Saturday Morning: Time for a New Game Plan

Joey Porter's Pit Bulls are sick and tired of the Patriots breezing into Pittsburgh and leaving town with wins over the Steelers. It's time the Steelers stopped being out-coached and outplayed.

Pittsburgh's coaching staff knew last spring the Patriots would be on the schedule. Coaches don't do this, but hopefully Mike Tomlin, Dick LeBeau and Bruce Arians spent time this off-season devising a special game plan just for the Patriots -- completely different looks, play calls audibles, etcetera; and then, in the second half, an entirely new set of offensive and defensive game plans with brand new schemes, terminology, etc. That's what it's going to take to beat these guys. Give them something -- a bunch of things -- they haven't seen before.

Each game, the Patriots seem to know what the Steelers are going to do on both offense and defense. Stop doing it! Stop playing zone coverage on defense. Stop letting the Patriots dictate the pace of play. Stop allowing them to force our linebackers into pass coverage. Stop allowing Bill Bellichick to make halftime adjustments based on what we did in the first half. Stop allowing the Patriots to pick up audibles, anticipate snap counts and read defensive formations.

Stop reacting to what they do, and make them react to what we do.

Do something completely different -- like beating the Patriots.

Cardinals!

Congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals for winning the World Series. Make us proud to be Pirates fans. See how good the Buccos are? ... fourth place in the same division as the World Series winners!

How do the Cardinals do it? It's a mystery, but we're happy for the good people of St.Louis -- probably the best baseball town  in America.


USA Today notes, "This is a team that was 10½ games back in the wild-card race on Aug. 25. They were still 8½ games back with 21 games left. Three games out with five to play. And four times faced elimination in the postseason."

Hey, we're just glad the World Series concluded before November. Three days to spare!