Steel Balls

Okay, I’ll give you a minute to clear the cornflakes out of your sinuses after reading that headline. Nobody in their right mind would consider Landry Jones to be among the very best quarterbacks in Steelers history.

Yet, Landry does acquit himself surprisingly well in a statistical review. For most categories he gets middling results, which frankly is already a surprise given what most thought of him in his first couple of pro campaigns. In a couple of categories he does appear among the best, and even comes out tops in one category.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Well it was a bizarre draft with punishing results for our 5th annual draft predictions contest.

Perhaps the most bizarre outcome is that our most vocally unhappy participant, mwalsh26, was also the most accurate predictor by a wide margin, and thus is our winner for 2018.

Our champion correctly predicted a S in round 1 and a WR in round 2, while nailing Joshua Frazier in round 7, giving him a total of 4 points.

In second place, we have a tie at 2 points between abennihana and estimatedprophet. Abennihana actually had 3 points but I’m docking him one for using a verbal vomit format that required me to retype his submission for scoring analysis. I can do that because I have a massive ego and dictatorial powers.

Honorable Mention goes to malsor, who correctly predicted 1st round selection Terrell Edmunds, though he was off by two rounds.

By contrast, your judge achieved zero points.

Way to go Mr. Walsh. Let’s see if you can keep up your winning streak with our next contest.

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I know my fellow Ballers enjoyed the play and may also enjoy the opportunity for a signed memento from TSE.

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Here we go, Steelers, here we go! Time for your draft predictions, 2018 edition. With the draft coming up in just three weeks, there’s no time to waste.

1. You will be granted one point for each pick correctly identified by name, regardless of when they are picked. For example, if you predict that John Doe will be picked in round 1 but he is actually picked in round 2, you will still get one point.
2. You will be granted one point for each correct position/round combination. The specific player need not be correct, and in fact need not be specified at all. For example, if you said the first round pick would be safety John Doe (or just safety), and the actual first round pick is safety D’Long Johnson, this would be one point. Note that if the first round pick is John Doe you will have two points, one for the correct name, and one for the correct position/round combo. If you select a multi-position player (such as S/OLB) where you did not pick the correct name you will gain a half point if the actual selection matches one of the positions of your guessed player but only if you identify both positions in the pick. For example if your pick is a DE that you project as playing OLB, then you should identify the position as OLB. If the Steelers then select a different player who is a true OLB you will get full credit. If you identify DE/OLB you will get half credit in that instance.
3. You may specify up to three UDFA picks.
4. You will gain a bonus point if you correctly predict a trade up or down.
5. In the event of a tie, the participant who entered his submission earlier will be the winner based on the time/date of submission.
6. You may revise your submission up to midnight before draft day, however such edits will change your submission time/date which could hurt you in a tie break situation.

Suggested format for submission is as follows:

• Round 1, D’Long Johnson, LS
• Round 2, George Cantu, P
• Round 3, Laquan Church, K
• Round 5-1, Demetri Jones, OT
• Round 5-2, Ethan Noonan, QB
• Round 7-1, Dra’Michael’La’Trillium Jenkins, WR
• Round 7-2, Nick Lavergne, RB
• UDFA, Antonio Morgan, CB
• UDFA, Ian March, TE
• UDFA, Irving Briggs, OLB

For full points potential, all of the above information types are needed (round #, name, position).

Good luck!

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Now that the NFL 2017 season has officially come to a close, we put our Steel Balls supercomputers to work crunching numbers to determine the winner of the coveted LamBalldi Trophy. MWalsh defeated last year’s winner (Army01) by a hair. The race was so close, in order to reach the final result we had to delve into tie breakers.

As for the rest of us, well, it was a sad showing. Two participants (kalel1199 and mwalsh) correctly guessed the final season wins total for the Steelers (13), and another six of us (copanut, tuskeegee_brown, tompaulbillybob, army01, estimatedprophet, and tennbob) were off by only one win. However it should not come as a shock that the Browns were the undoing of the majority of us who incorrectly guessed that the Browns would finally put all of their myriad high draft picks to some use. Boy, were we wrong.

Earl was the most pessimistic (10 Steelers wins) and jamesh the most optimistic (16 wins). Go figure. Who could have ever guessed such soul-mates could have such opposing world views?

Getting back to our winner and runner-up, both had exceptionally strong regular season predictions, with mwalsh nailing the Steelers, Ravens, and Bengals, and only whiffing on the Browns, while army01 was slightly more accurate on playoff wins. As a result they both ended up with 7 points and we had to go to the first tiebreaker where we look at the predicted game by game results. Even that was close, with mwalsh guessing 12 games correctly, compared to 11 for army01.

The full results are summarized below. As for now, cheers to mwalsh, while the rest of us lick our wounds and get ready for our springtime draft predictions.

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to Auger In  -  verb; to crash (e.g., an aircraft) into the ground. Named for the large crater an aircraft makes in the ground when it crashes at high speed. 
Examples: "The Baltimore Ravens augered in two years in a row, first due to the Steelers 'Immaculate Extension', and then, inexplicably, at the hands of a desperate Red Rocket."

How far did the Ravens fall in the blink of an eye? According to ESPN, they entered the day with a 97% chance of making the playoffs. In the space of a few seconds, they plunged over the cliff like Thelma and Louise:

That’s two years in a row where the Ravens controlled their destiny to have it snatched away at the final seconds by a defensive collapse, with multiple defenders flailing on the ground. What do you say, John?

+1

Charter Steel Baller Tuskegee_Brown makes an intriguing request – that we have a poll to determine the most unlikable Steelers of the past 40 years. In order to make that poll we need to produce a list of names. I’m soliciting everyone’s input because this is harder than it might appear at first blush. For one thing, there aren’t that many truly unlikable Steelers, but many names to sift through to find them. For another, we may dislike the players for different reasons: lack of talent, bad attitude, lack of discipline, low IQ, etc.

So, I’m throwing this open to the masses. Please contribute your least favorite Steelers of the Super Bowl era including your reasons if you wish, and once we have a good list we’ll put up a poll. I’ll get the party started:

Cliff Stoudt – like having Landry Jones as a starter
Neil O’Donnell – you know why
Mike Vick – torturer of dogs – though rehabilitated it’s hard to get over that
Anthony Smith – all hat, no cattle
Cam Thomas – whiffffffffff
Chris Rainey – woman beater, without even compensating talent
Jacoby Jones – did everything possible to hurt the Steelers, regardless of which team he played on
LaGarette Blount – nearly wrecked LBell, then left his teammates and slithered to the enemy

[Edit] The poll is now closed and we have a clear loser… LeGarette Blount. Here is the final tally, including a five way tie for third.

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The lure of the Steel Balls Trophy beckons you!

It’s that time of year where Steel Ballers put their reputations on the line to make their season predictions. Let me remind you of the rules of engagement:

Rules:

1. Lowest score wins.
2. Points are based on accuracy. An exact prediction yields zero points.
3. Categories include:
   • Final regular season record for each AFCN team.
   • Divisional positioning of AFCN teams.
   • Number of Steelers playoff wins.
4. Tie breaker: accuracy of game-by-game predictions

If you are too lazy to provide predictions in any of the above categories, you will get maximum points for that category.

Predictions will be accepted until Midnight ET September 9. You may change your predictions up until that time without penalty.

Good luck!

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Now that we’ve licked our wounds it’s time to crown the 2016 winner of the Steel Ball Trophy. After a satisfying run as reigning champion, copanut must step aside for this year’s winner: Army01. Army01 correctly predicted the Steelers’ wins in both regular season and postseason (11 and 2 respectively and was close enough in divisional predictions to hold the title.

Others are deserving of honorable mention. Abennihana and Tuskeegee_Brown both correctly predicted 11 wins for the Steelers. Tuskeegee_Brown and Malsor both correctly predicted two playoff wins, and malsor even correctly predicted a loss to the Patriots, and along with steelerfan58, correctly predicted the Rats would crawl to the finish with only 8 wins. Nobody foresaw the collapse of the Bengals, although copanut and kalel1199 were closest, while Army01 and mwalsh26 came closest in predicting the near perfect record of the Browns.

Rounding out the bottom were tompaulbillybob and chicosteelersfan, but to be fair it’s not because they are not good predictors. They lost a lot of points for areas where they failed to provide predictions and so got the lowest value by default. Lesson for next year: make sure you cover each category that is being measured.

Here are the results for posterity.

Raw data:

Scored and sorted results. Scores are the absolute difference between
predicted and actual results.

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