Monday Night Football: Three Good Reasons to Back The Steelers

Tonight the Baltimore Ravens (+5) visit the Pittsburgh Steelers for some Monday Night Football. We think the Steelers are the play here, for three primary reasons.

1) Yes, the Ravens are 2-0, and folks are talking about their stellar defense and strong running game. But the Ravens have only beaten two of the worst teams in football, the Browns and the Bengals. Your local high school JV team would appear to have a stellar defense and strong running game if they only played the Browns and Bengals every week. We see value here because we think that folks still don’t understand just how bad the Browns and Bengals really are.

2) Ravens rookie running back Ray Rice sold out his pal, Steelers rookie running back Rashard Mendenhall, for some cheap bulletin board material. Mendenhall sent a personal text message to Rice, saying he was going to have a big game against the Ravens defense. Rice told his teammates, who have since done some huffing and puffing about it. "He said later that he was just joking, but it's too late,'' Ravens linebacker Bart Scott said. " Thanks for the bulletin-board material, rookie." Whatever, Bart. Whatever it takes to get yourself fired up. Loser. It is super dumb that the Ravens have to pretend that they are mad about a joke that a rookie texted to his rookie friend. If anything, they should be scolding Rice for selling his homeboy out. Edge to the Steelers here. (We'll also note here that it doesn't bother us that Steelers' starting RB Willie Parker is out tonight. First-round pick Mendenhall was one of the best running backs in college football last season. And another fantastic draft pick by the Steelers. "Parker goes down? Well lookee here. It's Rashard Mendenhall on the bench." Geez do the Browns suck compared to them. Makes us sick.)

3) Speaking of sell-outs, Ray Lewis sold out the Ravens front office, and half of his teammates on ESPN’s Sunday Conversation that aired last night and this morning. He told the interviewer that he hadn’t played his best football yet, because he won’t be able to play his best football until the Ravens have a good offense. We’re not sure exactly how that works, but we wonder if Lewis has considered that the Ravens front office might not have been able to surround him with so much talent on the defensive side of the ball if they’d used those resources on offense. Would he be able to play as well on defense if he wasn’t surrounded by Pro-bowlers? Also, would he have the motivation to play as well on D if the offense was racking up the points? We don’t know. And we suspect that Lewis doesn’t either. We think that Ray should save the self-serving speculation for his own private thoughts instead of embarrassing his teammates and managers with it on national television. His misplaced indignation gives us one more reason to take the Steelers tonight.

And that makes three reasons why The Pick is the Steelers -5 over the Ravens. Good luck with the week’s last pick, and enjoy the game.