Pittsburgh Sports, Opinion and Politics | Just Watch the Game Blog

Everything new is old again.

After beating up on two terrible offenses, the Steelers defensive players were doing a lot of I-told-you-so-ing.

After losing to the Texans, James Harrison said, “We stink.”

There never was any debate about whether the Steelers defense was old.

That’s simple arithmetic.

The debate is about whether their age is going to show.

It showed yesterday in that 11-minute opening drive that the Texans went on.

Aaron Smith at 25 would have survived that much better than the 35 year-old version.

Same goes for Casey Hampton.

Ben Roethlisberger may have played one of his best games yesterday.

That depends on how many of those hits and sacks were a result of him holding on to the ball too long. He made some spectacular plays and showed that he’s as tough as anybody who ever wore a Steelers uniform, but the tape will tell how much of the debacle was his fault.

The question is : Is it good to have a quarterback who’s great at extending the play behind a bad offensive line or would it be better to have a guy who takes his three step drop and lets it rip?

Of course, if the offensive line doesn’t get better, it won’t matter because the quarterback who’s really good at keeping plays alive will be on the injured reserve list.

Of course, James Harrison is now saying he didn’t say what he obviously said about Ben Roethlisberger being overpaid and not being Peyton Manning, but that was to be expected.

According to some cold hard football facts, Roethlisberger isn’t overpaid and he doesn’t pale in comparison to Manning.

I know the Steeler Nation is in an uproar over the fact that Richard Seymour wasn’t suspended for slapping Ben Roehtlisberger in the mouth on Sunday.

All he got was a $25,000 fine.

Steelers fans who believe that the league is out to get their favorite team, are even more convinced now.

They’re contrasting Seymour’s fine with James Harrison’s fine and they think that Seymour deserved more.

He didn’t. A slap in the face isn’t nearly as dangerous as a helmet to helmet his on a helpless ball carrier.

Ejection perfectly fits the crime.

Sucker punches aren’t all that common in the NFL and they’ve always resulted in an ejection.

The NFL is going overboard on the late or flagrant hit penalties because it’s trying to change the way players tackle. I still think limiting the face mask to one bar would solve the problem immediartely, but that’s way too radical.

There will be more ridiculous roughing the passer calls but eventually the players and officials will adapt and the number of calls will go down.

Seymour’s penalty fit the crime. Fans need to get over it.

Joe Butler of Metro Index Scouting collides with the helmet-to-helmet issue in the NFL.