By: Joe Smeltzer
 |
| That just about sums it up. |
The Steelers got embarrassed on opening night in New England
because the whole team stunk.
One week later, they lost their home opener to the Seahawks
largely because the defense wasn’t good enough.
Pittsburgh’s week three disappointment happened largely because
of an offense that couldn’t make the most of five San Francisco 49ers
turnovers.
Offensive guard David DeCastro told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“I feel sick for the
defense.”
The good thing about this quote is that it shows that
although the Steelers are lacking in overall talent compared to the past five
years, at least one of their leaders knows that times are crappy. The bad thing
about it is that, well, times are crappy. Beyond that, we are only through
three games and the Steelers are already finding multiple ways to lose.
The mess that Pittsburgh sports are turning into goes beyond
its football team. The past week and ½ has been atrocious for the entire city.
Hell, Ben Roethlisberger’s season ending surgery somehow wasn’t
the most depressing news of the week.
The Steelers, Penguins and Pirates are all underwhelming at
the moment, as are Pitt football and basketball. To me, this begs a legitimate
question of whether Pittsburgh sports have been this low at any point in the 21st
century.
I threw out this query on my twitter account hours after the
world found out that Felipe Vazquez had been arrested.
To determine whether or not 2019 is the worst year for
Pittsburgh sports since Y2K, I’ve decided to break down the past eight months as
well as all the 19 years that preceded them.
This year isn’t over yet, but for now, let’s see how it
stacks up against the past
2019: Let’s try
to condense this.
·
Both Antonio Brown and the Pirates have had enough
nonsense to warrant separate articles.
·
Ben Roethlisberger’s season was supposed to be
filled with touchdowns and void of drama. Instead, it ended after two games.
·
Pitt basketball is on the rise under Jeff Capel,
but is still a bottom-tier ACC program.
·
Pitt football is the same as it always is.
·
Yes, I know Pitt volleyball is very good. No, I
do not care.
·
The Penguins have been in decline since 2017 and
have lost their last six playoff games. Yet our city sees them as its only hope
for a pride. Doesn’t that sum up where we are?
To get a better idea of how bad this year is, let’s turn
back the clock a bit.
1999: The
Steelers went 7-9 and missed the playoffs. The Pirates’ catcher and franchise
player, Jason Kendall, broke his ankle on independence day and was never the
same. The early part of the year was met with fear of the Penguins future in
Pittsburgh. Pitt basketball was a well-established joke under Ralph Willard,
and the school hired Ben Howland to pick up the pieces.
The last year of the 20th century also marked the
end of Pitt Stadium, and the cries for another on-campus field have been heard
from here to Bangor, Maine ever since.
2000: The first
year of Century #21 wasn’t a great one, but it was salvaged right at the finish
line by the return of Mario Lemieux to the NHL Dec. 26. Lemieux’s return alone
puts 2000 ahead of 2019, and “Le Magnifique” delivered, scoring 76 points and
43 games to show that he hadn’t lost a step after three years of retirement
2001: PNC Park
and Heinz Field opened, and the Steelers christened their new stadium with a
13-3 season that ended one game shy of the Super Bowl. The Penguins rode a resurrected
Mario to the Eastern Conference finals. Overall, it wasn’t a bad year, aside
from the Pirates losing 100 games and subsequently raising ticket prices.
2002: Thanks to
an NFL castoff turned XFL legend named Tommy Maddox, the Steelers won their
second straight division title. The Pirates improved from 2001, winning 72
games. On the downside, The Penguins downward spiral began with them missing
the postseason for the first of four consecutive seasons. Although the Pens
stunk, Pitt basketball didn’t. The 2000s Panthers had the first of what would
become many dominant seasons in the Big East, going 29-6 and making it to the
Sweet 16.
2002 wasn’t a year becoming of a “City of Champions,” but it
was a hell of a lot better than 2019.
2003: This is a
year that’s in the running the worst in recent memory, at least on the
professional side. The Steelers went 6-10, and haven’t sucked as bad since. The
Pirates had another sub-par season lowlighted by the horrendous Aramis Ramirez
trade. The Penguins missed the playoffs again amid increasingly dwindling attendance
in an outdated arena that everybody knew they needed to leave.
What saved 2003 was college athletics. Pitt’s Larry
Fitzgerald had one of the most successful seasons of any local athlete ever,
wrapping up several awards and narrowly missing out on the Heisman Trophy. Pitt
basketball continued to win under Howlad, taking home gold in the glamorous Big
East tournament and making another Sweet 16. Today, neither Pitt football or
basketball is good, and for that, I say 2003 was slightly better than 2019. But
it’s a close race.
2004: The
Penguins and Pirates still stunk, nut Pitt basketball was better than ever,
going 31-5 under first year head coach Jamie Dixon and winning the Big East
regular season championship. Pitt football also won a conference championship,
and God knows when that will happen again.
Perhaps most notably, the Steelers went 15-1, led by a
young, punk kid from Lima, Ohio who would become a Steel City institution.
2005: A Super
Bowl season. That’s all you need to know. Well, the Penguins won the NHL draft
lottery and drafted Sidney Crosby. That’s worth mentioning too.
2006: All in all,
2006 was lousy. But, the Steelers Super Bowl win happened in February, and
Pittsburgh hosted its first MLB All-Star game in 12 years five months later.
Crosby broke 100 points in his rookie season, and Freddy Sanchez won the
National League batting crown.
2007: The Mike
Tomlin era began for the Steelers, and the Jim Tracy era ended for the Pirates.
The Penguins made their first of 13 (and hopefully counting) consecutive
playoff appearances, and Pitt football pulled off one of the biggest upsets in
college football history in its legendary 13-9 win over West Virginia.
2008: Crosby and
the Pens fell two wins short of the Stanley Cup. Pitt football churned out an 8-4
campaign under Dave Wannstedt. The Steelers were also pretty good that year,
which leads us to…
2009: Super Bowl.
Stanley Cup. I could stop there, but I won’t. Andrew McCutchen made his MLB debut,
and Pitt basketball fell one game short of its first Final Four. Life was good
for a Pittsburgh sports fans 10 years ago. What the hell happened?
2010: The
Penguins closed out the Mellon Arena with another solid campaign, though it
didn’t conclude with a trip to the Stanley Cup, but rather a quarterfinal
defeat in seven games to Montreal. The Steelers overcome a four-game suspension
hammered down to Roethlisberger to get to another Super Bowl. Pitt fired Wannstedt, and the Pirates fired manager
John Russell. One of those decisions worked out significantly better than the
other.
2011: The Pirates
reached first place in July, giving this city hope for half a summer. The
Steelers turned in another 12-4 season, and the Penguins had what may have been
a great year stolen from them when Crosby went down at Heinz Field on New Year’s
Day. All three professional sports teams did well, which would become a brief
trend later in the 2010s. On the college scene, Pitt earned a #1 seed in the
NCAA tournament for the second time in three years, but lost in outrageous
fashion to Butler in the second round, a defeat the program has yet to recover
from.
2012: This is
another candidate for worst year of the 21st century, starting with
Tim Tebow knocking the Steelers out of the postseason in January. The Pirates had one of the worst collapses in
baseball history. The 2012 Steelers limped to an 8-8 finish, missing the playoffs
for just the second time under Tomlin. The Penguins embarrassed themselves in a
six-game series loss to the Flyers in the first round.
In college sports, Pitt basketball had its worst season in
more than a decade, settling for a dubious CBI championship. 2012 wasn’t good
at all, but was it worse than 2019? Because McCutchen officially became a
superstar, and Crosby returned from the concussion that put his career in
question, I put this year slightly ahead of 2019, for now.
2013: The Pirates
played in six playoff games. Hell of a year.
2014: All three
professional teams qualified for the postseason. That doesn’t happen often.
2015: The Pirates
won 98 games. The Steelers and Penguins also put playoff seasons together,
albeit the Pens’ run only lasted five games. Who knows when we’ll see all three
teams qualify for the postseason again? Only God.
2016: Lord
Stanley Returns.
2017: See above
2018: The
Steelers choked. AB became a joke. The Pirates traded away McCutchen and Gerrit
Cole and acquired Chris Archer six months later. The Washington Capitals
finally vanquished the Penguins when it mattered. There were a lot of bad
things that came out of 2018, but I don’t see how it tops the crap we’re
currently walking through.
So, all years have good and bad things that happen to a city
and its sports fans. But after breaking down this list, I’m still convinced
that never in my life as a Pittsburgh native has it been harder to find
positives than it has been in 2019. Plenty of justifiable answers can be given
as to why this year is or isn’t the worst stretch of Pittsburgh sports in the
21st century. My answer is, unless something drastically changes, it
will be the worst.
