Hard Hat Award (Game #10, @ Jets)
Nobody is the winner of the weekly Hard Hat Award, given to the Stiller player who best embodies the iron-tough, hard-as-steel attitude of the steel workers inside the blast furnace of a still mill.
The Stillers laid a collective egg in New York on Sunday, showing little sign of life en route to a drab, embarrassing loss to the lowly 1-8 Jets, 19-16, in OT.
Not much past 7:45 PM EST, there were already queries on the message board and around The Burgh, �Who�ll win the Hard Hat this week�?� There were even concerns that, merely because the team lost, there should always be a Hard Hat winner and conversely, if the team does lose, The Committee always names �nobody� as the winner.
The Committee, mustering our best Jim Mora imitation, exclaimed, �Hard Hat?? Hard Hat!? You want to talk about the Hard Hat?!!� We have to wonder if some fans actually watched this game. Here�s a team that did, or in some cases did not, do the following on Sunday versus a lowly 1-8 team:
- the blockers all resembled toddlers getting shoved about at a middle school playground
- defenders all flailed about like Dutch windmills, and ran, covered, and pursued as though they were wearing wooden Dutch shoes
- the pass rush was almost entirely soft and cheesy
- RBs, on bone-dry Field Turf, slipped and stumbled like drunken winos
- WRs treated the football like a live hand grenade, and stuck to their defender like Elmer�s glue
Hard Hat ?!! With such a slovenly, weak-assed, uninspired game played by the entire roster -- from QB to RB to LBs to punter -- it would be a total travesty to water down the most coveted weekly award that a Pittsburgh Steeler can earn by giving it away just for the sake of giving it away. That rationale might work in youth sports -- where every kid on every team gets a trophy at season�s end -- but it�s not the mentality that made this country great and the Stillers a proud franchise. Other guys at various burgh sites might stoop to low standards amidst the fury of this loss, but not Stillers.com. Nobody gets the award this week, because nobody played inspired, hard-nosed, never-say-die, smash mouth football, which is what the award was and still is designed to recognize.
Kudos to nobody for winning the Hard Hat Award. Don�t wear the Hard Hat proudly, fellas!
Previous 2007 Hard Hat Awardees:
Game 1, @ Clev: Jamie Harrison and Danny Sepulveda
Game 2, vs. Buffalo: Jamie Harrison
Game 3, vs. San Fran: Willie Parker
Game 4, @ Arizona: Santonio Holmes
Game 5, vs. Seattle: Ben Roethlisberger, Najeh Davenport, and Aaron Smith
Game 6, @ Denver: Nobody
Game 7, @ Cinci: Jamie Harrison
Game 8, vs. Balt: Jamie Harrison
Game 9, vs. Clev: Jamie Harrison and Ben Roethlisberger