Steelers must rebuild 'Stained Curtain'

By Joe Starkey

If you think of it Thursday, take a moment to reflect on the three-year anniversary of a most lamentable passing: the death of the Steelers defense.

Nothing has been the same since Feb. 6, 2011, when Aaron Rodgers tore apart a once-feared unit on his way to Super Bowl XLV MVP.

A lot of us — notably the Steelers themselves — lived in denial the next few years. We should have listened to Warren Sapp, who identified the body after the first game of the following season.

Sapp analyzed the Steelers as such, focusing mainly on their defense: “Old, slow, and it's over.”

The Steelers haven't won a playoff game since. Their defense has faded and frayed like an aging tapestry. By this past season, it had decayed to the point where a new nickname seemed appropriate: The Stained Curtain.

This team has participated in one playoff game since 2010. It didn't go so well. Tim Tebow passed for 316 yards in what surely will go down as the most prolific performance of his brief and sorry NFL career.

The Steelers and many of their fans spent the two post-Super Bowl XLV years hiding behind the NFL's bogus yardage standard for “total defense.”

“We're still No. 1!”

Thing is, they weren't flipping fields or quarterbacks anymore. They weren't scaring anyone. Not even Matt Flynn.

The truth no longer can be denied. The numbers are painfully revealing:

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Everything in moderation. In with the new out with the old.

I didn't believe Sapp then, and I don't believe it now. While our defense needs an injection of youth, it's not the age that proved our demise, because even when we were younger there were teams that would rip our defense apart with a lot of passing yardage.

The problem has been how well they've performed after those games. Unfortunately, they haven't had the fortitude nor the mental toughness to put it together.