Will the preseason overreactions ever stop?

The Pittsburgh Steelers have one of the largest and most passionate fan bases in not only the NFL, but in all of professional sports. This isn’t up for debate. However, what can be debated is the degree to which this passion sometimes leads certain sectors of fans to think irrationally. Extremely irrationally.

I’m aware that every fan base has its objective fans, experts, analysts, negative pessimists, eternal optimists, and clueless wonders. Throwing so many different knowledge levels and opinions into the mix makes for some free entertainment when it comes to the various social media outlets. Click on any Steelers related article and read the comments, or scroll through a Steelers thread on Twitter, and you’re bound to see something outrageous. It’s like clockwork. It’s like the nerd in high school – it never fails.

Last week, the Steelers lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in their second preseason game by a score of 17-0. Obviously it’s never fun watching a boring game filled with mistakes and fringe roster guys. But after the game, I learned that apparently hundreds of people take preseason football as serious as a heart attack.

Backup quarterback and favorite whipping boy of Steelers Nation, Landry Jones, didn’t exactly have his best outing. He threw four interceptions according to the box score. Now, all of them weren’t completely on Jones. There was some porous route-running and inability to make plays on the ball by receivers. There was some awful protection leading to a rushed throw. There were some clear bad decisions by Jones.

Like it or not, football is a team game. I’m not defending Landry Jones – he still has plenty of room for improvement. But I have never seen a fan base need a narrative or someone to blame worse than some Steelers fans. Guys, it’s preseason. I’m going to spell it out for you: P.R.E.S.E.A.S.O.N. Literally the most irrelevant games there can be. There is no game planning for opponents. There are no starters. There is a limited playbook. I might even have to use the most overused word to describe preseason games: vanilla. I hate that word. Unfortunately I have to use it, because it’s the truth.

I’m not going to look up the exact numbers, but can anyone recall when Pittsburgh HAS looked good in the preseason the last 2-3 years? I can’t stress enough that what we see on the field in August, even from guys like Landry Jones and Sammie Coates, will not be what we see in September and beyond.

Then there’s the  crazy notion that somehow, somewhere, a starting caliber quarterback slipped through the cracks and is sitting on the waiver wire for the Steelers to claim who will be better than Jones. News flash – there’s 32 teams in the NFL and not all of them have great quarterbacks starting, let alone having great backups. If backups were good enough to start, replace franchise guys and go unbeaten, then they would be starters. It isn’t rocket science, I promise.

I know I’m kidding myself thinking that people will stop panicking and overreacting to meaningless games that have zero bearing on the team that will take the field September 12th for Pittsburgh’s opener. But I can hope, right? For now I’ll just have to avoid Twitter during preseason contests, and patiently wait for the real thing to get here so the madness can stop.