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Some people are fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. This 2017 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.



Your team: Pittsburgh Steelers.


Your 2016 record: 11-5. They have still never beaten Tom Brady in the playoffs. How’s that feel?


Right? Should every 21st-century Steelers title have an asterisk denoting the fact they’ve never beaten Brady when it matters? I say yes. Anyway, you probably remember last season mostly for Antonio Brown using Facebook Live to record his coach calling the Patriots assholes (accurate!), and then the team surreptitiously forced him to apologize in a mirror scandal to #Boatghazi, and then the Pats went out and rolled them in the AFC title game anyway. I hate everything.

Your coach: Mike Tomlin, who just loves himself some good old fashioned trainin’ camp HITTIN’!

we made the conscious effort to have at least 12 to 15 snaps a day of live football.


Oh, well now I know why Pittsburgh’s starting offensive players haven’t taken the field together as a healthy unit since 1928. By the way, Tomlin got his contract extended this offseason. Will that stop meat-brained Steelers fans from calling for his head? Don’t be ridiculous. Tomlin’s won at least 10 games seven times in 10 seasons, never had a losing season, been to two Super Bowls, won one…but every other Yinzer will want him fired if they’re still fighting with the Ravens for the division late in the year because he’s NAWT AS GOOD AS CAHHHHHER!

By the way, what the hell is Joey Porter still doing on this staff? Joey Porter is an incorrigible shitbag and a horrible sports dad. Joey Porter could shoot a horse at midfield and probably still manage to stay on the payroll. I don’t get it. Find another raging prick to coach the outside linebackers.


Your quarterback: Oh my God Big Ben RETIRE BITCH. We’re nearing Favre-ian levels of waffling with this man, and he’s roughly half as likable. I love how, after 13 years of getting his brain turned into anchovy paste, Big Ben is like DURRRRRRR BIG BEN WANT TO RETIRE TO SAVE HEAD. I got news for you, kiddo: That train left the station a long, long time ago. Like, at birth. Big Ben came into the league as Fatter, Dumber, More Evil Gronk, and he’ll leave the same way. Meanwhile, while he wasn’t spending the offseason begging everyone to tell him he’s pretty, he was busy dumping on his own teammates:

Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said he does not know if Le’Veon Bell will be in good enough “football shape” to play all the time and immediately be a large part of the offense when he returns to the Steelers.


I’ve seen corpses less bloated than Ben Roethlisberger and he’s ripping another guy for his conditioning? What a complete ass. Have another french fry sub, Tubby.

What’s new that sucks: RIP Dan Rooney. Mister Rooney. SAINT ROONEY. Yes, to hear Steelers fans tell it, Dan Rooney spent every waking day with a rainbow streaming out of his ass, handing out gold shillings to all the little Yinzer boys and girls. Local media tossed his salad with impunity. Meanwhile, Rooney presided over one of the most drug-addled franchises in the sport, and he once excused James Harrison’s wife-beating because Harrison wanted to baptize his kid and his wife didn’t. (Harrison, of course, is still with the team and making Instagram videos of himself lifting pickup trucks over his roided-out head.)


Yet, if you have the gall to point any of this out, Yinzers come at you with a derangement normally confined to residents of State College. This fan base will eagerly remind you what a swell guy Rooney was by threatening to cut your throat if you disagree. One of our own staffers received endless death threats and got blocked by the official Steelers Twitter account all because he wrote an obit of Rooney that actually portrayed him as a fallible human and not the fucking Pope. Well, fuck the Rooneys and fuck the Western PA towel boys who labor under the delusion that Mister Rooney was their biological grandpappy. I could care less about yet one more NFL team being presided over by a bunch of low-key inbreds who hump their whole FAMILY bullshit more than the average mafia clan.

In other news, Le’Veon Bell ended his holdout. I really hope he decided to lay out his contract demands via rap SPECIFICALLY to piss Yinzers off. Does he deserve more money? Of course he does. Did he already tell everyone he would end his holdout in time for the season? Of course he has. Will the holdout actually keep him fresher, since he’ll have avoided all of Tomlin’s okie drills? Yup. Did the front office go out of its way to treat him like an ungrateful child anyway? They sure did. ALL CLASS, BABY. GM Kevin Colbert chided Bell and then got a fat contract extension of his own, presumably because he looks like literally every Steelers dad sitting in the Heinz Field upper deck. All the Steelers needed was one decent preseason outing from James Conner to passive aggressively let Bell know he was disposable, and I assure you more than a few of their dipshit fans would love to see Bell taught a lesson.


But you know who fans love already? You guessed it:


I’m not ready for this. JJ Watt has been a true humanitarian these past two weeks. But I’m not ready for another Watt, and I’m definitely not ready for him to play in the most insufferable place a Watt could possibly play. By December, there will be an Eternal TJ Watt flame burning in the end zone of that stadium. You won’t see TJ Watt using Facebook Live, no siree. TJ Watt is ALL FOOTBAW, ALL THE TIME. One time he was eating a sandwich and was so focused on football that he ate a football instead. True story.

The kicker got booted from a hockey game for being too excited.

What has always sucked: Yep, they’re still dirty. The players are dirty. The coaches are dirty. The training room is dirty. The whole town is stained with wing grease and dried Toradol. And their fans are biggest bunch of bandwagon sacks of shit on the planet, spending all day inhaling shit beer and waving penalty flags around. They have a “sellout streak” that allegedly dates to 1972, but if this team is below .500 in November, there will be more people at the casino next door that at the stadium on game day. Every team is full of bandwagon fans, but Steelers fans really ghost on the team when they dare to flirt with going .500 or worse.


I say this every year and it remains true: The most annoying sports fans at any sports bar are Steelers fans. It’s not close. It’s crickets when they’re down by more than a point and rakes on a slate board when they’re ahead. They’re the worst. Pittsburgh is more –tucky than Pennsyl- these days.

Did you know?






What might not suck: Okay, I kinda like this guy:

The enemy of the enemy is my friend.

HEAR IT FROM STEELERS FANS!

Brandon:

Ben Roethlisberger is basically the QB version of what it would be like if Donald Trump were actually good at being president in spite of being a trash human.


Eric:

The majority of our fans are Croc-and-baggy-camo-short wearing obese mouth breathers who never left their hometown and live off Mountain Dew and Skoal. Oh and my late, racist, terrible towel-waving grandpa always dropped explosive N-bombs towards his own beloved team, all game, every game. Healthy!


Joe:

My life is depressing because this team is my only real happiness.

Terry:

If Ben Roethlisberger was the No. 4 WR he would’ve been cut 13 years ago.

Steve:

My wife was flying back from Pittsburgh (her hometown) and saw Tomlin at the airport, furiously chewing gum and clutching a child’s Batman backpack. Yet no child was in sight.


Mark:

Once the morning after a preseason game, some angry Yinzer called in on the radio to say that Mike Tomlin is a racist because there’s no white guys on the O-Line, and it’s killing the team because good teams like the Pats and Packers are full of white guys on the O-Line.


Alex:

Neil O’Donnell still makes me upset. Somehow, he is the reason Trump is president. I just have to figure the logistics, and pin it on him. Fuck Neil O’Donnell so hard.


Chris:

People wear Steelers jerseys to funerals and nobody bats an eye.

Sam:

I really can’t think of anything else that I like that embarrasses me as much as being a Steelers fan and being lumped in with the fat, towel-twirling, shitty beer drinking, irrational, stupid mutants that root for this team. The type of people who admonish Bell and Bryant for smoking weed while packing up a bong. Oh, and Heinz Field is a fucking port-o-potty that should be set on fire.


Tommy:

With Mike Tomlin, you can always count on an exciting 11-5 or 12-4 season that ends with an annual display of inept January-coaching and Big Ben looking absolutely fucking dumbfounded on the sideline.


Tim:

I had the pleasure of watching a grown man in a Heath Miller jersey drunkenly yell at a child in a Browns jersey outside of Heinz Field. This child could not have been older than ten, and no one in the crowd seemed to want to do anything about it. Everyone just circled around and watched the show happen until security came, who kindly did not discourage his rowdiness but instead ushered him to the ticket line so that “spirit” could be targeted towards the game, not children.


N:

A few years ago we decided we would start making a pilgrimage to Pittsburgh every year to see a home game. As an out-of-state fan, I thought, “This will be great! I’ll be amongst my people! I’ll be part of the real thing!” I was wrong. I immediately felt out of place without a set of Carhartt bibs. EVERYONE in Pittsburgh carries a knife. It seemed cloudy even when the sun was out. The layout of the city infrastructure seemed to have been designed by a chimp, as driving through Pittsburgh was like a scene from Inception. Then we lost to an eventual five-win Ravens team in OT. Then I drank a whole bottle of Russian Standard vodka and my wife didn’t talk to me for 2 days. P.S. Coleslaw on sandwiches fucking sucks

Tony:

Because this fucking shirt exists.


Omar:

Our fans are absolute assholes. I went to the playoff game against Miami and ended up sitting next to an elderly group of Dolphin fans. I talked with them for a bit before the game about football and where they were originally from, before some drunk, obnoxious, fraternity Yinzer came and sat in the row directly behind us. On at least two different occasions I recall the couple next to me asking him to “please stop doing that” as he continually knocked one of their hats over and played it off as an accident like a five year old. At the end of the game as they were walking out of our row the guy called them all failed abortions. I hate myself for associating my NFL fandom with this bunch of jabronis.


Brian:

Holy hell, we are the worst. I know that every sports team has their pocket of really awful fans, but Steeler fans have certainly carved out a niche as being the most smug, insufferable, and holier-than-thou while being extremely simple-minded and unintelligible. I will bleed black and gold for the rest of my life, but I no longer have any illusions as to why we are so hated.


Rob:

The Steelers organization lives in a Landry Jones bubble. No Steelers fan likes our backup. If God told me I could get kicked in the sack instead of having Landry come in to a game, I would consider that an even trade off.


Luke:

The Steelers have an unbelievable talent at running back who not only wants a transcendent contract that they won’t give him but will probably get busted for pot again and have his knee blown out in the process.


Charlie:

I was at the Steelers/Cowboys game in Pittsburgh last year. The guy sitting in front of me, like most every other Yinzer in attendance, was too drunk to see way before kickoff. Before the Steelers scored on their opening possession, this dumb fuck is threatening to kill Tomlin, his family and basically everyone in earshot because they weren’t kicking the field goal. It was 3rd down. Fuck Neil O’Donnell with all the money he made Larry Brown in the form of jagged pennies.


Jim:

I have season tickets and every year the fans get more drunkenly obnoxious, yelling at the refs and opposing team as if they’re ten feet away. Our seats are in the 500 level. Sit down and shut the fuck up. Roethlisberger has a grey dick.

William:

The Rooneys have sent trial balloons for a number of years about hosting a Super Bowl. Unsurprisingly, they do this while always bitching about the need for “upgrades” to ultra crappy/low rent Heinz Field.


Andy:

My buddy and I have another friend that is from Wheeling, WV. He claims that Wheeling is a ‘suburb’ of Pittsburgh. We told him that even though he’s a Steeler fan, there is NOWHERE in West Virginia that is a ‘suburb’ of Pittsburgh. We also told him that the only ones that think that it is are from West Virginia and Ohio... He also wanted Marc-Andre Fleury traded mid eason. A side note: a guy that I used to work with in Orlando, who’s a Patriots fan, was overheard during the Stanley Cup Final that he was ‘tired of Pittsburgh winning everything.’ I wanted to punch him through FaceTime.


Rich:

Sometimes when fat terminator robot Ben Roethlisberger gets hit I actually hope he STAYS DOWN just so I don’t have to see him blow into a tube to drive his wheelchair to the 50-yard line for his jersey retirement ceremony, after his inevitable de-spining occurs on a play where he dodges six players for 30 seconds while attaining his 10th undisclosed concussion of the season. We have had it so easy for so long in the quarterback category that we forget that we are always one hit away from becoming the Cleveland Browns.


Lucas:

Roethlisberger will throw for four touchdowns one Sunday and play the next like a man still grasping object permanence. They’ll lose on the road to a 4-12 squad when Todd Haley calls consecutive halfback passes to compensate for his micropenis. And somehow Pittsburgh—who at no point will seem even remotely like a contender—will limp toward double-digit wins and provide the faintest whiff of hope, simply because they compete in a division that’s harder to watch than the third act of Requiem for a Dream. It’s pretty hypocritical that James Harrison rants against participation trophies but has no problem playing the Browns twice a year. But in the playoffs, god forbid they face the Patriots. Tom Brady could replace his entire batshit diet with Meow Mix and still torch this franchise.


Gilbert:

We hate on the Bengals especially Burfict and Pacman Jones for being dirty yet we are complete hypocrites for worshiping James Harrison, Ryan Clark, and Troy Polamalu for doing very similar dirty hits on opposing players. The regular season will be fun until we lose to the Patriots in the playoffs again.


Kevin:

My father and I have been to the home opener for the Steelers for the last 14 consecutive years. It is our father-son tradition. Every year, we sit in the same seats, and there is the same guy, a few rows down in the section to my left. Johnny Superfan. In Zubaz pants and a hard hat, drunk as shit 5 min before kickoff, who spends a vast majority of the game with his back turned to the field, because he MUST make sure that everyone else is FIRED UP!!! He couldn’t tell you what is going on in the actual game itself, since he is facing the wrong direction for half of it and he’d be too drunk to remember anyway. He is just waiting for “Renegade” by STYX to come on late in the game so he can lose his mind and spill beer all over everyone in front of him. From what I can tell, there is at least one of these jagoffs in every section. It is also now our father-son tradition that this is the only Steelers game we attend all season.


David:

Because Bill Cowher, a direct descendent of the Marty Schottenheimer coaching tree for choke artists, was 0 - 4 (!) in AFC title games at home, yet every season Yinzers talk about how Mike Tomlin doesn’t have the right temperament to be a head coach. “Dat jagoff needs to chew the players out like Cowwwherrrr did!” Also, have you looked at a Pennsylvania voting map? Steeler country won the state for Trump.


Sam:

Fuck Tim Tebow always.

Chris:

Look at this motherfucker. All of his “super fan” memorabilia is shit you can but at K-Mart.


Daniel:

The last couple of offices I’ve worked in have always had one other Steelers fan there, and they’re always the loudest, most obnoxious slack jawed small town invertebrates who scream at their kids as if that’s the normal mode of communication and you GRITLESS parents aren’t trying hard enough to turn your children into the next incarnation of Jack Lambert. I’ll bet hearing how James Harrison returned his kids’ participation trophies gave them instant, fully torqued erections. These are my people. Oh, also - I just KNOW they’re going to fuck up with Le’veon Bell. They’re going to get a grand total of 2.5 healthy seasons from him, throw out an insulting offer (because he should be grateful to be with Steelers Nation and never the other way around) and watch him walk away in his prime to a team with a competent coach who will actually let him play near the goal line...preferably the Ravens so I can scream into my couch twice a year.


Kevin:

Fuck Tom Brady with an UGG boot stuffed with a Himalayan Salt lamp.

Andrew:

We have a QB who can’t put together a full season. We play the same bullshit zone blitz that never works against an actual QB who can throw a timing route to a short Caucasian with good hands. We have a harder time scoring than a virgin with a retainer when it counts. And yet I’ve plunked down $724.99 over the last 4 years to watch my team from Peru. At least I get Spanish announcers who don’t constantly jerk off to the thought of “Steeler Football” every time they hand it off to Bell.


Anthony:

Every few months my Facebook feed will fill up with people sharing an article from a Washington Post or NY Times travel writer along the theme of “Pittsburgh — hidden gem!” (subtext — “not the shit hole you think it is!”) The Pittsburgh Airport’s slogan is the backhanded compliment “Yesterday’s Airport of Tomorrow!” And I think that’s a big part of why Pittsburghers are so over the top about the Steelers — it’s the one thing we have that’s at the top of its class without being graded on a curve.


Brian:

One tried and true way to spot terrible drivers in this town is they all have giant Steelers stickers on their rear window. You can tell the especially dangerous ones because they either add a “Sixburgh” or Penguins Stanley Cup Champs decal (bonus points for “Back 2 Back”). The really psychotic drivers here in the ‘Burgh put their Steelers sticker on the right side, just like on the team helmets. Commuting can be truly death-defying here, but at least it’s easy to spot the maniacs you need to give a wide berth to.


Daniel:

Witnessing the masses from Pennsyltuckey take a break from having sex with members of their immediate family to converge on Heinz Field on game days is truly a site to behold. It has all of the aesthetics of a Sunday flea market with none of the charm.


Alex:

Did you know that after crucial third-down conversions at home, the Steelers put on a 5 second clip of a big burly “steel worker” pulling a giant steel chain for some reason? It’s “moving the chains!” Get it? I cannot tell you the number of fans I’ve heard say they dislike Mike Tomlin because there’s “just somethin’ about him...” OH MY, WHAT COULD THAT BE We lost two Super Bowls because of Neil O’Donnell and Rashard Mendenhall, the latter a non-zero number of Steelers fans believe is an actual terrorist. Oh, and we got knocked out of the playoffs by a QB who now plays minor league baseball for the Mets. Fuck me.


Joe:

The Steelers suck because every year we either win it all via an easy playoff path or we choke against the Patriots on the way.


Jim:

-Any time a uniquely gifted player like Le’Veon Bell tries to maximize his earnings, Steelers fans act personally offended he doesn’t want to entertain them for below market value. -Now that Roethlisberger is openly pondering retirement, (ugh) the fanbase is debating his Hall of Fame credentials (Not even borderline, IMO.) Which means hearing the rape defenses all over again. They might as well replace the “Here we go Steelers!” chants with “He was never CHARGED!!!” -God, I can’t wait for Roethlisberger to be fucking gone, and I don’t care if that means 15+ years of below average QB play. We sooooo deserve it. -We totally fucked up our tight end situation by signing Ladarius Green’s multiple concussions, then cutting him, and then not drafting a tight end so we’re forced to rely on the likes of Jesse James. (And some Steelers fans are thrilled to ride James instead of Green. Wonder why.) -We’ll still never beat Tom Brady in the playoffs, no matter how many “man to man” corners we draft.


Chad:

Shit on my tits. Just look at this fucking guy:


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