Horses of a Feather

It is odd to find oneself accused of football provincialism by a goddamn-Jets fan . . . like finding yourself accused of hockey hickdom by an Islanders man. I won't entirely discount Dennis' thesis. Pittsburgh was a bit of a football backwater in the pre-merger days, and Joe Namath's New York Jets did play some killer ball, but Dennis seems to think no one is watching as he lines up on the sideline to trip the next thirty-five years of post-merger football, when Namath could no longer hack it and the team became an embarrassment to everyone except for seventeen contrarian Brooklynite Reform Jews who didn't want to root for the Giants. Rex Ryan has made the Jets fanworthy again over the last couple of years, I'll credit him that, but in a town whose combined Manning-Sanchez quarterback empire looks and plays like something Ben Roethlisberger would brutalize over a couple of Jagerbombs and a urinal, you'll pardon me if I take their teams' good luck and fans' resilience with the same skepticism I bring to the calorie count on a Primanti Bros. sammich. Meanwhile, that "rigid specimen of the Rooney family" has got one more ring than the olympics.

No Steeler fan worth his city's inability to spread road salt is allowed to believe in victory, though. I will cop to that particular provincialism. We are a primitive, superstitious people. We believe ourselves not only to be the most referee-despised team in the league, but also, actually, the worst football team in history, every victory a bizarre gift from an inhuman and incomprehensible gridiron god. I expect the special teams to abandon their lanes, the O-line to collapse, Flozell Adams to come in for an injured Troy Polamalu about forty seconds into the first quarter and subsequently hold every single Jets offensive player simultaneously, for a total aggregate penalty yardage of five touchdowns, a safety, and two hardboiled eggs. Chris Kemoeatu will get pushed into the backfield, trip over his own feet, and actually cause Heinz field to tip up away from the river. Ben Roethlisberger's giant, mutant hands will make a roundhouse fake, holding the ball through a full 270 degrees of motion, at which point it will fly out of his hand and through the uprights behind him, being ruled a field goal. Final score: Jets 40, Steelers 4 and a half.