All hope is lost.
I mean, I saw the same New England team we all did on that dream-come-true December afternoon at Heinz Field, right?
Tom Brady was finally fading at 42. Rob Gronkowski was barely able to break stride. A defense that couldn't come close to covering anyone in black and gold. And even Bill Belichick, the genius whose brain bursts with overflow ideas better than those of any football mind in human history, was outwitted by Mike Tomlin.
It all looked so legit. And especially to those in attendance, it all had to have felt so legit:
Didn't matter. None of it matters.
Anyone who watched that AFC Championship, from near or far, knows that now better than ever. It didn't matter that Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs' offense had been virtually unstoppable. Or that Brady and his offense were repeatedly stuck at third-and-long. Or that overtime ultimately was decided by a coin flip. Or that, at various stages of the season, nearly every facet of the Patriots' roster -- even Brady and Gronk, at times -- had been exposed as wanting.
All that matters, in football or any sport, is who wins.
The Patriots won:
It's what they do. And in doing so, they've succeeded -- and I say this seriously -- in having raised up something of an aura over the rest of the AFC, one that undoubtedly assists them in such situations. It lifts them up, buoys them, even as it beats the other guys down. It applies over the whole conference, from Kansas City to Pittsburgh, from regular challengers to upstarts like the Chargers.
This was the winter, I'd been certain, it would end. For more reasons than I could count, and that was before Heinz Field.
I was wrong.
And all of that bizarre, borderline treasonous segment of Steelers Nation that pretty much exists to praise the Patriots -- primarily as some omnipresent weapon with which to troll over Tomlin -- yeah, it turns out they were right. They won. They wound up on top in the battle/argument that interested them the most: Their team, the one they hold up as their ideal, is going to the Super Bowl.
So hey, congrats on that. You'll love Atlanta this time of year. Give those Rams heck 'n at.
But for the rest of us, those who don't believe in bogeymen, those who'd prefer to focus on a future in which the Steelers have an actual chance at advancing through the AFC, feel free to stick with the rest of this column.
Because I'm still there. I really am.
If anything, if I'm being completely honest, watching all seven hours of these two wonderful championship games -- in addition to have covered three of those participants up close -- had me all the more convinced that the Steelers had every business playing at this level and possibly advancing. At their peak performance, they were better than the Patriots, less one-dimensional than the Chiefs and ... at least competitive with the Saints.
They could beat anyone.
That's irrelevant, of course, and I'm not suggesting otherwise. The Steelers missed the playoffs on merit. Because of the terrible turnover ratio. Because of the missed kicks. Because of the blown challenges. Because of Oakland alone, one could argue.
It won't be easy to build that up again. The good part, I mean. Antonio Brown won't be back. The offensive line will take some tinkering. The players they'd damned well better acquire at inside linebacker and ballhawking corner will take time to adjust. So will the new No. 2 receiver behind JuJu Smith-Schuster.
But consider the starting point. Consider that, as I type this, even those who are most cynical about everything related to the Steelers might agree on these first two things and, by logical extension, the third:
1. These people are angry.
2. They're disappointed.
3. They believe their team should have been in Atlanta.
I do, too. It's no crime to acknowledge it.
• No one should weep for the Chiefs or Andy Reid. Just wait until the Patrick Mahomes sequel. That kid's not about to fade. And when training camps reopen in late July, the road through the AFC -- for realists -- will run through Kansas City, not Foxborough or Pittsburgh or Los Angeles.
• No sympathy here for New Orleans. Not so much because the Saints benefited from the Joe Haden non-call when the Steelers should have won in the Superdome but, rather, because Drew Brees and that offense had countless other chances to bury the Rams, including on that same critical drive. They didn't. Even after a 13-0 lead. Even with all the bogus, manipulative tricks they pull in that dump to manufacture noise.
• Besides, a football team really ought to win at least one playoff game outdoors to be a champion, right?
• The call was blown. The Saints blew the game. Both things can be true.
• Sean Payton, who spoke candidly about the call afterward, acknowledged he'd like to see all plays be reviewable in the NFL. I like that idea a lot. Not to give coaches more challenges or to further slow action, but just to broaden the scope.
Payton and Tomlin are both on the NFL's Competition Committee. I'll bet they share this stance.
• Let's talk about overtime, too. Mahomes never got to touch the football in this one. That's plain stupid.
If the aim of the rule, as was expressed at the time, is to keep games from getting too long, then at least waive it for the playoffs. Better yet, stop being stubborn and just adopt the NCAA's excellent format of having teams line up at the 25-yard line and playing, you know, actual football.
• Aaron Donald's in the Super Bowl. From Penn Hills to Pitt to NFL Defensive Player of the Year to a nine-figure contract this past summer to, now, a chance to play for a championship.
Good for him. Couldn't happen to a better dude.
This also serves as a powerful reminder about the folly of collegiate recruiting rankings: AD was a 3-star coming out of Penn Hills. A grand total of three colleges offered him scholarships: Pitt, Rutgers and Toledo.
• The NHL's five-day All-Star break is underway tomorrow for the whole league, but the Penguins get two bonus days because of how the schedule played out. This is welcome on so many levels, none more than getting Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Phil Kessel and especially Patric Hornqvist a meaningful break, both physically and mentally. In addition to being who they are, they're on the wrong side of 30, and any realistic push for the Stanley Cup has to come with all five remaining as energetic as possible.
• Cool stat I looked up myself on a hunch: Crosby's 56.8 percent success rate on defensive-zone faceoffs is the NHL's 11th-best among the 73 centers who've taken 500-plus total draws.
• Keep Malkin and Kessel together. There's zero harm in that, provided Mike Sullivan keeps what he himself describes as a 'defensive conscience' on the line, as he did with Riley Sheahan in Glendale and Las Vegas.
In general, it's long past time to stop hoping for HBK II. It isn't happening. Nor is it anywhere near as important for the coaches to find matchups -- Sullivan's stated reasoning for the preference -- as it is creating consistent five-on-five offense. The best chance for doing that with most teams, and now including this one, is to load up two lines, then wish for the best from the other two.
• Wondering what Garrett Wilson did to earn that glowing endorsement from Jim Rutherford in the past week?
You know, being that he's an NHL forward who's never scored an NHL goal in 53 career games?
Wonder no more: In addition to being visibly effective on the penalty-kill, his advanced statistics show that he's been on the ice for 33 high-danger scoring chances for the Penguins compared to 19 against. That 63.46 percentage is the very best on the roster, albeit in a 19-game, reduced-ice sample size.
The mainstay forward with the best such figure is uber-responsible Dominik Simon at 61.54 percent.
• Anyone taking the Islanders seriously yet?
Nah?
OK., well, then at least line up Barry Trotz for another Jack Adams Award. Because all he's pulling off in Brooklyn -- besides winning 15 of 18 to soar to the top of the Metro standings -- is transforming the NHL's worst defensive team into its best. No kidding: The Islanders' 296 goals-against last season were most in the league, and their current 119 are the fewest.
If that holds up, they'll become the first team in league history to go from worst to first in that category since the 1917-18 Senators.
Remember when John Tavares leaving was supposed to ruin the franchise?
• The Pirates' wicked slashing of payroll $90 million 2018 to a projected $71 million for 2019, as accounted by John Perrotto for our site this morning, is even more sinister than it appears on the surface:
Sure, it's lousy that they'll rank next-to-last in Major League Baseball, ahead of only the Rays. It's lousier still that they'll be smoked by two division peers above, the Brewers and Reds, based in smaller markets, and another, the Cardinals, based in an identical market.
But lousiest of all -- and it isn't close -- is that this reduction comes immediately after Bob Nutting’s team was cut a $50 million check by Major League Baseball for the recent sale of a subsidiary arm to Disney.
That money's vanished.
So has all the "financial flexibility" money, to borrow their favorite collective term used over the years. They presume the paying public is stupid enough to forget all the times cash went out without being reciprocated in any form. Maybe the public isn't, judging by 454,000 fewer tickets having been sold last summer, but I guess we'll see.
• With the insanely idle week again, I'm going to take a couple more days ... not off, but to spend time on some business initiatives. I'll be around, obviously, but Grind won't be back until the coming weekend.
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