Steelers lose. Again.

(Peter Diana/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

That picture is pretty much the last thing you want to see when you're a Steelers fan. Losing two weeks in a row after good starts is bad enough and then you add in that it was to the Bungles and things are all downhill after that. Let's face it, you can blame this loss on quite a few people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know. It's a team loss. But right now, we don't care about being all for the team and have decided to blame this loss on Limas Sweed. Yes, Limas Sweed. How can you drop that touchdown?! It was a sure thing! Looks like someone just lost the 3rd receiver position for sure now.

Okay, okay so we'll try to get back to being rational. No, it's not all Sweed's fault. The defense had a lot to do with that loss (obviously) as well as a coaching decision or two. There were a lot of mistakes but of course there was the good as well, believe it or not (Mike Wallace, that's you).

Taking everything into account, we have to say we're the most concerned about the defense. This is the defense that was the best in the league last year and now it's losing games for the team to the Bungles? C'mon! This is like a terrible nightmare. You thought that if you could count on anything, it was the defense. Not so much the last two weeks. So what's wrong with them? Why the collapse late in games?

We're going to sleep on that one. More later.

Yinz Luv 'Da Stillers Week 2

First of all we have to apologize for our lack of postings. We haven't been on our game to say the least. Do you ever feel like life just sucks sometimes? That would be us right now. We've had internet problems, life problems, blah blah blah. We're going to try to get our act together and get things going the right way around here. Hopefully sooner rather than later. We've already missed a couple of Pens preseason games (losses) and a Steelers game (loss). Ugh.

And for your viewing pleasure, Yinz Luv 'Da Stillers Week 2:

Greetings from training camp

We headed down to Pens training camp last Sunday and took a ton of pictures, some of which were not worth looking at unfortunately. Below are a few of them with a story or two while we're at it. Enjoy.

Consol Energy Center from the Mellon Arena side.

Jordan Staal walking in just before the start looking a tad sleepy.

GENO!

Eric Goddard

Tyler Kennedy with Dan Bylsma practicing a little shooting.

Marc-Andre Fleury

Jordan Staal on the "faceoff."

Doing a little planning on the white board.

Brooks Orpik

Sergei Gonchar

Fleury and Dupuis having a strategy session.

Brooks Orpik

An end of session puckfest on Fleury.

Billy Guerin and Chris Kunitz chatting it up.

Sidney Crosby!

Sid is even intense in practice.

Fleury

John Curry

Sid

After session stretching.

After practice shots of the guys leaving.

Sergei Gonchar

Could it be Sidney Crosby?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! *screaming*

Nope. But everyone sure thought it was, yelling his name and demanding autographs. He finally had to say "I'm not Sid." We have to give it to them, it does look like Sid from that point of view, but Sid has bigger calves! C'mon people!

Billy Guerin showing the cooking staff his goodies. Someone asked him what it was and he responded "booze!" Laughing ensued and he proceeded to say that it was "the special kind" and that "he wouldn't drink it." He threw it in his car and then went to sign autographs. When he came back to his car he told everyone to take it easy and waved. Very likable guy with a great personality. He was taking the guys you'll see below over to the Marriott near Mellon Arena.

Alex Goligoski

Gogo and Billy's friends whose names we can't tell you. Sorry!

The real Sidney Crosby. He dropped off his "booze" and proceeded to go over to a group of people waiting for autographs just down from his Range Rover. The people were polite when asking for autographs from the lesser known guys but once Sid started walking over there it was total chaos. People didn't care about barriers or anything for that matter and basically mobbed him. He was being surrounded and quite frankly we have no idea how he deals with it. The picture below shows the crowd, just before he became completely engulfed.

Sid's Range Rover and Fleury's Lamborghini

Marc-Andre Fleury

Fans above were asking him questions to which he said he didn't know. He then was telling the guy beside him to help Sidney because he was going to get mobbed. They weren't fast enough. A woman who came out took charge and told the mob he was leaving and basically dragged him out of there and forced him into his RR. Kind of amusing really. (See below)

Fleury hiding from the mob.

Chris Kunitz

That's it! It was a good day and an enjoyable experience. We mentioned it before but Chris Conner stood out to us the most. He has good speed and was scoring left and right. Eric Tangradi looked good as well. Dan Bylsma also has this child-like love of the game that really shows. He was out skating laps and shooting pucks with the rest of the guys and enjoying every second of it. Kids along the glass were taking pictures and he would skate by and make faces at their cameras. Just an all around good guy. We can't wait for the season to start.

The Pens had their annual Black and Gold game with the Black team winning 3-2. Alex Goligoski had a hat trick to win the game for the Black team. Details here.

The Pens play the Maple Leafs Friday in their last home preseason game.

The Pens will receive their Stanley Cup rings on September 29th.

Pens win first preseason game

The Pens won their first preseason game last night 5-4 against the Blue Jackets in overtime. Sidney Crosby and Chris Kunitz each had two goals with Chris Conner having the other. Besides all the goals, the game included a couple of fights. What a way to start off the season. For all the info on the game head over to Empty Netters where Seth live blogged the game. Remember that three games will be aired by NHL Network this preseason. September 21st at 7:30, September 22nd at 7:00, and September 27th at 5:00.

We did make our trip to training camp and will get some pictures up soon hopefully. Didn't get as many good ones as we would have liked but we've got a few worth a look. We hope some of you got a chance to go, it was a good time. Chris Conner had a goal last night and we're not surprised. He was one of the guys who stuck out to us in training camp because one, he's not very big, think the Stefan Logan of the Pens. And two, he was scoring left and right on the drills (Fleury was the goalie if that makes a difference to anyone). He seems to be making a good name for himself. Eric Tangradi seems to be looking good as well.

Lastly, a nice little article on Geno for your reading pleasure.

Yinz Luv 'Da Stillers

First YLDS of the season. Enjoy.

Steelers start the season off right

We probably should have put sort-of in the title as the Steelers did start off the season with a win, they had their mistakes. Or downright disasters, also known as the running game. And Hines Ward's fumble, but he gets the benefit of the doubt on that one as won't be making a habit of that. The Steelers wouldn't be the same without him. Or Big Ben. He may have been off at the beginning of the game, but he was his usual self when he needed to be, leading his 20th career come from behind win to beat the Titans 13-10 in overtime.

The good:

- Big Ben proved that his legal troubles are not going to distract him on the football field. It's ridiculous how many times he's led a come from behind win in the final minutes of a game. Who do you want leading your team when you're losing in the final minutes? Tom and Peyton who?

- Stefan Logan. Awesome. It's about time we can get excited about a guy taking one to the house or at least getting them great field position. No more fair catches 90% of the time or getting two yards. Who would have thought a 5'6" guy from the CFL would make such a big difference? Granted it hasn't been long, but he looks good so we'll jump on the bandwagon.

- More special teams. Who would think you'd miss your punter? Daniel Sepulveda never looked so good. It may not seem like much until you end up with a couple of bum punters and the other team is starting at their 40 every time you punt. Sepulveda looks great and we all know field position is extremely important.

- It looks like Limas Sweed lost the number three receiver spot to Mike Wallace. We were wondering why Sweed was rarely on the field as we were under the impression that he had the number three spot, obviously not. Wallace came up big near the end of the game and made a huge catch to set up the winning field goal. So far so good. (Edit: Bruce Arians is saying that Sweed and Wallace are interchangeable in the three spot and he didn't mean for Sweed to be on the bench as much as he was.)

- Santonio Holmes. He looks like the big time receiver he was in the Super Bowl. He had nine receptions for 131 yards and a touchdown. He made some big catches when it counted and has obviously taken lessons from Ward in standing in to make the catch when you know you're going to get hit.

The bad:

- Troy Polamalu gets hurt. His tackle early in the game for a loss was nuts and the interception was even more nuts (yes this should have been under the good) but he also had a couple of miscues with penalties. But then he gets hurt. After Aaron Smith blocks a Tennessee field goal attempt (good!), Troy is trying to make a play on the ball and Alge Crumpler lands on his leg, which twists in ways it shouldn't have twisted. And let's face it, Crumpler isn't exactly a small guy. So far all we've heard is it is a sprained MCL but he was supposed to have tests to see if it could possibly be any worse. He is expected to be out at least three to six weeks. Not good news for the Steelers. Are we the only ones who thought Madden curse? We seriously don't want to buy into the crap but look how many players have been bitten by something after being on the cover. Donovan McNabb, Michael Vick, and Shaun Alexander have been hit by the so-called curse. Definitely weird.

- The run game. Where was it and how do we get it back? It doesn't seem as if it's something you can blame entirely on the offensive line. Willie Parker just doesn't look good. And according to this article, the scouts don't think so either. We'd like to see Rashard Mendenhall get more carries along with Mewelde Moore, they had better results.

- We're not the only ones disappointed by the pass coverage, are we? We want to see more aggressive plays and broken up passes. It was getting frustrating watching Kerry Collins throw completion after completion.

Overall a little rust, but things are looking good. Big Ben also doesn't seem like his off the field issues will be interfering with his play any time soon. 1-0 looks good.

According to sources, Mike Tomlin is in talks with the Steelers about a contract extension past the two years that remain on his current deal.

Big Ben is clutch.

No update on Troy until Monday.

Harrison's hit a cheap shot? Bo Scaife seems to think so but his coach doesn't agree.

The Steelers are a big hit on TV.

Santonio Holmes is good.

So is Big Ben.

As for the Pens, they visited the White House. Link to Seth's montage over at Empty Netters.

The Pens will report to training camp tomorrow at 8 a.m. for physicals and other amazingly fun things. Sunday they will hit the ice. We're going to be heading down to visit training camp and hopefully it'll be a great time. We'll get some pictures up as soon as possible.

Penguins single game tickets go on sale today (Saturday) at 10 a.m.

Ahhhhhh!!!

Yes, the title says it all. We have been horribly remiss to not post all that has been happening the last few days. Not to mention the NFL season kicks off today with the Steelers playing the Tennessee Titans.

We apologize for lack of time for any real content but please head over to our favorite site for Steelers stuff, the Post-Gazette. They also have their Steelers and NFL preview.

Enjoy the game.

HERE WE GO STEELERS, HERE WE GO!

Cuts are made, roster down to 53

The Steelers have made all the cuts necessary to get their roster down to the 53 necessary for the season. There were a few kind of surprising ones in Isaac Redman, Anthony Madison, and Carey Davis. Also cut were Bruce Davis, Donovan Woods, Scott Paxson, Sonny Harris, A.Q. Shipley, Mike Reilly, Justin Vincent, Piotr Czech, Jeremy Parquet, Jason Capizzi, Steve McLendon, Dezmond Sherrod, Roy Lewis, Andy Shantz, Tom Korte, Dallas Baker, Tyler Grisham, and Brandon Williams.

The Steelers will try to re-sign some of these players to their eight-man practice squad, including A.Q. Shipley, Isaac Redman, and Sonny Harris. NFL teams have 24 hours to claim players off of waivers and can also begin signing players to their practice squads by noon today (Sunday).

The Steelers are also looking for a veteran offensive lineman considering the backups they have now do not have any NFL experience.

Sean McHugh, who had arthroscopic knee surgery last week, was placed on injured reserve. That means his season is over.

You can read all of this and how the team breaks down here.

Here is an article about a group of guys who traveled to Pittsburgh to have their fantasy football draft. What?! Nuts!

We forgot to mention the other day that the Pens will be heading to the White House to visit President Barack Obama on Thursday at 6 p.m.

See you soon.

Preseason is over

The presason is now over and it's time to make those final roster cuts and for the games to start counting for something. Only seven days...

Speaking of cuts, we think we know someone who won't be getting cut and that is one Stefan Logan. Ron Cook seems to agree with us. We unfortunately did not get to watch the game last night because we're outside of the Pittsburgh market, which is ridiculous considering we live in PA but that's a whole other issue. Our reason for wanting to watch was Logan himself and he definitely didn't disappoint. We caught his 70-yard punt return for a touchdown on the Final Score (does anyone like that show? So annoying!) after watching the NFL Films' story of the 2008 Pittsburgh Steelers special "Brothers and Champions" on FSN which will be available on DVD at Pittsburgh McDonald's starting September 7th for $7.99 with the purchase of an extra value meal. A portion of the proceeds go to the Ronald McDonald House.

Speaking of Steelers' specials, NFL Network will debut the 2008 Pittsburgh Steelers "America's Game" on Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. If you're not familiar with the series, although you should be, it's the NFL's award winning series chronicling each Super Bowl winning team. Each hour-long episode takes you through the year and the story is told by coaches and players. The 2008 Steelers will be told through the eyes of Mike Tomlin, Ben Roethlisberger and Troy Polamalu. If you haven't seen the advertisements for this then you haven't seen Mike Tomlin's comical narration of how "kind of dirty" the Lombardi trophy is. Be sure to tune in to that, it will be worth your time.

But back to what we were talking about, Stefan Logan. How nice will it be to have some excitement again on kickoffs and punt returns? Someone who is a threat to take one to the house on any occasion. We don't know about you, but we also like the fact that the guy is only around 5' 6". How many times must he have been looked over based on height alone? He seems to have made the right impression on Mike Tomlin and should definitely have earned his roster spot. Mike Tomlin said that all of his cuts will be done today (Friday) even though they do not have to be done until Saturday.

Oh yeah, if you didn't know, the Steelers beat the Carolina Panthers 21-10. Ryan Mundy (one of our favorites) even had an interception return for a touchdown. Issac Redman scored yet another touchdown and is making it awfully hard for Mike Tomlin to turn him away.

See you later for the final cuts.

We're back!

Here we are, back after a long vacation that unfortunately did not include sandy beaches and temperatures in the 80s. Far from it actually. But now the NFL preseason is almost over and the Steelers will meet the Titans to open the season next week. Pens training camp is just around the corner. Excited yet?

If not, this video should get you going:

In the news:

The Steelers signed defensive end Brett Keisel to a five-year contract this afternoon. He was in his last year under his current contract. He will more than likely be the last player the Steelers will sign until after this season.

Players who are also in their last year: Casey Hampton, Willie Parker, Jeff Reed, Willie Colon, Ryan Clark, and Justin Hartwig.

Players who were in their last year but signed extensions: James Harrison, Chris Kemoeatu, Max Starks, Trai Essex, Heath Miller, Hines Ward, and Keyaron Fox.

The Steelers put offensive lineman Darnell Stapleton on injured reserve which ends his season. They also released four players in center Alex Stepanovich, wide receivers Martin Nance and Steven Black, and safety Derrick Richardson.

Hockey season is right around the corner, do you believe it? We're excited.

Who else would do such little but awesome things for people and still be hated? Read nice Sidney Crosby story number one and number two (last question).

If you're not reading Empty Netters, you really need to be. Seth also has posted his new amendments to the Jersey Foul Bill of Rights.

Lastly, Yinz Luv 'Da Stillers is back with a two-part preseason special. Enjoy.