Not football related, but this deserves its own post.

One year ago today, Pittsburgh's own Billy Mays passed away.

He was a great salesman, an awesome dude, and a champion of the common man.

Tough to watch this from 6:30 on..

The world needs more people like Billy Mays.

RIP

Our ongoing season on the present state of the Steelers roster continues today with the special teams.

The long-overused joke of the Steelers special teams not being so "special" certainly applied in 2009 and will most likely be true again in 2010.

Things haven't changed too much since 2009. With Piotr Czech's release five days ago, Jeff Reed is still the only kicker on the roster and Dan Sepulveda the only punter. The biggest difference from last season is that special teams coordinator Bob Ligashesky is no longer with the team. He was replaced by Al Everest, who has bounced around the NFL with a few different teams in the past.

Despite the coaching change, I see few reasons why the special teams won't suck again in 2010. With the exception of 2008 and 2005, I can't remember a year where the Steelers haven't been abysmal in covering both kickoffs and punts. It probably isn't a coincidence that the team won Super Bowls both years they were at least semi-competent on special teams. Football Outsiders has the 2009 Steelers kickoff rating at a mind-blowing -34.7. The next lowest team was Detroit with a -9.0 rating. In fact, the 2009 Steelers easily had the lowest kickoff rating since FO started tracking the data in 1993. Only the 2001 Buffalo Bills ever finished with a comprable score (-31).

( If you are curious, he's a brief explanation of how the kickoff rating is calculated: Yards of field position from the other four elements of special teams are translated into points using a method that gives each yard line a point value based on the average next score an NFL offense is worth from that point on the field. Kickoffs and punts are based on net yardage. .... These numbers are then adjusted for weather and altitude based on stadium type (cold, warm, dome, Denver) and week )

For a team as talented as the Steelers, that is unacceptable. The main reason they are so bad is Reed's lack of leg strength on kickoffs, who recorded only three touchbacks in 81 kickoffs last season. Fans have long been crying for a kickoff specialist, but I'm not so sure it is that simple of a fix. Using (or wasting) a roster spot on a guy just to kick the ball off might not be the wisest thing. Injuries always do a number to NFL teams throughout the season and a kickoff specialist is probably a luxury that most teams can't afford. Still, something needs to be done with the kickoffs. The easiest solution may be trying Sepulveda on kickoffs. He's got a strong leg and it would save the team a roster spot. There's probably a good reason why this hasn't been done already, though I can't imagine him being worse at it than Reed.

Return specialist Stefan Logan is another interesting aspect to the Steelers special teams in 2010. He was lights out during preseason last year, seemingly breaking off a long return on every punt or kick. But he didn't score once in 2009 and was mediocre at best throughout much of the year. Since Logan only played a few snaps on offense and isn't a quality gunner in kick coverage, he could be on the outside looking in come the final round of cuts this fall.

Reed will probably continue to be a reliable kicker, a rarity at Heinz Field....and Sepulveda will once again be at least a league average punter. But none of that really matters if the Steelers keep surrendering 10 free yards on every kickoff, missing tackles in coverage, and letting Joshua Cribbs singlehandedly win games in special teams. It's not unreasonable to believe that the Steelers would have made the playoffs last year if they were even an average team in special teams. They need to be better in 2010 or else it might be back to back years with no playoff games.

Last year, I wrote a post titled "21 bold predictions for the 2009 Pittsburgh Steelers." I didn't hold back and threw out some ridiculous and very bold predictions. Even crazier, I believed in most of them at the time.

I stumbled upon the post today and my god...I could not have been farther off on so many things. After looking at some of these, you may want to read another blog. Let us recap and see how many I hit or missed with...Battleship style!

1. Ben Roethlisberger misses at least two full games due to injury. The offensive line isn't much better and after you win a Super Bowl, good luck is tough to come by.

Big Ben started 15 games and was mostly healthy. MISS.

2. Willie Parker outgains Rashard Mendenhall and Mewelede Moore by quite a bit and surprises a lot of people. Announcers say "He hasn't lost a step."

Jesus...

Fast Willie rushed for a total of 389 yards last year. MISS.

3. Number of times James Harrison is held and no flag is thrown: 251.

Cha-ching. HIT.

Read the rest after the jump...

Up next in our ongoing series are the linebackers. These guys are the backbone of Dick LeBeau's legendary 3-4 defense and arguably the engine that makes this whole team go. Linebackers have historically been a strength of the Steelers, particularly outside backers. And while the faces have changed a bit and the ages are getting up there, this group should be a strength of the 2010 Steelers yet again.

A couple nights ago I tuned in to ESPN to catch the 6 o'clock Sportscenter. I was hoping to catch up on all the day's baseball games, the Stanley Cup Finals, and the upcoming NBA Finals. But that's not what I watched and it nearly made me throw up the leftover hot dogs and hamburgers I was chowing down on.

What I got was a solid six or seven minutes of coverage on Ben Roethlisberger to open the show. It doesn't matter that two major sports (hockey and basketball) are in the midst of their respective championships. The "big" story was Roethlisberger's return to the practice field.

I understand that this is a pretty captivating and key story in the NFL world...but we are months and months away from real football and, honestly, is there really anything new or interesting in the Roethlisberger saga to report on? Is the situation that much different now that he put on a pair of shorts and threw a few passes to Hines Ward? I don't think it is.

What really frustrates me is that this is how it's going to be for this entire season -- and maybe longer. If ESPN, Yahoo, and all the local papers are making this big of a deal about Big Ben returning to practice, then the opening of training camp will be just as big of a circus. So will all the preseason games. Same goes for Charlie Batch/Dennis Dixon's play. When Roethlisberger returns to the field, it will be even worse. And when he has his first really good or really bad game, that's all we'll hear about.

I think the real victims of all of this are the other Steelers players and Steeler fans who, you know, actually care about other players than Ben Roethlisberger and would like to hear about other things on ocassion. I want to read about Rashard Mendenhall's progession to an offensive leader. I want to read about the health of Troy Polamalu. I want to read about the return of Antwaan Randle-El and Larry Foote.

I don't want to read anything else about Ben Roethlisberger. Unfortunately, Wendi Nix is lurking around the team's facility waiting to report what he ate for dinner and whether or not he shaved this morning.

Please. Make. It. Stop.

If you felt confident about the Steelers wide receiver situation throughout this offseason, you're lying to yourself. The Steelers have two proven pass-catchers on the roster. Hint: Mike Wallace isn't one of them. Everyone else on the roster has to be in prove-yourself-mode, and at least one or two of them will have to come through. After the jump, we'll look at each of the Steelers' pass-catchers and their expectations for the season.

In the third installment (RBs and QBs) of our updated look at the Steelers' roster and where it is heading, I take a gander at the talented but aging defensive line. There hasn't been a lot of turnover among the defensive linemen since last season, so the main focus will be on staying healthy...which has been hard for this group to do in recent years. Casey Hampton is 32. Aaron Smith is 34. Brett Keisel is 31. And Chris Hoke is 34. Unfortunately, the Steelers don't have a lot of depth behind these guys and their performance and health will go a long way in determining the fate of the 2010 Steelers.

Hampton might be aging but he's still the anchor of the defensive line and Dick LeBeau's 3-4 scheme. It's hard to tell how effective Hampton was through statistics because he hardly registers many tackles or sacks, but the Big Snack we saw last year looked like the Pro Bowl player of a couple seasons ago. He's not quite as mobile as he once was, but Hampton is still one of the better 3-4 nose tackles in the game and will once again be asked to clog up the middle in 2010. If he stays healthy, the Steelers will be in good shape in the nose tackle position.

The outlook is a little murkier at defensive end.

In our ongoing series, State of the Steelers, we'll profile each position on the team. And today, I present a topic that certainly no one is tired of hearing about, the Pittsburgh Steelers' quarterback situation.

I'm sure this will be news to you, but Ben Roethlisberger has been suspended for what we'll consider to be 6 games next season, on the grounds of being a giant frat boy. So with Ben ruled out for six games, there are 3 QBs left on the roster that will jockey for starting time. Tomlin insists he won't have a traditional quarterback competetion, and I for one am totally okay with that. It's not often that an open competition works out. Teams using that strategy (Cleveland, anyone?) insist that it's a good problem to have, as though three mediocre quarterbacks are all going to magically turn one another into Pro Bowlers after one training camp. The fact is, an open competition is just a way to decide which of your three mediocre quarterbacks is the least bad. It's going to be interesting to see what the Broncos end up doing with their cluster of QBs this summer.

As for the Steelers, we've got Charlie Batch, Dennis Dixon, and Byron Leftwich to compete for the season-opening job. Tomlin is giving Leftwich the weighted reps with the first team offense, and after the jump, we'll look at where each player will likely stand come game time.

We're now in the dead of the 2010 offseason and there's not much going on aside from Ben Roethlisberger drama that I am completely sick of hearing about. It's been months since the Steelers have played an actual football game and that makes it hard to believe that we've seen the last of Santonio Holmes in the black and gold or that Larry Foote and Antwaan Randle-El will once again be running out of the home tunnel at Heinz Field. All the changes are still very surreal to me. I think it is a perfect time to take a position-by-position look at the roster and the myriad of changes that have happened this offseason. First up is the running backs.

The Steelers running backs figure to play an extremely important role during the 2010 season --- even more so than usual. Roethlisberger's suspension and ownerships call for a return to a power running game means that there will likely be lots of carries to be handed out.

Well, Limas Sweed's Achilles injury appears to be bad enough to warrant his being placed on the Injured Reserve list. As myself and my fellow bloggers have surmised, this likely is the end of Sweed's career with the Steelers, and what a disappointment it will have been if that's so. Sweed had a ton of potential to be a great NFL wide receiver, being fast, strong, and able to get open against defenders. Unfortunately, he could just never manage to hang onto the ball.

I sincerely hope Sweed can stay on the roster through next season. He needs another chance to turn his career around.