No Guarantee

"Guarantee!! Guarantee!!"

Pittsburgh Steelers safety Anthony Smith felt that New England was due for an upset after playing like oh-so-much-crap against Philadelphia & Baltimore. And of course, like plenty of folks, we felt the Patriots were beatable, that they were bound to lose one game sooner or later.
Smith himself guaranteed that the Steelers would beat the Pats, right?

Wrong. His guarantee turned out to be a false hope in the making & his cheap talk really served as fuel for the Patriots' fire, an impetus to get them ready to play. As if this weren't enough, Smith was victimized by two long pass plays, one by Randy Moss & the other by Jabar Gaffney, & each of those TDs sent the floodgates wide open for New England & if I must say so they set the tone for the entire game.

If there is a lesson which Smith could learn from the comments he made earlier on, it would be that talk of that magnitude is cheap & is only going to get the opponents more pumped up, more ready to go & do damage. Also, if you're going to live up to your talk, be ready to play & ready to prove that your opponent is beatable through your overall performance on the field, something that Smith couldn't do to save his life against either of the two aforementioned dudes I brought up.

New England coach Bill Belichick himself remarked that the Pats have played better safeties than - guess who? - Anthony Smith. And from what we saw on Sunday, he's right. If the Steelers stood a ghost of a chance of beating Tom Brady & company, they'd have to play pretty much error-free football all four quarters. But Smith's "guarantee" proved to be a bad omen & the undoing of all our wishes that Pittsburgh would unseat the Patriots from the ranks of the undefeated for good.

Guarantee, huh? Aping Jean Girard from Talladega Nights, imagine him saying that "I have come to defeat you." Unfortunately, the Patriots did just that & left Smith eating his words.

Turns out that his guarantee was no guarantee after all.