'Burgh Sports Wrap: Why I Told Yo' Ass to Watch Out for Daunte Culpepper!

Oh, Rashard... let's hope you can make it look this easy against a team that isn't 1-19 in their last 20 games...

STEELERS

"I wouldn't say I'm worried about Culpepper. Would rather have a rookie back there, though."

That was my boy's general feeling about Matthew Stafford rocking the backwards hat and the clipboard this week against the Steelers. I was a little more concerned, what with the whole "fourth-quarter meltdown" thing and Culpepper being a seasoned vet who dropped 30 pounds in the offseason and is STILL bigger than Big Ben.

My concern was justified.

Culpepper led multiple successful drives against the D this afternoon, and looked pretty damned good doing it, too. True, it wasn't enough to catch up to the Steelers, and wouldn't have been nearly enough without a bad pick-six giveaway to the Lions' defense.

I was glad to see they left Polamalu out for this game. They (mostly) didn't need him, and he can rest up another week and get stronger. I will give the D all the credit in the world on the Lions' final drive, though. They just piledrove the whole damn organization into the ground, and that was pretty great.

Browns up next. And while a conference game is always important, this one is almost crucial. They really need to catch up to the Bengals and Ravens, and Baltimore gets the Minnesota Brett Favres next week (oops, I mean the Vikings), so they could easily take a loss. That would be nice. 'Nati gets the Texans, which is basically a toss-up with a slight edge for the Bengals. I would say probably Bengals minus 4.5.

PENGUINS

We saw about three-quarters of the Pens-Flyers game before the streaming TV channel got shut down (sonofabitches...), and even though we had already seen plenty of scoring by that point, there was apparently a bunch more. After the lazy layabout that was the Coyotes game, it was nice to see the Pens hustle and get a nice win against the Philth. Then another high-scoring win, 5-2, against Toronto. Ottawa up next.