I tried. Went stall to stall, canvassing the Steelers' sullen locker room late Sunday night in Foxborough, seeking any semblance of a positive to cull from that 33-3 loss to the Patriots. Something, anything that could carry over into Seattle week.
"Man ... I don't know," Alejandro Villanueva eventually replied. "I mean, it is just one game."
OK, math. It's 1 of 16. That's something.
Anyone else?
"Yeah, I think so," Vance McDonald came back after a similar pause. "Anytime you get on a football field, you have a chance to improve, whether it's timing or whatever."
That's ... also something. Kind of like a fifth preseason game.
Then there was Cam Heyward's take. This one resonated.
"First thing we have to do is look at the film, learn what we can from our mistakes. And we made a lot of 'em," he told me. "If there's a positive, when you're facing a Super Bowl champion, you're going to learn what those are right away rather than wait. Now it's up to us to learn from this lesson and put it to work."
After a pause of his own, "I'll tell you what: I can't wait for Wednesday."
Which is when, after the film study and finger-wagging, attention will fully turn toward the Seahawks.
The finger-wagging will be appropriate. Obviously. But it also will be, as Heyward suggests, ideally timed. Some opponent's going to expose an NFL team's shortcomings, probably all laid bare by the bye week at the latest. And in this specific case, especially since the Steelers showed so many offensive sets and dramatically altered their defensive alignment late in the first half, Bill Belichick's strategies and the Patriots' execution laid all of it bare.
McDonald's remark on another subject might have unwittingly explained this: "Most of what New England does is force you into man-to-man situations, so it's you against them and it's on your execution."
Yep. Some will execute, and some will do whatever the hell Donte Moncrief was doing. And if those performances better inform decisions moving forward ... again, that's something.
Now, consider the alternative ...
The Ravens fly down to Miami to take on the apparent equivalent of a college team, they run a 59-10 rout in their opener, they amass 643 total yards of offense -- most by any NFL team since 2012 -- and Lamar Jackson records a perfect 158.3 passer rating to go with his five touchdowns. And it's great for the Dirty Birds. Everyone's giddy. Heck, John Harbaugh was so pumped he authorized a fake punt with a 32-point lead in the first half.
Oh, and just wait till next week when the Ravens do likewise to the Cardinals. They'll all be spiking their crabcakes over there.
But let's now suppose that Jackson, a runner first and passer second by any reasonable definition, slips away from what makes him most dangerous. Or that their overall offense and defense, which are both basically average — if that — rest on the first couple of results. Without being exposed.
Next come the Chiefs in Week 3, and Patrick Mahomes will eat them alive.
And the first challenge in Week 9, right after Baltimore's bye, will be the Patriots with Tom Brady and Antonio Brown.
By the time the Steelers and Ravens meet in the regular-season finale Dec. 29, yet another possible AFC Central-deciding showdown between the two, which team will have had more time, more opportunity to become all it can be?
Hey, like I said, I tried.
• Andy Dalton just threw for 418 yards and two touchdowns -- with no A.J. Green, need I remind -- in losing to the Seahawks, whose secondary looked virtually invisible. I offer that not as hope for the Steelers to get their passing game together, but as a challenge. Because if they can't do it against these guys, they might never.
• I ripped the offense something fierce from Foxborough, but that doesn't mean I liked the defense as much as most seemed to. Only T.J. Watt made impact plays, really rising above. No one else came close to his level. That's not how it needs to work against the Patriots.
• Devin Bush led the team with 11 tackles, including seven solos, as an inside linebacker should when he leads that particular position in snaps. Which he did, by the way, with 53.8 percent to Mark Barron's 48.7 percent and Vince Williams' 22.3 percent.
How did he do?
Eh, I'll leave the intensive chalkboarding to Chris Carter. But from my live, press box perspective, Bush basically took care of business. Made the plays he was supposed to make. Secured the spots on the field he was supposed to secure. And that's really what's been most impressive about him since the day he arrived: He's eschewed chasing around splash in favor of building up a real foundation to his game.
Listen to the kid answer my questions, and it's easy to grasp how he's so grounded:
• Go ahead and bury Moncrief. Maybe the Steelers should, too. Because what bugged me most about his showing Sunday -- beyond the obvious -- was the lack of fight for the football. He was selected one of the team captains, and it didn't appear he could be bothered to come back to the ball, never mind exert a little extra to claim it.
Put it this way: He should have a hell of a week of practice before he's put into position for several more targets Sunday.
• Moncrief took nearly twice as many snaps as James Washington. This is ... I can't come up with a derisive enough adjective for it.
• The Browns will keep being the Browns until they have an offensive line. And they don't. Which is the primary reason they committed an insane 18 penalties in their 43-13 loss to the Titans, as well as why Baker Mayfield was sacked five times and picked off three times. I'd been writing this all summer. No amount of trinkets outshines what's in the trenches. They'll finish third in the AFC North.
• If there's any sports talk radio more stomach-turning than what's in Boston, I haven't heard it. And don't want to. The entitlement is beyond belief. Unlike anywhere in the country.
• When I say country, I mean country. No entitlement anywhere matches that of Toronto as it relates to the Maple Leafs.
• As long as I'm mixing NFL and NHL, this is for anyone who doubts the Steelers' continuing dominance within the Pittsburgh market: The NBC broadcast of the game against New England drew an epic 42.3 rating on WPXI. In their most recent full season, 2018-19, the Penguins had an average 5.81 rating on AT&T SportsNet. In their most recent full season, 2018, the Pirates had at 4.75 on the same network.
That's not a bad reflection of either the Penguins or Pirates. The Penguins' rating led all U.S.-based NHL markets, and they do the same for NBC broadcasts of their games. The Pirates' rating was the seventh-highest in Major League Baseball. Also, the Steelers play just once a week.
Still, we're not talking about double, triple, even quadruple the rating. We're talking about seven times what the Penguins average. And nearly double the 24.0 or 25.0 the Penguins were drawing in their most recent Stanley Cup Final appearances.
More than ever, Pittsburgh's a hockey town. But it's first and foremost a football town. Both things can be true.
• Football's awesome. Anyone who didn't stay up Monday night to see Saints-Texans missed a beauty:
Final 55 seconds of #HOUvsNO:
• (0:55) NO: Made FG {27-21}
• (0:50-0:37) HOU: 2-play, 75-YD TD {27-27}
-Missed PAT
-Roughing the kicker penalty
-Re-kick PAT good {27-28}
• (0:00) NO: Will Lutz 58-YD career-long game-winning FG.
• Saints win 30-28 pic.twitter.com/TYlNw0Jq7q
— CBS Sports HQ (@CBSSportsHQ) September 10, 2019
We're a football country. It's who we are. It'll survive head injuries, anthem flaps, anything that gets thrown at it.
• These Pirates sure don't quit on the field. Give them that. They've earned it.
• Bryan Reynolds had two more hits Monday night in San Francisco, boosting the ninth-inning rally that beat the Giants, the team that drafted him in the second round in 2016 and moved him through the lower minors before the trade to the Pirates. Once with Pittsburgh, he spent one full season in the system ... under Michael Ryan in Altoona.
Really, other than a couple weeks in Indianapolis this year, Reynolds never had another manager. Just Ryan.
But that's the guy you fire when seeking "new thoughts, new ideas and new energy” in minor-league development, as Neal Huntington claimed in his weekly session with reporters Sunday at PNC Park.
The jokes just write themselves.
• There was no need, no benefit other than a selfish one, for Huntington to elaborate at that same session on his reasons for firing Ryan. That was surprising. I'd not seen that side of Huntington shown to the public previously. All any other GM would usually do there is thank the man for his time with the organization, cite some difference in how they see stuff, and move on to the next question.
Yeah, good luck hiring the cream of the crop out there to replace Ryan and anyone else who gets scapegoated. Word of things like this spreads quickly in baseball's little world.
• The Pirates' next loss will be their 82nd. That'll clinch a losing season for the eighth time in 12 years under the National League's most tenured GM. Three cameo playoff appearances. Zero division titles. In that same span, every other team in the Central has won the division at least twice.
• The Penguins will open training camp Friday in Cranberry with more answers than questions, given the concrete state of their roster. There'll be no surprises, no plucky tryouts, nothing of the kind.
But I'll be damned if I can conceive of forward combinations, even after Mike Sullivan shared his ideas this week with Dave Molinari in Buffalo, N.Y. It feels like there's ... I don't know, too much flexibility? Roughly half the forwards can slide up and down lines as easily as they can flip wings.
My best effort before they hit the ice, and these are based on my own concepts rather than a prediction:
Guentzel-Crosby-McCann
Galchenyuk-Malkin-Kahun
Simon-Bjugstad-Hornqvist
Tanev-Blueger-Rust/ZAR
Thoughts: McCann's got significant scoring upside. Don't bury it. Bring it out ... Kahun's a needed two-way presence on the second line, plus he's got the speed to give Malkin that always-beloved first man on the forecheck. ... Galchenyuk's at least got to get a top-six look. I'm not buying what he's selling, but I've at least got to shop. ... Third line was beautiful late last season. A shot-generating buzzsaw. ... Sorry, but I can't count on ZAR to stay healthy. If he does, Rust can be traded for needed cap relief. ... Leave Teddy alone already. ... Overall, it's a little too lefty for my liking, but that's hockey in 2019. ... A trade would help all of this, actually. I'd like to see Adam Johnson, Sam Lafferty and Sam Miletic not get thoroughly blocked out.
• Another reason for cap space is that Matt Murray's going to need to be approached about a contract well before season's end, provided he performs to par. Andrei Vasilevskiy's eight-year, $76 million extension with the Lightning has raised the bar for goaltending gold. Murray's won two more Stanley Cups than Vasilevskiy ever might, and he's capable of being better all-around. No one's going to take Jack Johnson's term, but they'll take Rust.
• Hockey talk ... feels good.
• Thanks for reading, as always.
