Steel Balls

[Admin Note: Click below to see Mr. Walsh’s magnificent draft projections…]

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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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Click on:

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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?

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If you ever wondered how weird I actually sound, give this a listen.

I’ve updated it to open in a new tab. You can always go to the SCB podcast page and click on the Episodes tab to listen to any of the past podcasts.

Episode 52 – Week 16, 2017. At Texans Lots of swearing on this one. Sorry, NSFW.

Episode 51 – Week 15, 2017. Patriots Week

Episode 50 – Week 14, 2017. Ravens Week

Episode 49 – Week 13, 2017. At Bengals 

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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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Any votes for the new helmet?

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