Welcome to Brian Batko’s weekly Steelers mailbag. You’re more than welcome to email him at bbatko@post-gazette.com, tweet him @BrianBatko or slide into his DMs to inquire about the Steelers, NFL or anything out of bounds. Let’s get started:
Robert L: I have an AB question that no chat will touch, and I do not know why ... a 'rest of the story' inquiry. Did AB get his grass cut?
Brian: The most rewarding part of doing this weekly mailbag so far is that I truly never know what you all might ask me. Take this question, for instance.
Robert is referencing the tweet from last month about Antonio Brown’s lawn that went viral. It was from a neighbor, who got an angle that made the lawn at Brown’s Pine Township estate look absurdly high. You can see that here (in case you missed it on local news stations):
Hey @AB84 @Raiders we are happy you left the Pittsburgh neighborhood but don’t you think you can spend some of that signing bonus and cut your grass? pic.twitter.com/LpAG2Yd25w
— DONALD BINOTTO (@DBINOTTO1) May 23, 2019
Brown responded by asking if anyone can be a “Good Samaritan” and cut it for him, because he’s kind of busy right now with the Oakland Raiders and he has that property up for sale. The short answer is that yes, Brown’s grass has been cut. The long answer is that it wasn’t a Good Samaritan or super fan who did it.
It was surprisingly easy to track down Taylor Rombold, whose TLC Lawn Care company got the job done. Rombold was contacted by a previous real estate client, went to assess the overgrown situation, and produced a quote. A few days later, he sent employee Tyler St. Esprit to go mow it, and it took St. Esprit more than three hours.
“I had to cut everything at least twice, maybe three times,” said St. Esprit, 23, who just graduated from Slippery Rock University.
And was there a crowd of cheering neighbors as he finished up?
“No. Honestly, the neighborhood was pretty empty,” he said. “I didn’t see anybody out.”
Rombold returned to Twitter for the first time in almost five years to alert Brown to St. Esprit’s handiwork. Naturally, Brown blasted out that tweet to his 1.4 million followers on Memorial Day, and business was booming for a couple of Steelers fans from New Brighton.
Happy Memorial Day #GoodBusiness https://t.co/MjfVmwFJO0
— AB (@AB84) May 27, 2019
“I made a lot of friends in California, and I think I lost a few in Pittsburgh,” joked Rombold, 27, who lives on the North Shore.
“It’s still blowing up,” St. Esprit said. “I have like 200 follower requests from random people. I had to turn my notifications off.”
And that, folks, is the story behind the rise and fall of Antonio Brown’s abandoned yard.
Robert K.: What are Mr. Rooney II’s hobbies? Just curious.
Brian: Team president Art Rooney II is often at Steelers headquarters watching practice, but football is probably more of his life’s work than a hobby. He golfs, travels, spends time with family, attends plenty of charity events in the community. He serves on NFL committees and the boards of local and national foundations. He’s a lawyer by trade, in addition to being at the top of the franchise, and yet he still probably has more hobbies than me. I pretty much just watch TV and play pickup basketball. Moving on …
Alan in Nashville: I was a little surprised last season when Chris Boswell's contract took as long as it did and just how almost defiant he seemed in conversations with the media about it. I didn't think much of it but now that I see how he is with the media this year, I guess he's not the nicest guy after all. He seems like he has a bit of an attitude and I have to say, with the way he kicked this past season, to me, he doesn't have a whole lot of equity built up like he did when he was one of the better kickers. I know that he doesn't owe the media or fans a single thing but man, how about a little humility? At least enough to match his FG and extra point success rate. To me, he's lucky to still have a roster spot.
Brian: I wasn’t covering the team last year, or in any of Boswell’s seasons before that, so I can’t really speak to his previous dealings with the media. I’ve only attempted to speak with him once this spring, and he agreed to it, though he didn’t seem all that excited about it. But why should he be? He knows better than anyone that he’s coming off a disappointing season, and these guys are human. They aren’t always going to want to discuss their own struggles at length, and answer difficult questions about why they happened.
To me, Boswell was plenty humble in his answers during OTAs. He may not have answered every question, but he was at least straightforward in doing so, and that’s fine with me as a reporter. A player doesn’t have to be nice, or overly friendly, or accommodating. It’s a bonus when they are, but a baseline level of respect and understanding that we have a job to do is enough. Players such as Cam Heyward and Ramon Foster wouldn’t be such likable guys and “great quotes” if every NFL pro was the same way.
Thomas S.: There has been recent talk about going to an 18-game schedule. The current schedule is 16 60-minute games, or a total of 900 minutes. Has anyone floated 18 games, but reducing the time down to 48 minutes (12 min. quarters)? The benefits: 1. Reduce total game time from 900 to 864 minutes. Less playing time for players. 2. Increases the the season, so owners get one more home game and TVs get two more weeks of broadcasts, and, if they add a second bye week, they would get three more weeks of games. 3. Games will be shorter. How many games go more than 3 hours? Seems like way more than half. Wouldn't it be nice if 90%+ of the games were completed in less than three hours? 4. Eliminate the preseason games. Fans hate them. Let the teams schedule scrimmages with other teams. 5. And since we are talking change, let's eliminate the bye week for the one and two seeds. Get four more teams into the playoffs, and four more playoff games. 6. And eliminate OT during the regular season. Another way to reduce players' field time. Nothing wrong with a tie after regulation.
If it is truly about player safety AND money, seems like this kind of a change might be good for all.
Brian: So, four 12-minute quarters? I actually don’t mind your idea, Thomas. Most things in sports — games, seasons, preseasons — already are too long, especially in baseball. And, as a sports writer, of course I’d love for the games — and thus, my work days — to be shorter. We here in the print industry still have deadlines, I might add.
But you know who might mind? People who buy tickets to these games and would be paying 100 percent of the same (absurd) prices for four-fifths of the action. The average length of a game is more than three hours, yes, but that’s shorter than college football. Certainly, you won’t get much resistance from anybody on the preseason front. An expanded playoff format could be interesting, but probably not your setup. I’m not sure we need half the league in the postseason, and there should be at least some reward for winning the No. 1 seed out of your conference.
Can’t say I’m at all on board with eliminating overtime, though. I already don’t like the idea of ties, and they’d become all the more prevalent under your suggestions. There were two ties last season and 12 other overtime games, which would’ve meant a lot of angry NFL fans. But then again, sports don’t actually matter that much, so maybe ties are OK.
Be sure to compliment Joe Starkey and also send me questions for next week. Brian Batko: bbatko@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrianBatko.
First Published: June 13, 2019, 2:43 p.m.
