented to, as no one’s was significantly worse or better than mine I thought, and that we all did well overall. Overall, I would most definitely consider my TED Talk a success as the pros (that I did very successfully deliver a talk) outdo the cons (few stumbles, PPT mistake) by a considerable margin.

…And there goes my optimism… (technical difficulties, this is the real post)

PIT: 13 NYJ: 20 FINAL

PIT: 13
NYJ: 20
FINAL

Riding a three-game winning streak against the very good teams of the Baltimore Ravens, Indianapolis Colts, and Houston Texans (well, at least J.J. Watt on the Texans is good), the Steelers went into East Rutherford to play a clearly inferior team in the New York Jets. Should be an easy win for a 6-3 team with momentum right? WRONG. The Jets beat the Steelers at home Sunday by the score of 20-13, and the Steelers looked straight embarrassing. The only touchdown scored by the offense I heralded as one of the best in the league last week was basically scored in garbage time by standout rookie Martavis Bryant (another story) with less than 2 minutes left in the game. Big Ben Roethlisberger, who had 12 TDs in the last 2 games, followed up with 1 TD and 2 INTs and a relatively poor overall performance. Needless to say, all good things come to an end, and they certainly did. The loss knocked the Steelers out of first in the AFC North and dropped them to third. You can see the standings for the NFL here, where you will mysteriously see Cleveland (yes, Cleveland) at 6-3 and in first place in the AFC North. What world is this? The Browns in first? Insanity.

The problem with the Steelers is seems is that they went on the road and lost to an inferior team once again. This has been a theme all throughout Mike Tomlin’s tenure as Pittsburgh’s head coach. We went into New York, lost to the one-win Jets, and soon have to head to Nashville to face the 2-win Titans. I am most certainly nervous about this upcoming game because it would fit the Steelers very well, losing to an inferior team two weeks after dismantling 3 very good ones. The Steelers are, if you look at the standings table posted above, actually 4-1 at Heinz Field, with the fans supporting them (their only loss came to the lowly Bucs, of course), and 2-3 on the road with the fans rooting against them. I feel that a .400 on the road is simply not an acceptable winning percentage for a team that can truly dismantle many good teams for three weeks in a row. What’s really sad is that I would say that we should actually be 8-2 right now and in first place in the AFC because we had potential to beat both the garbage Bucs and the garbage Jets. Head coach Ken Whisenhunt of the garbage Tennessee Titans, used to be our offensive coordinator in Ben’s formative years and will most likely know how our offense runs in principle as well as know what Ben likes, what he doesn’t, and how to stop him. I really try to be optimistic sometimes but right now I just cannot be because of how I feel we will lose this game and the next because I think at heart this season, the ‘Lers are a .500, 6-6 team.

Optimistic: Steelers 24, Titans 14

Pessimistic: Steelers 10, Titans 17

Don’t blame my pessimism if they lose 🙂

Birke Baehr: What’s wrong with our food system

To acquire some inspiration for my own TED Talk, I went onto Google Search and searched TED Talks organic food as a starting point. Google brought me up with three choices, two twenty-minute long videos, and a five-minute long video. Guess which one I watched. :). (Haha I watched the other ones too.) What really stuck out to me in the five minute video, however, as opposed to the twenty minute ones, was the speaker, an 11-year-old named Birke Baehr, and the topic: organic food. The topic was quite literally my topic, and the length of the video was quite literally my length, and that kid, at age 11, could have easily been (a much smarter version of) me.

Here is the link: Birke Baehr: What’s wrong with our food system

This TED Talk’s helps me figure out the setup of my own future TED Talk. Birke starts his off with his view of farms from a young age. He says that he thought that farms were beautiful places where animals existed with great freedom and cartoon-like actions: chickens pecking feed, cows grazing in wide green fields, and pigs happily rolling in mud and grime. What he really knows now is that corporations block animals in, prevent them from truly living their lives, and treat all food with chemicals. This TED Talk actually helped me decide stuff to research as well because it made topics within my topic more obvious and searchable. The part of the speech I cannot really replicate is the whole childish enthusiasm and cuteness part. This relatively cute 11-year-old is not delivering his talk to his peers, like I am, but rather is delivering his talk to adults far older than him who will almost condescendingly laugh at him and make him feel more comfortable despite his young age. Overall though, this talk is good for helping me set up the content of my essay.

Birke Baehr

Birke Baehr (no clue why it’s so distorted)

The Steelers: What we used to be and what we are now

Talk to anyone who knows any history about the Pittsburgh Steelers and you will hear them mention all the clichés: the Steel Curtain, Mean Joe Green, Blitzburgh, the Immaculate Reception, the Immaculate Interception…the list goes on and on.

"Sick, but a piece of history"

Sick, but a piece of history

All throughout history (well, since 1933, that is), the Steelers have been known for their extreme defensive prowess, tricky blitzes, and outright duping of opposing offensive coordinators. Whether the mind behind the team be Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher, or Dick LeBeau, the Steelers always stymied opposition and beat them into submission in a low-scoring struggle. Notice how I said any history when I was referring to the Steelers’ defensive legend. Hard-hitting, violent games controlled by superior defense are a thing of the past for the Steelers, as I have hit on several times throughout the course of this blog. I would not call the Steelers a defensive powerhouse: in the modern NFL, no one really is, save maybe the Seattle Seahawks. The Steelers are now what I would like to call (and many of my Philly friends disagree) an offensive juggernaut. Watching NFL Network today before Thursday Night Football, I noticed the bar on the bottom of the screen highlighting the leaders in offensive yard production. (Of course, there was no defensive stats, because defense isn’t exciting, so doesn’t attract fans, so doesn’t make money, so doesn’t register that much into fantasy football, so loses more money…sorry its just that there has been so much offense this year its making me insane. Can you tell?) Anyhoo, I noticed that the quarterback in second place for passing yards, behind Andrew Luck, was not Brady, or P. Manning, or Rodgers, but Ben Roethlisberger. Third place in rushing yards? None other than Le’Veon Bell. And number one in receiving? You guessed it: Antonio Brown. Now, all these should be taken with a grain of salt since most teams have had their bye week and we have not, but still that is a lot of offense for one team. I think that the Steelers were actually the only team that made it up there for all three positions (again, no bye).

Now let’s talk about what offense really does for us. Well you see, we have scored 94 points in the past two games. “That’s a lot” would be an understatement; thats 47 points per game if it were to improbably keep going. However…

...there's this little problem

…there’s this little problem

^I actually have not a clue how to make that white space go away. Offense never wins championships, even in this offense-happy league we call the NFL today. The Denver Broncos last season set records in all offensive categories, and got demolished by a good, but not record-setting Seattle Seahawks defense and team in the Super Bowl by a score of 43-8. So while I feel great currently about the Steelers scoring loads of points, and Big Ben putting up 12 TDs in two games, I feel pessimistic about the team’s chances of achieveing its overall goal, climbing the Stairway to Seven.

And she's buying a stairway to...seven...

And she’s buying a stairway to…seven… (Led Zeppelin, anyone?)