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 the right up those big nostrils”. So that’s it. This is my 2 cents after sitting on the latest Steelers game for a bit. 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 an average team with a huge variance between their best and worst football. I feel that the team is far enough into the season that I have a large enough set of data to realize that this team is actually very average. The frustrating part is that they don’t play anywhere near that average on any given week. Being a math nerd I’ve thought it would be fun to plot out what I think the Steelers are as a team on a box and whisker graph, but most people wouldn’t understand it so I’ll try to explain it really quick instead. Overall the Steelers are pretty average and can even win games when they are playing near that average. The tough part is that they can have games where they play better than average, and that gets the fan bases hopes up. But as everyone has discovered lately that when the Steelers play bad they can actually play really really bad. That makes it very difficult to then determine exactly how good this team is. We have seen that they can play very good football, but we’ve also seen that they can play very bad football. So I guess the ultimate question is who are they? Unfortunately we are 2/3 of the way through the season and I’m not sure I am anywhere close to being able to determine that for sure.

SOMETHING I’VE SOFTENED ON

Nothing. After getting my hopes up after an improved offensive game against the Bengals, the Steelers come out and show an extremely lackluster performance against a two-win Arizona team. I could not find anything from the Steeler performance this past weekend that I felt could be a take that I could soften up on. I could have found many things that I could ramp up on. I guess if you twisted my arm hard enough the one thing I could say that I’ve softened on are fans who have been critical of this team. I could understand why fans can get very critical of this team because of the ups and downs in the inconsistent play. We as fans get very emotional in the Steelers put us back and forth through so many emotions I can understand how that takes its toll on people as fans. I sure know that it has taken a toll on me.

SOMETHING THAT HASN’T CHANGED

The Steelers still have to rely on defense to win games. There will be no correction to this statement this season. The Steelers will go as far as their defense is able to carry them. My biggest worry is that as the season continues injuries have been popping up and showing their ugly head, which makes the Steelers margin for error all that much narrower. I feel bad for the defense at times because they have to show up with their A+ game week in and week out to give the Steelers a chance. I wish I could say that I’ve seen an A+ game from the offense, but that has yet to happen this year. My biggest fear is that some of the defensive stars for the Steelers will not want to stick around and play their entire career for a team where the offense does nothing to pull their weight.

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.