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| STEELERS | PIRATES | FORUM | PENGUINS | POLLS |
| Duce in the Hole By The Wise Guy It’s not as if the Steelers needed to do very much on offense last Sunday to beat the Green Bay Packers. If we’d have let them have the ball the whole 60 minutes (at one point, it looked as if we were going to), they would bumbled around enough to allow our defense to score at least one more touchdown, and two TDs would have won it. Our offense certainly wasn’t going anywhere fast—or slow, for that matter. Charlie Batch, the apparent heir to Tommy Maddox looked a lot like a guy that hadn’t played a game of football in many years, which in fact he hadn’t. You can hardly blame him for a performance that at times looked a lot like He-who-shall-not-be-named, but used to be called “Slash.” Any time the Steelers’ leading receiver is Dan “Cement Bucket” Kreider, you know your passing game is vertically and horizontally challenged. Then along came Duce. All season long, Mr. Staley graciously has accepted his role as mentor to Willie Parker and sideline cheerleader emeritus. So, when Willie turned his ankle and went in for X-Rays and maybe a cup of hot cocoa, it was time for Duce to debut. If you were like me, and you wer thinking maybe Duce’s better days were behind him, along with about 20 extra pounds, you had to be a little worried. Given the circumstances (no Bus, no Ben), his performance was especially gratifying. He gained 75 yards on 15 carries. What makes this really remarkable is that the Packers played nine guys in the box and they still couldn’t stop him. It was great to see Referee Ed Hockulie doing his left-handed first down wave, even if he wasn’t wearing his usual short-sleeved referee muscle shirt. It was also nice that Duce gave the Steelers some semblance of an offense in front of a national television audience that may have been wondering if they were watching a Division I-AAA game. Something tells me that we’re going to need Duce down the stretch, what with the injuries to Willie and the Bus…wait…Willie and the Bus…was that a movie starring Gene Wilder and Richard Prior? It could be that Duce’s pre-season surgery was a blessing in the knee, since it’s given him almost 12 weeks to rest up. Remember that last year, a healthy Duce averaged a bit over 100 yards per game for the first eight games,until his hamstring got baked. We have eight games left. It could be time to play the hole card. |