Cowher Power The AFC Central Champion Steelers Learned Early That Things Would Be Different Under Their New Coach

At the Houston Astrodome on opening day last September, the Pittsburgh Steelers were playing for the first time for their new coach--35-year-old Bill Cowher--when the same old things began to go wrong.

The offense fumbled the ball away, and the defense, losing track of what was going on, caved in. And with five minutes still to play in the first quarter, the Steelers were behind, 14-0.

In the press box, a scout for another NFL team turned to a friend and said: “Same old Steelers.”

Not quite. Pondering the consequences of another punt to the heavily favored Oilers--and another touchdown by a hot team--Cowher told himself: “No way.”

He ordered a fake punt instead, a pass by the Steeler punter, whose completion for a first down astonished the hometown fans, not to mention the hometown team.

And in a wink, Cowher’s players had the next touchdown, reversing the game’s momentum, starting them on their way to a 29-24 upset and moving them toward the mountaintop they occupy today: They are the first in the league to earn a division championship.

“Cowher power,” Pittsburgh’s All-Pro cornerback Rod Woodson said the other day. “That’s the first time we ever had a season turning point in the first quarter of the first game.”

With a 10-4 record and without their injured quarterback, Neil O’Donnell, the Steelers aren’t ready yet for comparisons with the San Francisco 49ers (12-2) or Dallas Cowboys (11-3).

But in their own neighborhood, the Steelers are even with the Buffalo Bills (10-4) for best record in the AFC. And, although backup quarterback Bubby Brister couldn’t keep them in last Sunday’s game, which they lost in Chicago, 30-6, they are in position to make a run for, at least, the conference championship.

And in Pittsburgh, that’s a switch.

Under Coach Chuck Noll, the Steelers were 93-91 in the 12 seasons after they won four Super Bowls.

They were 7-9 last year--and with a couple of exceptions, the lineups Noll used are the same as those Cowher has used this year.

Two weeks before the playoffs, the Steelers, who will be home to Minnesota and Cleveland in their last two games, have seemingly changed direction.

How did it happen?

The short answer is simply that a new coach seems to be getting the most out of players who are more talented than their opponents realized until lately.

Cowher, who was an NFL player as recently as 1984, has shown himself to be a leader beyond his age.

His strong safety, Carnell Lake,a former UCLA standout, made the key points in a recent discussion.

“(The coaching staff) has pumped a new energy into the players,” Lake said. “(Cowher) is hands-on. He talks to his players, he encourages his players. I didn’t see that happen here before this year.”

Lake said that the 1992 Steelers, on both sides of the ball, are being coached to attack.

During Noll’s years, the Steelers were a slow-blocking, trap-blocking team--and a decade later, that might still prove to have been the wiser course. But football players would rather attack than react, and Cowher is catering to that interest.

The other thing different is the previously unsuspected high level of Pittsburgh’s talent. Last year it wasn’t so visible. This year it is:

--On defense, the Steelers are fielding an effective secondary whose players were drafted in different rounds: Woodson as a No. 1 in 1987, Lake as a No. 2 in 1989, free safety Darren Perry as a No. 8 this year and right cornerback D.J. Johnson as a No. 7 in 1989.

--On offense as well as defense, nine other Steelers form what has been called the nucleus of the team. And all nine were acquired in the two uncommonly successful Pittsburgh drafts of 1990 and ’91.

Some are injured or otherwise unavailable now, but all nine have started for Cowher--among them running back Barry Foster, the NFL’s leading rusher; quarterback O’Donnell, tight end Eric Green and wide receiver Jeff Graham, each a potential All-Pro.

O’Donnell, Foster and Green were drafted in 1990, Graham and four other young starters in 1991.

The way the Steelers have done it in a handful of drafts is reminiscent of the 1970s, when, in one draft (1974) Noll got Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth and Mike Webster--Super Bowl starters all--as their first four picks.

That takes some luck. As a rule, impact players are only available one to a club--and only in the top half of the top round.

But Cowher isn’t complaining.

His luck, if it is luck, is something like Vince Lombardi’s in the 1960s, when the Green Bay Packers won the first two Super Bowls with players who, as Lombardi later admitted, “were a lot better than I thought when I first came here.”

Some other Lombardi-Cowher comparisons can already be made. Cowher discovered his running back, Foster, in the pre-Cowher Pittsburgh tapes; Lombardi found his quarterback, Bart Starr, in the pre-Lombardi Green Bay films.

And if Cowher is conservative, Lombardi was reactionary.

Yet Lombardi beat the Dallas Cowboys in an NFL championship game with what still seems an absurd gamble, a quarterback sneak in a Wisconsin freeze when a kick was the percentage play.

As for Cowher, he’s where he is because, last September, he gambled and won his first big game with a fake punt.

Cowher, of course, is no Lombardi yet.

But in Pittsburgh, they are glad they’ve got him.

TWO WAYS

The Steelers were losing to the Detroit Lions in the second half of their 10th game when a committee of three defensive starters, Woodson and linebackers Greg Lloyd and David Little, called on the boss and asked him to mend his ways.

Cowher, fearing the Lion run-and-shoot, had prepared a passive game plan, which wasn’t getting the job done.

“We should be blitzing more,” said Woodson, one of the NFL’s most intelligent players, as Lloyd and Little nodded.

Cowher took off his earphones, stared at Woodson and the others for a moment, and then broke the faith with Lombardi, the Green Bay autocrat who never consulted anybody.

“Well, blitz then,” Cowher said.

That energized the Steelers. And, suddenly aggressive again, they came back to win, 17-14.

Talking about it, Cowher said: “I have always believed that communication is a two-way street.”

Meaning he will listen.

But not forever.

“This football team will always understand where they stand, and where I stand,” he said.

Cowher is in charge, in other words, and everyone else is a cog, as everyone found out on the opening day of training camp. To ensure 100% compliance with the nightly curfew, Cowher ordered alarms installed at all dormitory doors--all but one, the front door.

At the front door, he stationed a security guard.

There were no night owls.

“The thing that I’ve always paid the most attention to is how (leaders) handle distractions, how they handle (curfew problems), what they do when something goes wrong,” Cowher said when asked what he had learned about coaching--what he had studied--during his six years as an NFL player and his seven years as an assistant to Kansas City Coach Marty Schottenheimer.

At Cleveland and Philadelphia in 1979-84, Cowher, a linebacker by training, was mostly a special-teams player, a mean special-teams player, and he still looks like a mean special-teams player.

Above a thick, black mustache, his eyes penetrate. A North Carolina State teammate once said that Cowher has the eyes of “a man leaving the planet.” In tribute to his iron jaw and familiar scowl, they called him “Stone Face,” later shortened to the nickname Cowher’s old friends still use, “Face.”

What they all remember most is that in a social setting he was a congenial companion, and that in a football setting, fueled by an incredible intensity, he had more energy than a power plant.

Cowher is a Pittsburgh native. The second of three sons of an insurance-company auditor, he has moved across town to an upscale suburb, Fox Chapel, where he lives with his wife, Kaye, a former professional basketball player and the mother of his three daughters.

When they play back-yard basketball, he said: “Kaye always tries to take me. She never learns. One on one, she hasn’t beaten me yet.”

GIANT FAN

In his days as a defensive coach at Kansas City, Cowher watched a lot of film of the New York Giants, who won two Super Bowls under Bill Parcells.

“I liked their offensive system,” he remembers.

So when the Steelers hired him last January, four months before his 35th birthday, Cowher knew exactly what he wanted to do first.

He wanted to bring in, as offensive coordinator, Ron Erhardt, 62, who as the Giants’ offensive coordinator had planned both of Parcells’ Super Bowl triumphs.

“(Erhardt) has been a winner everywhere--high school (45-9-2), college (62-7-1) and pro,” Cowher said. “He was the first person I hired.”

Thus, Cowher is every bit as conservative as Parcells. Isn’t that too conservative for today’s fans?

“We’re orchestrating to win here,” Cowher said. “Not (entertain).”

His team is actually more interesting to see when it’s on defense.

Defensively, the Steelers have led the AFC most of the season, doing it with game plans that tend to be newfangled.

For example, it is immaterial to Cowher whether his players ever sack an opposing quarterback.

“Take-aways are this football team’s No. 1 priority,” he said. “When you get a sack, you seldom get the ball.

“I want my players pressuring the passer with their arms in the air. Deflections lead to interceptions, and an interception is more (helpful) than a sack.”

When he first heard that, Steeler President Dan Rooney nodded appreciatively.

“The thing that’s so impressive about (Cowher) is that he knows just what he wants and where he’s going,” said Rooney, who brought him to Pittsburgh.

But how could he hire a coach who was then 34?

“I couldn’t believe it myself,” Rooney said. “Until I met him. Nobody who knows him notices his age.”

Nobody except, perhaps, the team.

His players enjoy having an older brother in charge--a guy young enough to go out for lunch with them occasionally without looking out of place; young enough to know what MTV is; young enough to realize that on a chartered jet, for example, veteran players resent sitting in coach while their coaches lounge around in first class.

Only eight years ago, Cowher was out there hitting Joe Montana and Dan Marino himself. He remembers. On his airplanes, players sit in all the first-class seats. He sits in coach--with his idol, Ron Erhardt.