John Steigerwald Columns category, Page 3
John Steigerwald: Steelers QB Mason Rudolph shouldn’t get off so easily in Myles Garrett fight
Has everybody calmed down? Let’s try to take a nonhysterical look at what happened Thursday night in Cleveland. Myles Garrett of the Browns hit Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph on his helmetless head with his own helmet. And now Garrett is suspended indefinitely, for the rest of this season at...
John Steigerwald: Let college football players go to NFL when they’re ready
Break up the NFL. While you’re at it, break up the NBA, the NHL and MLB. And, oh yeah, the NCAA. But let’s start with the NFL. Have you heard the story about Chase Young? He is the defensive end at Ohio State who is considered to be the consensus...
John Steigerwald: Winning streak has given Steelers a pulse
Back on Sept. 16 when it was announced Ben Roethlisberger would have surgery on his elbow and miss the last 14 games of the regular season, I had planned to predict the Steelers would win four of their next six games, but I forgot. Remember when the conventional wisdom was...
John Steigerwald: Same old song for Pitt football since Dan Marino left
Pitt is still Pitt. There was an opportunity Saturday for a program that has been struggling since Dan Marino left in 1982 to move beyond mediocrity and actually be considered a good team. But Pitt, being Pitt, managed to play just well enough to lose a homecoming game to a...
John Steigerwald: Publicly funded stadium was worst decision for real Pirates fans
The Pittsburgh Pirates do not belong to you. They do not belong to the City of Pittsburgh. They belong to G. Ogden Nutting and his son, Bob, and a few other investors, who own a small percentage of the franchise. There appears to be a movement afoot in certain parts...
John Steigerwald: Losing a franchise QB not an excuse anymore
It can be done. The Steelers have won two games with quarterbacks who, before being used in an emergency this season, had never thrown a pass in an NFL regular season game. Devlin Hodges, who was working on his world famous duck calls before being brought in off the street...
John Steigerwald: Scholarships, education should be payment enough
Two down, 48 to go. California’s state government decided on Monday that it would be a good idea to stick its nose into a mutual agreement between college athletes and the NCAA. You know, the one in which people between the ages of 18 and 22, in many cases with...
John Steigerwald: Don’t blame Clint Hurdle for Pirates’ failures
Who’s the greatest manager in MLB history? I don’t know. You pick. Is it one of the three or four guys lucky enough to manage the New York Yankees when they were putting an All-Star team on the field every game? Whoever it is, if he had been brought back...
John Steigerwald: Mason Rudolph not up to job for Steelers
It could have been worse. Actually, it should have been worse. The Steelers almost got out of San Francisco with a win because the 49ers were determined to give them one. How often does a team commit four turnovers in the first half and win? The 49ers finished with five...
John Steigerwald: Pitt’s Pat Narduzzi could learn a lot from Pete Carroll
I wonder if Pat Narduzzi watched the Pittsburgh Steelers-Seattle Seahawks game. If he did, he saw a coach, the Seahawks’ Pete Carroll, play to win, which is exactly what Narduzzi didn’t do when his Pitt team had fourth-and-goal at the Penn State 1 on Saturday. Narduzzi’s Pitt team was down...
John Steigerwald: Antonio Brown looks crazy like a fox
Antonio Brown got the last laugh. He laughed at the Steelers and laughed at the Oakland Raiders and he laughed at the National Football League, and if you think he cares about the $15 million in guaranteed money he left behind in Oakland on Saturday, he’s laughing at you, too....
John Steigerwald: Early season cupcake games are dumb, greedy
Idaho has been outscored 158-20 in its last two season openers. Penn State beat the Fighting Potatoes, 79-7, on Saturday at Happy Valley. Last September, it lost to Fresno State in a squeaker 79-13. Nothing new here. The stupidity of cupcake openers has been going on for a long time,...
John Steigerwald: Andrew Luck has perspective many adult male NFL fans lack
Good for Andrew Luck. He has had enough of football and officially announced his retirement at a news conference Saturday. Lots of Indianapolis Colts fans took it personally and booed him as he was walking off the field that night. Many of the boos came from grown men wearing jerseys...
John Steigerwald: Misconceptions exist about running QBs in NFL
“Slide a little bit.” That was Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ advice for Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson after they played each other in a preseason game Thursday. Rodgers also said, “I love watching you play, man. That was spectacular.” He was talking about an 18-yard touchdown run by...
John Steigerwald: NFL preseason games give empty feeling to many
Exhibition games used to be for the fans. Now they’re for the coaches, and they’re tough to watch. Unless you’re watching them like a coach, purely as a way to evaluate players. And they were called exhibition games before they were called preseason games. Somewhere along the line, somebody at...
John Steigerwald: Measuring Steelers, Browns, Ravens delusions
Whose fans (and, in some cases, media) are more delusional, the Cleveland Browns’, the Baltimore Ravens’ or the Pittsburgh Steelers’? The fans are fired up in Cleveland because the Browns have one of those “Quarterbacks of the Future,” and they won more than two games last season. The Sporting News...
John Steigerwald: Equality Act could create major problems for women’s sports
Do you have a daughter, granddaughter or niece who plays a sport in high school or college? If so, you might want to think about contacting your congressperson and ask about the Equality Act. Especially if that congressperson is a Democrat. That party voted unanimously to pass the Equality Act...
John Steigerwald: ’79 Pirates reminder of difficulty current small-market teams have
What will happen first: An American walking on Mars or the Pirates going to another World Series? Right now, I’d put my money on a Mars walk. The Pirates celebrated the 40th anniversary of their most recent World Series win Saturday night — the same night America was celebrating the...
John Steigerwald: NFL finds another way to give fans less for their money
“Eighteen games is straight baloney, either way you cut it.” You wonder how many NFL players agree with that tweet from Pittsburgh Steelers defensive end Cameron Heyward on Saturday. According to Andrew Beaton of the Wall Street Journal, the owners are going to try to sell the players on an...
John Steigerwald: In listening to Kaepernick, Nike shows its values are misplaced
Colin Kaepernick lit a cherry bomb two days before Independence Day and disturbed what had been a pretty quiet beginning of the summer, if you don’t count the stupidity surrounding the U.S. women’s soccer team. Kaepernick, who apparently majored in revisionist history at Nevada, decided to be offended by Nike’s...
John Steigerwald: Personality, not production, led to Phil Kessel, Antonio Brown trades
Two Pittsburgh teams have become a lot less entertaining since their seasons ended. Whether they both got better and closer to championships remains to be seen. The Phil Kessel trade looks like a good one for the Penguins. On paper. Kessel had to go. He wanted out, and he probably...
John Steigerwald: Maybe best deals are no deals for Penguins stars
Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don’t make. Somebody said that a long time ago, but nobody has been able to prove it because general managers, no matter the sport, never talk about the trades they could have made but didn’t. So maybe Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford’s...
John Steigerwald: Home runs can no longer save baseballVideo
“Chicks dig the long ball.” That was the message delivered in a 1998 Nike commercial. It was the answer given by two skinny pitchers, who were asked why they were training so hard. Mark McGwire, who was on his way to 70 home runs that year and looked like an...
John Steigerwald: Pirates not signing Dallas Keuchel actually makes sense
Dallas Keuchel to the Pirates? Are you serious? When Keuchel, who won the Cy Young award in 2015, signed as a free agent with the Atlanta Braves last week, there was the usual and expected outcry from fans and some in the media. He only cost the Braves $13 million....
John Steigerwald: Cubs’ Albert Almora Jr. not to blame for girl’s injury
Somebody owes Albert Almora Jr. an apology. Almora is the Chicago Cubs outfielder whose line drive struck a 4-year-old girl Wednesday night in Houston. His emotional reaction received almost as much attention as the little girl being carried up the aisle by her father. Almora Jr. seemed to be blaming...
