Even though the region is equidistant from three NFL markets, it is easy to see that Erie is Steelers Country. The Black and Gold empirically outnumbers the Orange and Brown by three to one, and double that over the Red and Blue of the Bills.

A well-written, no-nonsense fan blog of the defending Super Bowl Champions is Steelers Gab. This is a place for the faithful to get the latest on injury reports, post-game anecdotes, without the extreme fan-dom. One of the features on game day is up-to-the-minute quarter recaps and analysis.

I enjoyed this piece by Matt Loede sharing his concerns after the Detroit game on Oct. 11th about the apparent wilting of the Steelers in the fourth quarter, titled Concerns Continue as Team Can’t Close Out Games.

Steelers leading WR Hines Ward said it all about how teams come out to play the Steelers, and about how the team was able to hang on vs the Lions.

“A win is a win. That’s what this business comes down to,” Ward said. “When teams are playing the Pittsburgh Steelers — we’re the defending champions — they’re going to give their best shot.”

Ward brings up a good point. Teams really do tend to turn it up a notch against the world champs, but I’m not sure how many fingernails I’ll have left if each week we have to sweat out wins like Sunday in Detroit.

Better have a Terrible Towel at the ready when you sit down to read this blog.

Joel is the editor of the Erie media blog Press and Tower.