They Are Who We THOUGHT They Were!

Rob Gronkowski breaking free from Robert Golden

The secondary.  Yikes.

To borrow the words of former Arizona Cardinals Denny Green, "They are who we THOUGHT they were!"

Which is, for most of them: Not very talented. Not very smart. Lousy tacklers. Hapless. Clueless. Undersized. Slow. And not very good at their craft,

It was no surprise, the way they performed; but it was shocking, the ineptitude.

Mike Tomlin, Keith Butler, the rest of the coaching staff and the players should be ashamed of themselves. They had all off-season to prepare for that game. The entire off-season.  It was the season opener, for crying out loud. They knew what the Patriots were going to do.  Everybody knew what the Patriots were going to do.  It's what they do.

Yet the Steelers, time and again, allowed Rob Gronkowski to break free, unjammed, and roam free, unmolested and uncovered, romping an frolicking past the undersized, overmatched and all-too-slow safeties, corners and linebackers who flailed haplessly as they were either getting outjumped, stomped or run around by Gronkowski.

The missed tackles. The blown coverages. The half-hearted attempts at coverage. Honestly, it was embarrassing.

What happened to the plans to jam Gronkowski, play him tight and disrupt patters? Big talk. Turns out it's easier said than done.

If the performance we saw Thursday night is what we have to look forward to watching all season, it's going to be a long year.

Frankly, Joey Porter's Pit Bulls still don't understand why the Steelers' brass seems to be so infatuated with certain players in the secondary: Shamarko Thomas. Mike Mitchell. Cortez Allen.

Well, we're stuck with them.

It's Michael Vick's fault. Bad karma.