The Post-Gazette is showing its age

Gene Collier has apparently challenged Ron Cook to a wrong-off.

Oddly enough, the Rooneys have not solicited my suggestions on whom to talk with about replacing offensive coordinator Bruce Arians, likely because I was not in total agreement with his sudden "retirement."

Two Arians columns, two self-deprecating revelations that the Steelers haven't talked to Newspaper Columnist X about who they should hire as their new offensive coordinator. There are two problems with this alone. First, while the self-deprecation might be real, it is insincere. Both Ron Cook and Gene Collier think, either consciously or subconsciously, that their opinions should carry weight on this matter because they're columnists for a newspaper. They might be joking about the Steelers not asking for their opinion, but the only catch is that they're not at all joking. Second, the "nobody asked for my opinion but I'm going to give it anyway" is as weak a literary device as the one-sentence paragraphs both Collier and Cook are so fond of.

Oh, and it's good the Steelers haven't solicited your suggestions because you're wrong.

This won't be the first time I wasn't consulted on urgent policy matters, nor is it unprecedented for my opinions on a range of football issues to be pointedly ignored.

The more you talk about how unimportant you are, Mr. Collier, the less likely it appears to the rest of us that you actually believe it.

By random example, I've made it clear to various Rooneys throughout the years that I'd prefer the Steelers have cheerleaders, but they apparently feel I'd be better off spending the timeouts asking God's forgiveness for even the thought of objectifying young women, and/or praying to Saint Vincent, the patron saint of ball security.

You get it? Because the Steelers train at St. Vincent College! And when they train there, they...try not to fumble? This has all of the canned-cranberry-sauce-saccharine feel of a joke that's built for continuous re-use. BOLD PREDICTION: come August, this line will still not be funny.

Fair enough.

Our first one-sentence paragraph of the column! We should really start keeping track of how often the Two Gentlemen of the Boulevard use these.

But, today, I fear they seriously are overcomplicating the offensive coordinator search, particularly in a city where there is an offensive coordinator every 30 feet. In fact, when they announce the attendance at Heinz Field, I think they now say, "Today's attendance, 63,881 offensive coordinators."

Everyone thinks they're SOOOOO smart! Collier's exempt from this because he's merely pointing out how stupid this all is, which is his way of telling you he's yards smarter than everyone else who thinks they know something about football. Honestly, if you took 64,000 people at Heinz Field for a game, I'd be willing to bet that 4,000 of them could be more inventive playcallers than Arians. Of those 4,000, about 1,500 probably have a disturbingly technical knowledge of football that Gene Collier does not.

On a daily two-mile walk with my belligerent Airedale, I typically meet two to four offensive coordinators, which is how I know Jim Kreiger. Jim's standards for modern offensive football are so high that he calls talk shows to criticize Tom Brady.

Sports writers think people who call talk shows are sad, pathetic, blithering idiots. I have never in my life known an exception to this. For the most part, they're not wrong -- people who call talk shows to criticize Tom Brady sound like inherently sad, pathetic, blithering idiots.

"Hines Ward, you have to get rid of him," Jim said Tuesday. "I mean he was great. I loved watching him. A great Steeler. Great for the city, all that, but it's time to go."

Hey, Jim's actually dead on! I take it back.

"I'd also consider getting rid of Charlie Batch. He's gettin' up there."

I don't think you "get rid of" Charlie Batch, so much as you just bring him to camp, tell him you're going to cut him and allow him to retire a Steeler.

"Now this one, people will say I'm nuts, but I'd think about trading Ben [Roethlisberger]. He's 29, and I think he's just average, maybe a little better than average. I think you could get something for him."

I disagree with this, but not strongly. If the Steelers could have traded Roethlisberger two years ago during the draft, they should have. As it is now, I think they're probably stuck with him for the foreseeable future. That said, were the opportunity to come around for the Steelers to make an upgrade at quarterback, they should take it.

This is what I like about Jim. I was talking to him about the offensive coordinator's job, but he jumped right to vice president of pro personnel. Jim, what about the play-calling?

Yeah, Jim. Tell us about the play-calling.

"Too predictable," he said. "It's very obvious to me it's always run the ball, run the ball, throw the ball. They should mix it up a little. Other teams don't seem to do that."

If Jim can correctly identify 22-Double and when it's coming, he's going to get a guest column on FTC and we're going to take him out to a nice dinner.

This is about where it occurred to me that, if the Steelers were overcomplicating the search, perhaps I was guilty of oversimplifying it, and that just walking around the neighborhood did not necessarily meet the professional standard of due diligence.

By a quick show of hands, who thinks he's setting this up as a transition into something insightful, perhaps a well-reasoned opinion, maybe even the point of the column?

/silence

/crickets

/crickets go silent

Okay, who thinks that this paragraph is actually the gateway to another joke about how fans have stupid and ill-informed opinions?

/raises hand

/crickets explode

So I went to Giant Eagle.

If you're playing along with the FTC home game and you raised your hand, move yourself forward three spaces. If you knew he was going to deliver the joke with a one-sentence paragraph, give yourself a new two-year contract.

I knew there would be at least one strong candidate at the Camp Horne Road store, because that's where I saw the guy with the leather-sleeved 5 TIME SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS jacket that time, but this was after Super Bowl XLIII, so he had ripped off a three-inch square of duct tape, covered the big '5' on the back with it, and wrote '6' right on the duct tape.

Did he do that himself, or did he buy it on etsy?

That's the kind of attention to detail you need in an offensive coordinator.

Funny you mention that, because little patches of duct tape are what hold the Bruce Arians offense together.

I didn't find that guy, but, in the parking lot, I talked with Raymond Connolly, who gave a good presentation and had some football experience on his resume. High school, yeah, but around here, that's closer to pro than a lot of places.

"Anybody but [Arians]," Raymond said. "We've got to run the ball more. Get a fullback. Get back to basics. Quit giving Ben his way all the time. I've been watching for a long time. We've got to get back to some ball control. All that talent and no points."

It'd be nice to carry a real fullback, but I don't agree with experienced football mind Raymond Connolly. An indictment of Arians is not an indictment of the pass-based offense. That said, it's nice Gene Collier didn't have to look too hard to find exactly the quote he was looking for -- some yinzer who played WPIAL football, probably in the 70s, who longs for the days of Franco Bettis and a fullback with one eye who eats rocks and broken glass.

That's not exactly what Art Rooney II said last week, but it's not exactly not, either.

Eerie.

That's six one-sentence paragraphs so far, if you're scoring at home.

As the Steelers' search progresses, you might notice that only men are being considered. My own preliminary interviews were under no such arbitrary restriction.

"I like the way the offense has been going; I like the play-action and I like the passing, but I'd mix it up more," Jeanne told me from behind the lottery tickets at the gas station. "I think the mentality of this team and these fans is that we expect to win, but you can't run the same old thing all the time. You have to mix it up when your progressions aren't working."

Does anyone else feel like Gene Collier is mocking these people?
The sentiment here is totally dead-on. When some guy you meet while walking your dog, some guy you stop to talk to at the grocery store and the lady selling lottery tickets at the gas station all think that your play-calling is predictable, YOUR PLAYCALLING IS PREDICTABLE. But please, Gene Collier, continue to mock these people in the name of telling me why the Steelers should not have fired Uncle Genius Bruce Arians.

Progressions tended to break down for Arians, according to my candidates, specifically in the red zone.

"My motto would be," Jane Ubb told me at the Northland Public Library, "red zone equals end zone. If you get it to the red zone, you have to put in the end zone."

Forgot to ask her how soon she could start.

Maybe that's because you didn't tell her you were going to skewer her in a column, and instead just went up to her and asked for her opinion? I'm sorry, Geno, but for you not to look like an asshole here, you're going to have to convince me that all of these people mobbed you in public to force their opinions down your throat. I refuse to believe that's the case. Also, this woman at the library is the first person you've talked to who hasn't offered any real pointed analysis. Everyone else has had something to say that's been spot on. You haven't paid attention to that because you went into this with one goal, and that was to make people look stupid. You, meanwhile, have offered nothing in the way of solutions or ideas, and we're about three-quarters of the way through this thing. We're running out of space. Do you have anything to say, or are you going to just crack wise from on high?

But, in the interest of thoroughness, and so no one might accuse me of failing to conduct a nationwide search, I interviewed Billy Gardell, the Pittsburgh native now the co-star of the CBS sitcom "Mike and Molly."

/soulpalm

I started by mentioning that the person who succeeded Arians would need skin thicker than a pachyderm.

What are we up to? Is that nine? I've lost count.

"My skin's been that thick since I was 9," said Gardell via cell as he was pulled into work in Los Angeles. "Look, we've been going to the pass too quick. The first thing I'd do is start that [John] Clay at running back and pound him at them in the first quarter, like we used to do with [Jerome] Bettis. That will set up Ben's play-action and sets up our quick receivers because the safeties will have to come up.

"When we get the lead, I'd run it up like it was a college team and then I'd bring back the big back. Then, we don't have to spend the last six minutes wondering if we're gonna get the ball back in time to score."

Geno, if your point is that Pittsburgh fans like the old, two-back power run system, why can't you just say that? If you don't like that this is a fanbase resistant to change, why can't you just say that? If you think the game has changed to the point where the power run is obsolete, why can't you just say that? Why don't you just say whatever it is you're trying to say? All you're doing here is taking up space by trying to be cute. So far, the only positions you have clearly taken in this column have been that you didn't think Arians should have been let go, and that you think the locals are imbeciles. By my count, you've defended neither of those positions.

Sounds like five strong candidates to me. I assume any of 'em will work nights and weekends. No need to thank me.

When did these people you approached ever start pontificating about how they could do better than Arians? Since when is expressing a criticism of a football team the same thing as an assurance the critic could do just as well? This guy didn't call you and say "Man, listen to what I would do because I'm so much smarter than him." You called this guy and you asked him what he would do. You did that with all these people, only to flip it around and write it so that it looks like Steelers fans are claiming they're all way better options than Bruce Arians. Not only is that unfair, it's lazy and mean-spirited.
These folks who were just going about their business when you ambushed them -- none of them said outright that they were right for the job. The gist of their criticism was that they didn't think it was being done well, and that it could be done better.

Look, I do not happen to think I would make a particularly good offensive coordinator. But you know what job I'd be great at, Geno? Post-Gazette sports columnist. Since you're obviously not doing anything but collecting a paycheck, how about you take a buyout and make some room for someone -- anyone -- who has things to say.