Sports
NFL Considers Banning Pittsburgh From Cleveland On Humanitarian Grounds
By Michael Yappaport, . BSN Network. Satire.
CLEVELAND, OH, The Pittsburgh Steelers returned to Cleveland on Thursday night for what has become the NFL's most reliable recurring event: a loss.
The Browns won, moved to 3-1, and took the lead in the AFC North. Pittsburgh, meanwhile, extended what is now a five-year Cleveland losing streak so consistent that meteorologists have started using it as a reference point for things that simply happen no matter what anyone does.
Five years. Five trips. Five losses. At some point this stops being a football problem and starts being a zoning issue.
I have watched a lot of bad football in my life. I have watched coaches call timeouts they did not have, quarterbacks throw to the other team on purpose apparently, and offensive coordinators draw up plays that appeared to end with everyone just standing still. None of it has prepared me for what Pittsburgh is doing in Cleveland, which is showing up every single year like a man who has been told the restaurant is closed and keeps rattling the door anyway.
Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin addressed the situation with the confidence of a man who has clearly stopped looking at the scoreboard in that particular city. "We're going to continue to do the things that make us competitive," Tomlin said, which is a sentence that means absolutely nothing and which he delivered perfectly.
The Browns, to their credit, are 3-1 and leading their division, which is a sentence I did not expect to type in my lifetime. Cleveland has spent the better part of twenty years being the team other teams use to feel better about themselves. They were the bye week you circled in August. They were the game you played when your quarterback needed a rest.
Now they are first in the AFC North and Pittsburgh keeps flying in to hand them the trophy personally.
At some point the league has to intervene. I am serious. There should be a commissioner's review. A formal inquiry. A strongly worded letter from the AFC scheduling committee asking Pittsburgh to stop doing this to themselves in front of a national audience on a Thursday night when people are still trying to finish dinner.
The Steelers organization has resources. They have a storied franchise, a passionate fan base, and a front office that has been making competent decisions for decades. They cannot win in Cleveland. They simply cannot do it. They have tried in the cold, they have tried with good quarterbacks, they have tried with quarterbacks whose names I have already forgotten. Nothing works.
At this point Pittsburgh's Cleveland game plan is less a football strategy and more a spiritual experience. They go. They lose. They fly home. They do not discuss it.
The Browns, first place, will take the week off emotionally and then start worrying about something. That is what Cleveland does. But tonight they are first.
Pittsburgh will be back next year. They always come back.
Somebody should probably stop them.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/50079473/cleveland-browns-pittsburgh-steelers-week-4-tnf