It’s hard to believe we haven’t done this one yet, but your draft this week requires you to pick your favorite NFL game ever, postseason, regular season, whatever. And it can be for any goddamn arbitrary reason you want. It need not be the best game. Shit, it can be a game where a player you hate got hurt. I’m sure the Theismann game will go early.

For most people. I imagine, t choice is bound to be tinged by homerism. For me, it’s no different. A sloppy game your team wins is exactly 18 times better than the most tightly contested games between two teams you couldn’t give a shit about. Sure, I loved the shit out of the most recent Super Bowl. It was probably the best one yet. But to me it’s not going to touch the three to five biggest victories by the Steelers over the last 15 years. If you’re able to distance yourself from your favorite team enough to pick an epically contested game, more power to you. With that kind of ability for emotional disconnection, you should probably be a surgeon or something.

My opening pick: The 1995 AFC Championship Game

Odd as it is, the two most memorable games the Steelers have played in my lifetime have been playoff contests against the Colts. Absolutely, Super Bowl XL resulted in one of the most deliriously happy moments of my life (that life, by the way: very shallow), but objectively I can admit that the game itself sucked. Really, for me, it’s a toss-up between ’95 AFC Title Game and the 2005 Divisional Round victory in Indianapolis. Both games were instant classics that came down to the wire. Sure, you could make the argument that the 2005 game should be more satisfying, as the Steelers’ chances of winning were nigh on inconceivable, whereas in ’95 they were heavy favorites.

But that discounts their agonizing loss to the Chargers in the conference title game following the 1994 season. The mantra for the entire 1995 season was “Three More Yards,” which symbolized just how close they got to being blown out by the 49ers in Super Bowl XXIX. The ’95 AFC Title Game went much like the previous year’s, with the Steelers squandering a lead late in the second half, via a long TD pass from Jim Harbaugh to Floyd Turner that more than smacked of the Stan-Humphries-to-Tony-Martin dagger from the year before. That put Pittsburgh in the same position they were in in ’94: needing a final scoring drive to send them to the Super Bowl. This time, however, they did it. Then, of course, they had to weather a nearly completed Hail Mary pass to Aaron Bailey that, if I weren’t 13 at the time, would’ve given me a Tim Russert-sized heart attack on the spot.

Some of it has to do with age. At 23, however still young and irreponsible you may be, you can’t have the unalloyed obsession with sports you could at 13. By then, you’re (at least nominally) an adult, you mostly likely have started a career, probably are in a relationship, have gained at least some semblance of perspective. When you’re 13, you really don’t have shit else to think about. These big games are beyond life and death. They get amplified to an importance that’s nearly biblical. There is no tomorrow if your team loses. It’s supremely subjective but if you know any other way people experience life, Mr. Fucking Dispassionate Robot Person, I’d like to hear it.