Steelers Get Call, Take Big Step

They ran out of downs in last year’s AFC championship game against San Diego, three yards shy of the end zone and lost the opportunity to advance to the Super Bowl, but now the Pittsburgh Steelers contend they will be waving their terrible towels at this year’s Super Bowl.

A partisan crowd of 59,072 concurred, taking delight in the Steelers’ 40-21 victory and ending the Buffalo Bills’ 10-game AFC playoff winning streak in Saturday’s divisional contest at Three Rivers Stadium.

But before scheduling that Super Bowl parade through downtown Pittsburgh, take note of whom they beat, and whom they must still defeat.

The Bills, who went 7-9 a year ago after advancing to four consecutive Super Bowls, began play with defensive end Bruce Smith in bed with flu back in Buffalo. Their best running back, Thurman Thomas, limped off the field early with an ankle injury. Their best wide receiver, Andre Reed, who was sidelined for much of the season because of a hamstring injury, looked like an athlete in need of training camp. And their leader, quarterback Jim Kelly, went to the locker room with a separation of the collarbone and the sternum, leaving the Bills’ playoff fortunes for a time in the hands of Alex Van Pelt.

“I was just trying not to screw up too bad when I was in there,” Van Pelt said.

And still the Steelers needed a “very, very generous” call from an official, as Pittsburgh wide receiver Ernie Mills described his 10-yard touchdown catch in the second quarter, to jump out to a 14-0 lead. Moving ahead 20-0, then 23-7 at the half and 26-7 early in the third quarter, they would still need an acrobatic third-down catch from wide receiver Yancey Thigpen to secure the victory.

“We were just protecting the lead and waiting for the clock to run out,” offensive tackle Leon Searcy said. “You can’t win a championship like that.”

Indeed, like the Chargers here a year ago, who trailed 13-3 in the second half, the Bills would not go away. The Steelers could not stop Van Pelt, who was 10 of 18 for 106 yards with two touchdowns during the regular season, from completing a two-yard touchdown pass to rookie tight end Tony Cline to make it 26-14 with 3:37 remaining in the third quarter.

While Van Pelt labored, Kelly was in the locker room taking a pain-killing shot in his chest. Linebacker Greg Lloyd had smashed into Kelly with 5:14 left in the third quarter, and while falling backward defensive lineman Bill Johnson dropped his 290 pounds on top of Kelly.

Like Thomas, who returned to the game after his ankle injury, Kelly came back. With a little more than 11 minutes remaining in the game, he replaced Van Pelt and immediately threw a nine-yard touchdown pass to Thomas.

The Bills, who had posted the greatest comeback in NFL history with a 41-38 overtime playoff victory over Houston on Jan. 3, 1993, after trailing by 32 points, were now within a touchdown of overcoming a 20-point deficit.

“We certainly made it interesting,” Pittsburgh Coach Bill Cowher said. “But it’s like I said when we started this thing: It’s a three-week season, and we just have to find a way to win.”

There shouldn’t have been any need for fourth-quarter heroics against the battered Bills, but with 9:11 left in the game, the Steelers called time out on third and eight from their own 41 with the Bills behind by only five.

“It was a big third down, the kind of play I had been talking about all week, the kind of play you just have to make,” said Neil O’Donnell, Pittsburgh’s quarterback. “I put the ball where it had to be, and boom, it’s a first down.”

There has been no bigger boom in Pittsburgh in recent years. Thigpen, a rookie bust with the Chargers before being picked up by the Steelers in 1992, went high into the air to catch the pass then maintained possession while landing hard on his back for a 21-yard gain and a first down.

“That catch brought back some of the momentum that Buffalo had taken away from us,” said Thigpen, who caught three passes for 77 yards. “Then it was just up to Bam Morris to finish them off.”

Thigpen’s catch allowed the Steelers to keep the ball, then Morris sent the Steelers into the AFC title game with two fourth-quarter touchdowns on runs of 13 and two yards.

“Yeah, the momentum had swung to Buffalo, but we made the key plays when we had to,” said John L. Williams, the Pittsburgh running back who scored the game’s first touchdown on a one-yard run. “And after we made the big plays, Bam took over, and he’s really something late in a game.”

After Williams had opened the scoring for Pittsburgh, the Steelers demonstrated the need for instant replay. On second and nine from the Buffalo 10-yard line, O’Donnell went to the back of the end zone to Mills, who had beaten the coverage of safety Kurt Schulz. Mills caught the ball with only one foot in bounds, but field judge Billy Smith called it a touchdown and ruled that Schulz had pushed Mills out of bounds.

“They gave me the call; we were at home, so I’ll take it,” said Mills, who had no chance--pushed or not--of successfully landing his right foot in bounds. “I saw a replay of it and it was a very, very generous ruling.”

The ruling gave Pittsburgh a 14-0 jump-start on the Bills, then Norm Johnson added field goals of 45 and 38 yards for a 20-0 lead.

“We came out hot and then just got a little complacent,” Pittsburgh linebacker Kevin Greene said. “It got a little hairy there, but then we turned it up a notch.

“We didn’t want to squander another opportunity like we did a year ago. We don’t like to think about how close we were last year, but it lingers in the back of the mind. Now we’re back in the same position as we were, but this year we’re hitting on all cylinders, so I feel good about our chances.”

The Steelers will have to go toe-to-toe against the winner of today’s Indianapolis-Kansas City game to get to the Super Bowl, and if successful, then they will have to deal with the NFC’s domination in the big game.

“This team has proved that it can take a punch and then get back up,” said Cowher, who drove the Steelers to an 11-5 record after a 3-4 start. “They are focused. They really are, and it’s just like after we won the division championship, in that locker room it was, ‘OK.’ That’s the way it is now; there is unfinished business.”