However, I've spent the entire weekend in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which is like San Francisco East for the gay and lesbian community. Needless to say, I've been trying to talk a lot of football to try and even things out.
I'm also going to be on a plane while the game is taking place, so I'm not sure how much of it I'm going to catch. The important thing is that I'm most likely to miss the first few series, so there won't be much point in watching the second half. Unless, of course, I want to see if our fourth string guys are better than the Saints' fourth string guys.
I'm also flying Jet Blue, though, so I'll have access to TV. I'm hoping that they'll have it on one of the stations. (This is not a Jet Blue plug, though I enjoyed the flight out, I'm just stating facts here.)
Two things interest me about this game:
1. Seeing how much of the new offense Bruce Arians unveils.
2. Watching Danny Vulva punt.
I have a sinking suspicion that, since this is the first of five pre-season games for our beloved Steelers, that Arians is going to keep things vanilla enough to make seven or eight banana splits, so I'm not holding out too much hope for that. Still, it will be interesting to see whether or not Tomlin actually wants to win this game. If nothing else, he wants to come out of his first pre-season with a winning record. And, after all, we took the pre-season waaaaaaaaaaaaay too lightly last year and it (among other factors) really screwed us for the regular season.
So, I'd have to say that I'm more excited about this particular pre-season, given that we might actually try to win some of these games, keep the starters in longer than it takes for them to break a sweat, and show off some of the new wrinkles on offense and defense.
But... saying that I'm more excited about this pre-season is like saying that I'm more excited to go to the dentist when I find out that he only needs to fill in one cavity instead of two.
Training Camp and the pre-season are important, I understand this. But, to me, they're only truly important for one reason: They mean that the regular season is not far away.
To put a finer point on it, here is the list of the five most painful sporting events to watch*:
- Women's softball.
- Women's basketball.
- Women's... okay, any women's sports. But the top two are, by far, the worst.
- Any playoff game after your team has been eliminated.
- Pre-season football.
Pre-season football is painful to watch because it's tough to get into, the starters barely play, no one uses complicated schemes, the players and coaches could really give two shits who wins or loses, and absolutely everyone is gripped with paranoia that someone important to the team is going to get hurt. It's kind of like watching the playoffs, but without all the promise, the high level of play on both sides, and the finality of it. So... really all you're left with is that feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach, like you're trying to figure out how to fart through a wicker pew.
And, I think it's an idictment of the entire pre-season system that the one thing I'm looking forward to the most is how the new punter does. I actually really want to see him punt. I've heard he has a funky kicking style, his balls have a strange rotation (there was something vaguely dirty about that phrase, but I can't put my finger on it), and he's got a linebacker mentality. As sad as I am to see Gardocki go, I'm excited for the future. Because, honestly, Gardocki had lost a great deal of leg strength and his directional skills were even beginning to fade. Obviously, we still wouldn't have made the playoffs last year if we had a better punter, but I also think that Vulva is going to be very important to the team this season in terms of winning the field position battle.
And we're going to need all the help we can get, having lost Sean Morey and James Harrison from the coverage units. It says something that I was overjoyed that we were able to re-sign Chidi Iwoma.
All pre-season bashing aside, though, I'm still pissed that I'm most likely going to miss it. Because, well, it's football for God's sake.
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