Smart Dumb Cats
Aaron Rodgers, Steelers fandom, death created time to grow the things it would kill
After a lot of public bickering and whatnot, the Steelers finally signed Aaron Rodgers. Everybody knew this was going to happen after Russell Wilson and Justin Fields dipped for the Giants and the Jets respectively. Rodgers was the only man on the planet who could feasibly lead a competitive NFL team that wasn’t already playing for one. Without Rodgers we would we be trotting out Mason Rudolph. While he looked passable with the Titans last year, nobody in Pittsburgh trusts Rudolph after he sucked during his first stint with the Steelers, especially after he capped it off by probably calling Myles Garrett the n-word on the field.
The Steelers and Steelers fans are used to putting the art before the artist when it comes to our quarterbacks, having recently spent some 15 years at the top of the league with dull sexual predator Ben Roethlisberger under center. You get that grace when you win Super Bowls. If we needed another reason to shun Mason Rudolph, he recently made an appearance at a Trump rally in Pittsburgh. Big Ben was buddies with Trump too, but again, count the rings. Aaron Rodgers is also one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, but he did it in Green Bay. Today he’s a shadow of his former self, less notable for anything he accomplished on the field last year with the Jets, than for pushing anti-vax bullshit towards RFK Jr. and “just asking questions” on manosphere podcasts. There are a lot of racists with sexual assault charges in the NFL. There are many fewer who helped measles make a comeback.
As a Steelers fan and a Nets fan, I am in the unique position of having already reckoned with rooting for an anti-vax weirdo. But Kyrie Irving had already put in a year of phenomenal basketball before he missed the bulk of the 2021-22 season because he refused to get the COVID vaccine. And while Kyrie’s flirtations with the Flat Earth Society and Black Israelites have the same Smart Dumb Cat energy as Rodgers’s bullshit, he also has a long track record of support for causes like Palestinian rights and Sioux anti-pipeline protests. Above all, that was then and this is now: Kyrie did not have the ear of our undead Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Anyways, it’s easier for a point guard to dazzle you into looking the other way than a quarterback. Kyrie is a joy to watch and having him on your team is fun, even if your team is trash. Win or lose, he will be defying the laws of physics as long as he can stay healthy1. On the other hand, even the best quarterbacks take brutal hits every game and give up goofy-looking fumbles. The worst ones are still capable of rolling out and throwing a missile to a receiver 30 yards downfield. In either case, they are limited by the team around them and the coaches behind them. Nobody runs a bubble screen good enough to make you forget their politics. Quarterbacks have to win.
My family moved to Pittsburgh in the mid-90’s. My brother and I grew up Tar Heel die-hards, a little late for Jordan and Worthy, but in time for Rick Fox and Eric Montross2. My brother started college the year we moved and our experiences as sports fans forked: I got into the Pirates and Steelers, going full “root for the laundry” in a classically working-class city. My brother got deep into the NBA, where a wave of player individuality was filling the vacuum created by Jordan’s retirement, and would eventually make a name for himself writing about player-focused “liberated” fandom.
At one point we had a fight about the NFL’s “Any Given Sunday” mantra. My brother didn’t understand why I would want to watch a sport where every game was fundamentally a coin flip. I watched because it was Sunday and the Steelers were playing, and my fandom was uncomplicated. But it definitely helped that I’m kind of a casual and what happens on the field is mostly illegible to me. I understand football just enough to complain about how we run too many jet sweeps, so it wasn’t much of a leap for me to start every drive believing things could be different this time.
It helps that there’s just a lot less football. The NBA is random and unpredictable too, but when Terance Mann goes off for 40 in November, while a nice surprise for some fantasy owners and future trivia fodder, it’s still just one game out of 80. In football, the right twist of fate is way more likely to turn your whole season around, or at least ruin someone else’s.
But there is also no good reason to watch the Steelers win a 14-12 rock fight against the Ravens without investment. Save a few rare moments of beauty and elegance, football is unpleasant. The average play is mostly chaos, teetering on the brink of collapse just long enough to accomplish a few very specific actions. It’s somehow too violent but also not violent enough because it used to be more violent, and physics says one big burst of kinetic energy hits fewer targets than a bunch of smaller ones. When you think about the path everyone on the field took to get there, the time, the work, the discipline, the pain, the sacrifice, how so many others gave the same and didn’t make it, the money, the marketing, the cultural impact, the appropriation of public funds for stadiums, everything that goes into a futile off-tackle handoff for one yard, the vacuum between input and output is so vast it becomes profound. Like a zen koan.
“Any Given Sunday” is good marketing, but it’s also a dare. What is this all for? Don’t you believe? If you don’t, why are you here?
Every Steelers season is the same. They are all different, but they are all the same. They were the same when we somehow coerced winning seasons out of Tommy Maddox. They were the same when 15 win seasons kept ending with a Naruto run into a brick wall in Foxborough. We have a good coach and a defense that prioritizes TBI’s over picks. We start every season 3-1 whether or not we actually do, and we are cautiously optimistic until we lose our quarterback real quick midseason. There is always an inexcusable, baffling loss around week 10. We limp into the playoffs and/or have a statement win at the end of the season. Our o-line is injured, we will fix it in the draft. Or we won’t.
Sometimes we win a Super Bowl. The seasons change. A bridge collapses. A bus falls in a sinkhole. The mills close. A successful tech hub blooms. Time marches on. God is dead. Aaron Rodgers is our quarterback.
Someone pointed out that the Steelers defense is always objectively a good time, which is fair, but that’s like saying you shouldn’t complain about your job working construction because demolition is fun.
I beat Rasheed Wallace in Mortal Kombat!