Hot Steelers Still Living in a Dream : Pro football: After nightmarish start to its season, Pittsburgh finds itself playing the confident Broncos in a playoff game.

Talk about your great matchups.

On the one hand, you have the Pittsburgh Steelers. They were happy to make the playoffs for the first time in four years, doing so by winning their last game while the Indianapolis Colts, the Cincinnati Bengals and the Raiders lost in the last week of the season.

They were ecstatic to win last week’s wild-card game in Jerry Glanville’s ex-House of Pain in Houston. Now they’re emotionally spent--and underdogs.

On the other hand, there are the Denver Broncos. If they’re as good as they think they are--and as good as they were up to Week 12 when they were 10-2--they should easily finish off the Steelers and the Cleveland Browns in friendly Mile High Stadium to reach their third Super Bowl in four seasons.

“I’d feel a lot more confident going into the Super Bowl with this team than I did with the last two,” owner Pat Bowlen said.

He said that four weeks ago, before the Broncos locked up the home-field advantage, certainly before they had beat anyone in a playoff game.

Does Broncomania go before a fall?

In 1984, another nondescript Steeler team with a 9-7 regular-season record--and Mark Malone, Walter Abercrombie, Frank Pollard and Elton Veals in the backfield--came here for a playoff game against the solidly favored Broncos and upset them, 24-17.

That’s the last playoff game the Broncos lost, short of the Super Bowl.

“That’s ancient history for most of these guys,” Steeler Coach Chuck Noll said last week. “We’ve got a young football team, and there aren’t too many left from that time.”

Ridiculed as over the hill when he capped four non-playoff years with a 5-11 record in 1988, Noll was ordered by owner Dan Rooney during the off-season to fire four assistant coaches and demote defensive coordinator Tony Dungy. Noll reportedly considered quitting, but he swallowed hard and wielded the ax.

He was further obliged to accept a Rooney appointee, Tom Donahoe, as a sort of overseer on his staff. Donahoe was to watch practices, sit with the coaches in the press box and make suggestions, while remaining in touch with Rooney.

When 1989 started with consecutive humiliations--51-0 to the Browns at home and 41-10 at Cincinnati--Noll was asked to a meeting with Rooney, Art Rooney II and communications director Joe Gordon.

They gave Noll a pep talk.

Noll was asked later by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Ed Bouchette if he’d wondered why they were doing it.

“Yes,” Noll said.

Had he asked them?

“No,” Noll said, “but I was thinking it.”

There was rampant speculation that Noll would be fired if they didn’t pull out of the tailspin.

“We had Minnesota the third week,” said quarterback Bubby Brister, who vowed before the season that the Steelers would win 10 games and make the playoffs. “I really started thinking, ‘This may get worse before it gets better.’

“Chuck Noll was the same coach. He didn’t blast anybody. He didn’t embarrass anybody. He didn’t say we weren’t any good and we couldn’t win any more games, like some coaches in this league have done. He was pretty level-headed. He just said, ‘We need to get here earlier, we need to stay here later, we need to work a little harder. The guys we’ve got in this room right here can be a championship-caliber football team.’ ”

Pittsburgh beat Minnesota, 27-14.

The Steelers won five of their last six, then the wild-card game against the Oilers, making them--not the San Francisco 49ers, Broncos, New York Giants or Rams--the hottest team in the league.

“Well, you know, we’re pretty determined right now,” Brister said. “But we’ve got some guys nicked up right now. We’re coming off a very emotional game. It’s going to take us a couple of days to get back to getting ready for this one.”

It had better not take too long. It’s curtain time again.

Playoff Notes

Contrast: The Broncos were No. 15 on offense, No. 3 on defense. The Steelers were 28th and 19th, respectively . . . Less contrast: Denver quarterback John Elway finished with 18 interceptions and was the league’s 18th-ranked passer. Pittsburgh quarterback Bubby Brister was No. 20 . . . Brister is an engaging fourth-year pro from Monroe, La. Before the finale against Tampa Bay he guaranteed a victory, and before the Oiler game he said: “We’re gonna shock the world.”

Brister on the game plan: “We’re playing the same kind of ball Pittsburgh has always played--blood and guts and stuff like that. We try to run the ball. We try to possess the ball as much as we can.” . . . Good idea, since the Steelers’ starting defensive linemen finished eighth, 10th and 11th on the team in tackles.

Rookies: The Broncos have Bobby Humphrey, who is being compared to Marcus Allen. Like Allen, Humphrey is tall, fluid and athletic, but doesn’t have sprinter’s speed. He gained 1,151 yards even though he wasn’t a starter until week five. The Steelers’ Tim Worley was the seventh overall pick in the draft, a 6-foot-2 220-pounder who has sprinter’s speed. He held out, lost three fumbles in the opener, and after a defeat in week seven, said: “I can’t do it by myself. It starts up front.” He had 417 yards in the last five games.