Did we just witness the fall of the Evil Empire?

[Striper]

I'm about to give the steelers some compliments and I want you to know that it grosses me out to type this, but I just don't see the decline happening anytime soon. The Steelers don't rebuild. They reload and they'll do it again. I'm thrilled and tickled that they lost to the Jaguars, but they won 13 games and their run of competitive, annoying play isn't close to being over. Their offense is loaded. Their oline is solid. Ben has at least 2 more years and all he needs is his arm to be functional for hte offense to go. They're like the Patriots in this regard. They are really good at knowing when to move on from declining players and target college players or free agents who check all of their boxes in their organizational philosophy to replace them. The Bengals don't do this well at all.

I also know they'll have a plan in place for the future when Roethlisberger moves on. It's very likely that Roethlisberger has had internal discussions with their football ops people about when he's gonna retire so they can map out a plan to find the Aaron Rodgers to his Brett Favre. Our only hope is they guess wrong and the guy they end up bringing in is a complete bust and tanks their entire program. I'm glad I won't have to worry about them in this final four, but I won't be truly happy until their fans know what it's like to be 2-14, 3-13, 4-12, and hopeless for improvement going into the next season. I'd love to see how good their fans are when they have to support a decade of pisspoor play like we had to. My guess is you'll know a lot fewer steelers fans than you know now.