With no Marion Barber, Romo will have to keep his throwing pinkie warm, as the expected wind chill at kickoff in Pittsburgh is going to be in the neighborhood of 7 degrees. In the meantime, I’d like to extend a hearty fuck-you-in-the-pants to NFL Network for playing Super Bowl XIII on loop all weekend, you jinxing assholes.

So how are Dallas fans dealing with yesterday’s news that Barber will be absent? Cautious optimism tempered with wisdom and restraint?

I love you, dipshit Cowboys fans. Don’t ever change.

Somehow this is only the third meeting between Steelers and Cowboys since Super Bowl XXX. Reading the chapter in Boys Will Be Boys about the game exhumed some rather unpleasant memories. But the most embarrassing for me was the fact that I bet our school’s equivalent of Jimbo, Dolph and Kerney $100 straight-up that Pittsburgh would win that game, knowing full well they weren’t gonna give me shit even if I won the bet. I was tired of being taunted that there was no way the Steelers were going to win and wanted the stupidest way possible to show I had faith in my team. Well placed, of course!

You stupid sexy, sexy kid!

Then two months later, I contracted Bell’s Palsy (Just like Jim Ross!) and had to spent the next five months getting electroshock therapy on my face to clear it up.

Fuck, I hated 1996.

The first time I ever met a Patriots fan was 10 days after my 20th birthday. It was week 1 of the 2002 season, the Steelers and Patriots held the first-ever regular season game in Gillette, a rematch of the previous season’s AFC Title Game. Only where I was watching the game, there wasn’t one of them, there was somehow a crowd of Pats fans. I honestly couldn’t believe it. Where had these people been during the run the previous year? Or, more to the point, at any point ever?

Back in high school, I remember a discussion me and my friends had about which team jerseys you would never see anyone wearing in public. We hashed out the following: the Cardinals, Jaguars, Seahawks and Patriots (I’m sure the Texans would join that list if it were made after the 2002 season and the Seahawks would probably be off it now). Granted this was made by a bunch of teenagers outside D.C., so regional factors had something to do with it, but of all those teams, the Pats had the least excuses. They had been to two Super Bowls. We were on the East Coast, hardly far from their territory. Red Sox hats, those were easy to pick out. So why not even so much as one Bledsoe jersey?

It’s not as though Pats fans didn’t exist, but the only place I ever stumbled upon them was AOL chats when the Steelers and Patriots exchanged playoff wins in ‘96 and ‘97. Still, the change from near nonexistent fanbase to ’90s Cowboys-esque bandwagon practically overnight was staggering and unlike anything I’d ever seen in sports.

I didn’t hate the Pats after the ‘01 loss, at least no more than the Chargers and Broncos teams that had won in the playoffs in Three Rivers in the ’90s. The gloating, smug fans I’d met in ‘02 got the hate ball rolling. Then as the years wore on, the fans got more omnipresent, the team got more cocky, more fawned upon by the media and added dicksmacks like Corey Dillon, Rodney Harrison, Vince Wilfork and Randy Moss.

Anyway, all of this is a long way of saying I hope every Pats fan gets run through with a broadsword so they can watch their viscera leak all over their goddamn John Lynch jerseys. Go the most ethnically diverse corner of Hell, you racist Masshole fucks.

Also, the NFL is encouraging me to embrace my hateful impulses this holiday season by scheduling the Steelers against the Patriots, Cowboys and Ravens the next three weeks.

The NFL rescinded its bullshit fine to Justin Tuck late this past week, but naturally upheld the latest in a series of nonsensical ones to a Steeler, this one to LaMarr Woodley for a pretty garden-variety planting of Jason Campbell last week. Not that Shaun Rogers was ever disciplined for the cheap shot he took on Roethlisberger in Week 2.

The list of Steelers fined this season include Hines Ward (twice), Ryan Clark (twice, once for honoring deceased former teammate Sean Taylor), James “Silverback” Harrison, Nate Washington and James Farrior. I take it The Rog didn’t take that “pansy league” comment by Polamalu kindly. Try to levy one on Max Starks. He’s got money to burn.

Meanwhile, Mike Tomlin reunites with his coaching mentor and Tony Dungy tries to get a win against the team that gave him his coaching start. It’s good enough storyline to make me ignore the “Steelers trying to lose second consecutive home game to a Manning” one.

“Our receivers are so good, we have a field named after our playing field”?

Fuck you, Terry.

The Steelers begin their two-week odyssey against NFC East teams with one of their former receivers, first the one who was actually worth a big contract and then Antwaan Randle-El. Pittsburgh was already hurting enough with America’s Most Blunted receiver, Willie Parker, Marvel Smith and Bryant McFadden out, but Aaron Smith is gone too? And he’s not even hurt? What the bloodclot? What are these personal reasons that are keeping out our run-stopping defensive end? Screw his right to privacy, I must know!

Ack! It’s okay. The Steelers can still take this. No team playing Eli Manning is ever really out of it. You Giants will learn to fear Nate Washington and his epic case of dropsies!

You know, you New York Giants deserve some more respect. That’s why I’m going to do everything I can from to help you guys out today. Well, everything that can be done from 20 yards off the line of scrimmage, anyway.

Why, hello there, Brandon Jacobs. No, don’t mind me. You keep running by, I prefer the challenge of tackling you from behind.

Derrick Ward, is it? Well, we can’t let Brandon get ALL the yards on the ground, can we?

(Eli Manning play-fakes)

Where’d the ball go?!?! It’s a run! It’s a run! I have to get to the line immediately!

(Sinorice Moss catches touchdown)

Wow, that was amazing! Y’know, Eli really is one of the greatest quarterbacks in the league. Heck, he’s completed almost all of the passes he’s overthrown today!

Look at that, another stillborn possession by our offense. All right, c’mon guys! Let’s get out there and ALLOW SOME TOUCHDOWNS!!! WOOOOOOOOOO!

Recently I wrote that grown men wearing team jerseys looked like fucking dorks. But that was before I GOT THIS TOTALLY SWEET PURPLE JESUS JERSEY, YOU WHORES.

I totally look like a professional football player now. I could run out onto that field and they’d all be none the wiser! MWAHAHAHAHA! I bet Troy Aikman would be totally blown away by how firm my handshake is.

Anyway, here’s your Sunday open thread. Your early slate is highlighted by that naughty Iggles-Redskins tilt. Which team will come out with overly inflated expectations for the rest of the year? We’ll just have to see. I’ll be taking it all in while looking like a consummate professional.

Oh wait, they were playing the Lions and the Bengals. I guess that makes sense. Still, how the fuck does Michael Turner go over 200 with a rookie QB starting? (more…)

Everyone seems to be pulling for the scrappy, defensively deprived Cleveland Browns to overtake the Steelers for the AFC North crown. Well, their vaunted offense is laying a Horse Ball sized egg in Cincinnati.

I bet Browns fans are pissed. Not as much as those who bet on the over in this game. Thought you were so smart, didn’t you?

Welp, that was unpleasant. Perhaps the next time Anthony Smith issues a guarantee, he’ll consider not getting beat on three or four deep passes.

I’d like to think Polamalu and a healthy Santonio Holmes might make a possible playoff rematch more competitive. Or maybe that’s just the whiskey and turpentine talking. What’s that? You want me to drink you? But I’m in the middle of a blog post and no, no, I don’t need a glass.

That’s a nice first half you put up Derek Anderson, with the benefit of a couple of short fields. How did you nurse that 12-point halftime lead? Going three of 12 until the final drive of the game, one-hopping and overthrowing your receivers when the Steelers didn’t sack you once? Did the Browns return unit outgain its offense by 50 yards? I think so.

Roethlisberger has 22 TDs and seven picks, despite having a mediocre offensive line that makes him run for his life. But, yeah, he’s totally an overrated game manager.

Give the retard his due. Or at least something shiny.