YINZER BALLIN'

Of all the difficult decisions facing the Pittsburgh Pirates this winter, there’s one move that shouldn’t require much internal debate at all. Bringing back Brandon Lowe is the single most important thing this front office does before pitchers and catchers report in 2027. To understand why Lowe matters so much, you have to remember what the Pirates looked like before he got here. In 2025, Pittsburgh finished dead last in baseball in home runs with just 117 — the only team in

Joey Porter Jr. didn't play a single snap in the Steelers' Week 1 win over Atlanta. He was a healthy scratch, the fallout of a summer-long contract standoff that has since been reported as effectively dead. Pittsburgh has told reporters it is done negotiating during the season, and a trade remains on the table. And yet the Steelers won anyway, 20-13, behind a defense that got by without its best cornerback. That's the paradox sitting at the center of this situation: Pittsburg

On paper, it reads like another grind-it-out Steelers win carried mostly by the defense — and T.J. Watt's 35-yard pick-six of Cam Rush in the fourth quarter certainly did the heavy lifting on the scoreboard. But a closer look at the box score shows an offense that did far more good work than its modest point total suggests, and that got hurt by a handful of self-inflicted wounds rather than any fundamental lack of execution. Pittsburgh's offense finished with 264 total yards