I must confess that I was only able to watch 1 game yesterday in it's entirety and it was a rough one to watch if you're a Steelers fan. They were killed by the Ravens, and it was even possible to hear the crowd shout "Steelers suck! Steelers suck!" at certain parts. Not a great season opener for my man's home team.
But there was a lot of action & drama. The Steelers and Ravens have a long standing rivalry, and it's grown more heated in recent years due to, what else, nasty text messages being sent between players before games. Even NFL players aren't immune to bullying each other like middle school girls. According to Boomer & the gang at ESPN, in 2008 Steeler's rookie Rashard Mendenhall sent a text message to a Raven's player and he, in turn, exaggerated its contents to pump up his defensive players for the game. As retaliation for the nasty texts, the Ravens defense broke Mendenhall's shoulder during the game. Maybe that reaction is a little extreme, but both teams hit hard during this rivalry game and players have been left with concussions and other injuries each year.
This year the defensive teams kept hitting hard and putting pressure on the quarterback. (The award for most intimidating facial hair by a defensive player goes to to Steelers #99 Brett Keisel.) Things got so heated between the teams that in the 3rd quarter the players started fighting each other after a play in which the Ravens tossed aside Troy Polamalu after the play was complete. They even knocked down a ref! It looked like a hockey game for a minute. But things settled down and the Steelers lost 7 to 35.
Oh man, I have so much more to write but I need to start getting ready for work. It's hard to have a life and watch NFL football at the same time. But I can already see that my other TV-watching commitments will fall to the wayside in my quest to truly understand the game. It's easy when ESPN is basically a male version of The View.
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