DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: Purple pain!

DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: Purple pain!

[Music] Tell you what, for a bunch of guys who scattered themselves all over various beaches or couches past couple days, your football team sure had itself a wonderful weekend. Good morning to you. Good Monday morning. I’m Dan Kvachovich of DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Steelers presented by FanDuel. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you’re into hockey andor baseball, I also offer daily shots of Penguins Pirates in the same place that you found this. It’s back to practice later this morning over on the south side. That’ll begin around 11:00 a.m. and that’ll be aimed at the Browns coming into town next weekend. Now, as the great philosopher Guju Smith Schuster once famously spoke, the Browns is the Browns. Only now the Browns is pretty much representative of the entire remainder of the AFC North Division because the Browns is 1 and4, the Ravens is 1 and4, the Bengals is two and three. All three of these teams lost yesterday, of course, and in most cases weren’t even in the game. The aggregate score of their three games was 102 to 51. a literal 2:1 ratio. The Browns losing to the Vikings over in London, the Ravens getting destroyed by the Texans in Baltimore, and the Bengals being very predictably handled by the Lions in Cincinnati. And so, here we are through five official weeks of the NFL’s regular season, and the Steelers are 3-1, and they’re well ahead of the pack. Now, I’m not here to pretend that means something. I was here, just in case anybody’s wondering, last season as well. 10 and three looked awfully good. And if memory serves, the Steelers had several opportunities where, of valition, they could have closed out the division and didn’t. That was way after week five. This was just week five. So, talk to me again about taking command of the AFC North. Uh, you know, in a couple of weeks because after the Browns comes a Thursday night game in Cincinnati, the first two divisional games of the season. And on top of that, the Ravens will be facing a pretty good Rams team that’s 3-2 after a tough overtime loss to the 4-1 49ers. With all the injuries that Baltimore has, and it goes way beyond Lamar Jackson, Rocoan Smith, they could have really used a by-week right about now. instead they’ll be getting theirs after the game against the Rams after which they might be 1 and5. But the Ravens don’t have their quarterback. The Bengals don’t have Joe Burrow. The Browns never had a quarterback. And if there’s one thing you can say about the Steelers to date, they sure weren’t great in their first three games, but they’ve had a quarterback all along. And at the risk of making everybody think about something unseemly, if Aaron Rogers goes down that they still have Mason Rudolph. So yeah, do the Steelers appear to be in a much better spot than the remainder of the division? Yeah. Is that predicting something toward the future? Heck no. Not necessarily. But I’ll take and I I said this from Ireland, you guys. I’ll take this whole set of circumstances untouched if you’d offered it to me back in August. Everything about it up to and including the flaws that remain because I see the flaws and I have seen the flaws as being fixable all along. Even the offensive line, look, fixable can be defined a lot of different ways. You can say, “Well, until these five guys get better and become a unit, you’re never going to get what you need out of the line.” Okay, so put Spencer Anderson out there for 20 snaps. Put Darnell Washington pinned next to Brick Jones left shoulder. Bang. Just like that. Blocking solved. It’s not perfect, but it’s fixable. I’ll take what’s gone wrong with the defense to date, if only because that always was visibly fixable. They had to tackle. That’s it. And they had to get people who’ve made a living tackling people to tackle and they had to communicate and they had to show cohesion. All of that’s happened or it’s at least gotten underway. Are they going to go undefeated the rest of the way? No, of course not. Are they locks to win one or both of the next two games? No, of course not. But is there a very real possibility that they turned some figurative page in Ireland on a lot of these fronts? Well, we’ll see. But you had to start somewhere, even if it’s the other side of the planet. They did that. A lot of them did that. And then there’s another thing to bring up as it relates to the Steelers. Is there more upside to what they’ve shown? And I’m sorry, I can’t even conceive of anybody answering that question in the negative. I don’t know how you could look at even if it’s just in some cold bland way at the names that they have on this team and say, “Yeah, no, they’re not going to get any better. This is pretty much who they are.” Who would think that, much less say it? Listen to me. Injuries are part of the game. I’d be saying that if the Steelers had an injury list like the one the Ravens have. I’d be saying that if they were missing their number one quarterback the way the Bengals are. But I don’t recall seeing, hearing, or reading anybody from the Baltimore, Cleveland, Cincinnati vicinities weeping over the Steelers having all kinds of defensive guys missing from their own past two games. So say what you will about the Steelers general performance through the first three games. Fact of the matter is, and I mean fact, they’re three in one and everybody else is really far behind. They’re getting better. And I don’t know that that’s true of anybody else in the division. You’d happily take both of those things a month or two ago when we come back to J1Q. Luxembourg Garbet Kelly and George is a personal injury law firm in Western Pennsylvania that represents injured people in automobile accidents, workers compensation cases, and medical malpractice claims. The attorneys at Luxembourg Garbet Kelly and George pride themselves in doing what they say they’re going to do. It’s important to them that when they make you a promise, they keep that promise. And this law firm has been keeping promises for over 80 years. Luxembourg Garbet Kelly and George has been AV rated. That’s the highest rating a law firm can receive for legal ability and ethics. And the lawyers at the firm have been designated super lawyers. That’s a real thing for over 15 years. Rare combination there. Luxembourg, Garbet, Kelly, and George. Has offices in Cranberry, Newcastle, Beaver Falls, Butler, and Elwood City. Learn more about them at lgk.com or by calling 888425454. Again, that’s 888842-5454. Football season’s finally here. Time to check out the latest odds, futures, and win totals on the FanDuel sports book. Think the Steelers are headed to the Super Bowl? Lock in your bets today. Whatever your game, FanDuel Sportsbook delivers the latest lines, futures, and specials so you can join in on all the action. Hey guys, if you’re planning to see a Steelers game, use the Game Time app to get your tickets. You can snag new ticket deals before anyone. If you set it into your app alerts, the app is easy to use. No surprise fees at checkout. You can see your seat view before buying. And you’re getting legit tickets delivered on time. If you’re not much of a planner, you can get lastminute deals on tickets right up to the start of the event. Lowest price guaranteed or game time will credit you 110% of the difference. Download the Game Time app and enter the code DK Steelers into your app profile to get $20 off your first purchase. [Music] Today’s J1 Cube comes from Jason in Arkansas and he says, “Hi DK. Appreciate all the coverage on the app and an amazing value. I listen and read every day. Thanks for that, Jason. My son plays quarterback for a high school team. Coaches tell him a lot about how important off-field prep and training is to their goals as a team. Soft tissue injuries again are an issue with the Steelers, specifically related to Joey Porter Jr. and now Jaylen Ramsay. Is the Steelers training staff doing all that they can to prevent these injuries? And our players accountable to properly stretching and training? There has been a pattern of this over the past 3 years. You know, Jason, normally I I get the lumping together of injuries and related whether it’s theories or narratives or whatever you’d want to call it, and I kind of just go, eh, because the the commonality involved is such a stretch. Oo, no pun intended. I didn’t mean to do that. But as I’m gonna guess that your your son can attest, the stretching, the responsibility for keeping those soft tissue muscles in a state where they can handle an extraordinary level of exercise that only competitive athletics can present. Man, that’s on the athlete. It’s on the athlete a 100 times out of a hundred. They are given every guideline. They are especially out in Latroe where the temperatures can get pretty crazy. They have workers chasing them around with a hose that’s spilling water. They want you to stretch. They want you to hydrate. They want you to strengthen. And they don’t just want you to do it. They order you to do it. There aren’t exceptions to this. I’ve watched the same process happen with Aaron Rodgers as it did for everybody else on the field. Sometimes guys just get hurt. Now, have the Steelers had, to your point, a few too many of these, you know, pulled hamstrings and stuff like that that seem like they should just be routine or routinely prevented. Yes, they have had and it’s been the time span that you mentioned roughly 3 years and it is worth the Steelers monitoring how they handle these things. But if you’re going to ask me if I’m seeing something systematic that looks like a failure on a grand scale, no. And for that matter, if you’re going to ask me if every hamstring injury or every pull or tweak of this muscle or that muscle is preventable, that answer is also no. And it’s a definitive no. And that needs to be emphasized here as well. I appreciate the question, Jason. I know where you’re going with it, and I know it’s in the right spirit, but I’ll tell you, 99.9% of the time it’s either on the athlete or just on stinking rotten luck. I appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody who listens to Daily Shot of Steelers. And by the way, just as like a little bit of a side note, if the audio of my Daily Shot of Steelers and the other podcasts I do has sounded a little bit off. Bit of an embarrassing admission on my part here. I left my microphone. I lost it at Croak Park in Ireland and it’s taken a while to get the replacement. It’s supposed to come in the mail today. I’m hoping it does. Honestly, I I missed the thing. I felt like it produced some of the best sound we ever had. Anyway, it’ll get taken care of one way or the other. We have a double shot today at 400 p.m. Eastern, after which I’m headed to New York to cover the Penguins season opener against the Rangers. Go download our app already. Don’t make me go through the whole speech every day. Talk to you later. [Music]

Who weeps in these parts for purple pain?

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