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I'm proud to be a self made Steelers fan. What did it for me was
watching the Steelers back in the early 70's and seeing the black and
gold.Posted by Steel_Elvis
POST
NOW!
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Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Ben’s play has
Steelers feeling super By BOB
LABRIOLA Steelers.com They didn’t care.
They really didn’t. When a team had to win four straight regular season games
and also get some help just to make the playoffs, there isn’t a lot of extra
energy to expend on making a list of preferred opponents. It was back on Jan. 1
after a win over the Detroit Lions had squeezed the Steelers into the AFC
playoffs as its No. 6 seed, and a room filled with microphones was waiting for
Coach Bill Cowher to talk about those and other things. On televisions near
the front of the room, the New England Patriots and Miami Dolphins still were
waltzing around the floor of Gillette Stadium in the game that would set the
matchups for AFC Wild Card Weekend; the dates and kickoff times were a foregone
conclusion. If New England
defeated Miami in that regular season finale, the Steelers would be their
opponent in the Wild Card round. If the Dolphins won, Jacksonville was headed to
Foxboro and the Steelers would be sent to Cincinnati for a rubber match with the
Bengals. As Cowher sat down at the table to begin his news conference after the
Lions’ game, the Patriots-Dolphins game was about to be decided by a two-point
conversion attempt. Cowher noticed his
audience was distracted. “You guys watching something?” When updated on the
situation, Cowher asked if they all wanted to wait and watch the deciding play.
A reporter answered that with his own question: “Don’t you?” Cowher just
shrugged and answered, “Nah. Let me know.” This was a reflection
of the attitude the Steelers would take into the 2005 NFL playoffs, and the
one-game-at-a-time approach had been narrowed further to become
one-day-at-a-time, and then one-snap-at-a-time as the team upset the No. 3
seeded Bengals and then the No. 1 seeded Indianapolis Colts. Their ability to
focus, their willingness to attend to the details during the preparation for
each opponent had allowed them to beat both the Bengals and
Colts. On the morning after
the Steelers had lost the AFC Championship Game to the New England Patriots,
many of their players bemoaned the opportunity they had squandered, and they
talked about all the hard work required to get back to that point
again. They were back, and
so the 2005 AFC Championship Game would a Denver Broncos team that was
undefeated at home in 2005, a team with a homefield advantage made more daunting
by the mile-high altitude, versus a Steelers team on a run that could make it
the best road team in NFL playoff history. “Throughout the
course of these playoffs, with our football team we have had really great weeks
of work,” said Cowher. “We have been as healthy as we have been all season. We
are playing our best football at the right time of year. It’s a very resilient
group of guys, a very grounded group of guys. We never took anything for
granted, never looked beyond the next game, and all of that allowed us to have a
great focus for the challenge of that particular week.” This week, the week
the AFC would decide whether the Steelers or the Broncos would represent the
conference in Super Bowl XL, well, it was no contest. Due respect to the
Broncos, who had finished 13-3 to earn the AFC’s No. 2 seed and the bye that
came with it, who had taken out the two-time defending champion New England
Patriots to host this conference championship, but this game was over at
halftime. Again, it was
second-year quarterback Ben Roethlisberger who led the Steelers. Apparently not
convinced what they had seen him do to the Colts was real, the Broncos figured
the Steelers to start by trying to run the ball and they aligned their defense
accordingly. Bad move. In fashioning a 10-0 lead, Roethlisberger was 7 for 8 for
89 yards and the touchdown, and his precise play was the catalyst for a first
half that all but clinched the outcome that day. In losing the 1997
AFC Championship Game to the Broncos, the Steelers had fallen behind at the
half, 24-14; in losing the 2001 AFC Championship Game to the New England
Patriots, they were behind at the half, 14-3; and in the 2004 AFC Championship
Game loss to those same Patriots, they had been behind at the half,
24-3. Not this time. This
time it was the Steelers who put the Broncos in a deep hole come halftime, a
deep hole described by the scoreboard as 24-3. On the Steelers’
three touchdown drives of the half, Roethlisberger completed 13 of 17 for 180
yards and two scores, but it wasn’t just the offense that
dominated. In helping build that
24-3 halftime lead, the defense had limited the Broncos’ No. 5-ranked offense to
six first downs and 38 yards rushing while forcing two turnovers; Jeff Reed’s
47-yard field goal 10 minutes into the game had established a positive dynamic
right off the bat for the Steelers, and the combination of his kickoffs and
coverage had made Denver’s average drive start its own 28-yard
line. In fact, after the
game’s first 30 minutes, the only statistical categories in which the Broncos
had posted higher numbers were turnovers and punts. Still, these playoff
games are the times when teams truly need great quarterback play, and the
Steelers got it from Roethlisberger. In the win over the Bengals, and in the
first halves against Indianapolis and Denver, Roethlisberger completed 39 of 55
for 560 yards, with seven touchdowns and one interception for a passer rating of
135.6. It was a string of remarkable performances by a quarterback who outplayed
the guy on the other team, head-to-head, in three straight road playoff wins,
but also a guy who had finished seventh in the AFC balloting for the Pro Bowl.
Yes, seventh. “The toughest route
they said to take was the scenic route, and that ended up being the best route
for us,” said linebacker Joey Porter. “We went to three different cities and
shocked the world three different times. We weren’t supposed to be in this
situation, but we pulled it off. We pulled it off everywhere we
went.” The Steelers were
going to the Super Bowl, and the story of Jerome Bettis capping a magnificent
career with a return to his hometown for a shot to go out as a champion would
dominate the worldwide sporting press for the next
fortnight. But the Steelers’
winning this AFC Championship Game also meant Ben Roethlisberger had kept two
promises he made, promises that at the time sounded mostly like youthful
bravado. On Jan. 23, he went up to Bettis on the sideline at Heinz Field as the
Patriots were wrapping up the 2004 AFC Championship and promised through tears
that if retirement could be postponed for another year he’d get him to that
Super Bowl. And on Aug. 1, he told reporters who were asking about the
possibility of a sophomore slump, “All you guys think I’m going to have it, so
I’m not going to. We can still win a Super Bowl and not win 15 (regular season)
games.” Now, it was on to
Detroit. “We have to go and
win the game,” said Cowher. “Nobody every remembers the loser in the Super
Bowl.”
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