The title “My Worthless 2 Cents” that I came up with isn’t one I feel I can take full credit for, but is a story in itself, so here it is. I was in the 8th grade at the time, and found myself tagging along with my older sister (a senior in high school), as she was a part of the high school theatre group who would work as ushers for local community theatre productions. Working as an usher at a production of “Harvey”, the dad for one of my baseball friends came up to me at intermission and handed me two pennies and asked me to go back to the dressing area and find the lead actor in the play. I was to give him the pennies and tell him “this is from the guy with the big nostrils, giving you his two cents worth”. I thought this was funny so I agreed to do it, especially since I knew the two were friends. I go to the dressing room and deliver the message and the “gift”. The response I was given was even better. The actor told me to return the pennies and I was to “tell the guy with the big nostrils to take his worthless 2 cents and shove them right up his big nostrils”. So that’s it. This is my 2 cents after sitting on the latest Steelers game for a bit. This is quite the opposite of my Knee Jerk Reaction article, so I get to bring everything full circle. You might tell me to take my worthless two cents and shove them up my nostrils, and that’s okay, because we are friends and I don’t look at it as personal.

I am going to break things down into three categories: One, something I feel stronger about. Two, something I have softened on a bit. Three, something that didn’t really change.

SOMETHING I FEEL STRONGER ABOUT

The Steelers are not pretenders. I have heard and seen a lot of folks in the media have question marks about the Pittsburgh Steelers the past several weeks. In my opinion, the game against the Commanders changed a lot of those questions marks. The Steelers went on the road and were able to do enough to beat a quality Washington Commanders team. They did that by holding the Commanders offense to some of its lowest outputs of the season. They were also able to do enough against a good Commanders defense to get a victory. After the Jaylen Warren fumble, it looked like they may have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, but the Steelers overcame that turnover and still won the game. That in itself was huge.

SOMETHING I’VE SOFTENED ON

Russell Wilson’s moon ball. I have not always been a fan of Russell Wilson and his high moon ball passes at times. After this week I got a much better understanding of what they are and why he uses them. I really feel what he is doing with that moon ball is being able to run deeper routes without holding the ball and possibly taking sacks. The extra time that the ball is in the air takes away from time he would be holding the ball in the pocket. On top of that, it allows his receivers to find the ball and have time to make adjustments to it. I now have a much better understanding as to why Russ uses the moon ball as a real weapon.

SOMETHING THAT HASN’T CHANGED

The Steelers can’t buy a holding call. Between T.J. Watt obviously being held multiple plays a game, including this game where the hold would have resulted in a safety, there are other blatantly missed holds as well. I am still trying to figure out why there was no flag on the Commanders field goal attempt where Donte Jackson should have drawn a flag either for a hold or a face mask. Technically, there were both on that play. The official is standing right there looking at it, shakes his head and doesn’t throw a flag. I’m getting a little tired of having to rag on the officiating every week, especially on calls that should be easily made. I can understand missing difficult calls, as it happens in all sports, but I cannot forgive missing the easy ones. I don’t know about you, but if I couldn’t do the easy part of my job I would be fired. At some point accountability has to happen. Hey, I’ve got an idea, maybe PFF could grade the officials every week, at least at that point if the league didn’t want to call out their officials they would then have to call out PFF for having ridiculous grading systems.

There you have it. My worthless 2 cents. Maybe you liked it, maybe you didn’t. Maybe you want to tell me to shove my worthless two cents up my big nostrils. Maybe you have your own worthless 2 cents you would like to share. If so please feel free to share it in the comments below, I might look at it and tell you to shove it up your big nostrils…but that’s okay, because we are still friends.