Pacman Jones is an idiot.
No, really, the man's bona fide brain-dead.
"How many yards did he have?" the Bengals' cornerback was snapping late Sunday afternoon in Heinz Field's visiting locker room. One of the reporters around his stall, a place that's always packed in anticipation of evermore idiocy, had asked Jones to identify the key to limiting Antonio Brown to just four catches and 39 yards in the game that had just ended. And Jones didn't disappoint. "How many yards? How many touchdowns? ... Looks like we did our job."
Yeah.
This, at the risk of repeating a refrain, is what losers do.
But there's always a winner at the end of this equation, too. And for all the slippiness and sloppiness of this rain-soaked 84th home opener before 65,072 yellow-poncho-covered fans, for all of Ben Roethlisberger's early misfires, for all of AB's visible frustration, for all that went wrong for both teams ... the result was a resounding status quo.
Which, of course, it does.
Steelers win, Bengals lose.
Charlie Brown runs, Lucy yanks ball.
And if any facet of this outcome should weigh more than today's AFC North standings or even the eventual playoff picture, it's that the defining dynamic between these two franchises remains very much intact and, as a result, the Steelers' only serious threat inside the division now has to drag that all the way through Christmas week.
Good grief.
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