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  Steelers OTA’s and Mini Camp 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

Art Rooney II is not Dan Rooney, has never been Dan Rooney, and will never be Dan Rooney. That could not be made any more clear than what went on with Cameron Heyward during OTAs and minicamp. Something like this would never have happened under Dan Rooney’s watch. Dan had personal relationships with the players to the point where they would not take things and put them out in the media because of the respect that they had for Dan Rooney. Cam Heyward being willing to talk to the media about potentially going and playing for the Cleveland Browns shows me that he does not have the respect for Art Rooney II that he had for Dan Rooney. I am not saying that Art Rooney II is a terrible person, I actually just bring this up to point out how special of a person Dan Rooney really was. He took the Steelers from perennial losers to the top of the football world. He did things differently and didn’t care what anyone else thought about it. To him the Steelers were more than a business, the Steelers were family. That culture is not 100% gone, but it is not as strong as it once was.

SOMETHING I’VE SOFTENED ON

The Mike Tomlin contract situation. Of course this is something I would bring up, because Coach Tomlin got his extension. My reason for bringing it up is that now that the extension has happened we will no longer have to talk about or worry about if the extension is happening. I have talked about feeling this extension was not done sooner was a leverage point by coach Tomlin, as I felt he used his situation to put pressure on Art Rooney II to get Matt Canada off of the staff. I don’t know if that is true, but I could see where it would be. Either way there are going to be people that hated the fact Coach Tomlin got an extension or people who loved the fact that Coach Tomlin and got an extension. Whichever it is for you doesn’t matter so much to me, what really matters is an extension is done and the talk about it should now end.

SOMETHING THAT HASN’T CHANGED

I am excited to see what the new Steelers offense looks like. Will it be exciting and high flying and high scoring? I doubt that. I expect it to be Steeler-type football. That means run the football and use play action to open up the passing game. What I’m really excited to see is potentially more creativity in the offense. Time to see the Steelers creating and taking advantage of mismatches against the defense. The Steelers have spent the last two drafts building the trenches to go along with some of the skilled position talent they had in place, and now is the time to see it all starting to work together.

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. Now bring on preseason games!!!!