mesaSteeler
12-09-2009, 05:57 AM
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View From The Press Box
No fun zone
December 8th, 2009
It wasn’t too long ago that the Steelers’ locker room also doubled as a game room.
While some of the Steelers played pool and ping pong at one end of the locker room, others shot wadded up pairs of socks into a garbage can in spirited games of “Around the World.”
Today both the pool table and ping pong table sat idle during the time when they are usually getting a lot of play. Geography may have had something to do with that.
Both tables are near James Harrison’s locker, and the outside linebacker may not have taken too kindly to anybody having any kind of fun right now with the 6-6 Steelers in crisis mode.
“It’s real gloomy,” right tackle Willie Colon observed of the atmosphere in the Steelers’ locker room.
A four-week losing streak that has nudged the Steelers near the brink of playoff elimination will do that to the mood in what is usually a light locker room.
And if Colon is any indication there has to be some disbelief among the players that they are actually at this point.
“I was talking about that to (guard) Trai (Essex) the other day,” Colon said. “When I walked into the season there was no doubt in my mind that we were going to come back and run the table. You see a lot of guys put in the hard work this season, do the little things that kind of make you a winning team. You look at the schedule and how we got here, it’s mind boggling.”
The key for the Steelers if they want to have any chance of defending their Super Bowl title is not focusing on how they got to this point but rather where they go from here.
“You’ve got to acknowledge the potential that this is a shaken group which has swallowed a lot here of late,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said earlier this week.
Yet dwelling on what has happened will only hasten the demise of the world champions. And perhaps makes this the perfect week to have a game on a Thursday.
If the Steelers manage to beat the 1-11 Browns, they get the victory they badly need to stop the bleeding. They then get a long weekend to rest and get re-charged for a closing three-game stretch against the Packers, Ravens and Dolphins.
“Every game is a playoff game,” nose tackle Casey Hampton said. “That’s the mentality we have to take right now because we have no room for error.
View From The Press Box
No fun zone
December 8th, 2009
It wasn’t too long ago that the Steelers’ locker room also doubled as a game room.
While some of the Steelers played pool and ping pong at one end of the locker room, others shot wadded up pairs of socks into a garbage can in spirited games of “Around the World.”
Today both the pool table and ping pong table sat idle during the time when they are usually getting a lot of play. Geography may have had something to do with that.
Both tables are near James Harrison’s locker, and the outside linebacker may not have taken too kindly to anybody having any kind of fun right now with the 6-6 Steelers in crisis mode.
“It’s real gloomy,” right tackle Willie Colon observed of the atmosphere in the Steelers’ locker room.
A four-week losing streak that has nudged the Steelers near the brink of playoff elimination will do that to the mood in what is usually a light locker room.
And if Colon is any indication there has to be some disbelief among the players that they are actually at this point.
“I was talking about that to (guard) Trai (Essex) the other day,” Colon said. “When I walked into the season there was no doubt in my mind that we were going to come back and run the table. You see a lot of guys put in the hard work this season, do the little things that kind of make you a winning team. You look at the schedule and how we got here, it’s mind boggling.”
The key for the Steelers if they want to have any chance of defending their Super Bowl title is not focusing on how they got to this point but rather where they go from here.
“You’ve got to acknowledge the potential that this is a shaken group which has swallowed a lot here of late,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said earlier this week.
Yet dwelling on what has happened will only hasten the demise of the world champions. And perhaps makes this the perfect week to have a game on a Thursday.
If the Steelers manage to beat the 1-11 Browns, they get the victory they badly need to stop the bleeding. They then get a long weekend to rest and get re-charged for a closing three-game stretch against the Packers, Ravens and Dolphins.
“Every game is a playoff game,” nose tackle Casey Hampton said. “That’s the mentality we have to take right now because we have no room for error.