SUPER BOWL XXX / Cowboys 27, Steelers 17 : In the Search for a Scapegoat, Start With Pittsburgh Coaches

Don’t blame those interceptions on the quarterback. And don’t credit the Dallas Cowboys’ defense for winning the Super Bowl.

What happened was this: The Pittsburgh Steelers’ coaches asked more of their players than any football team could give.

Surprising almost everybody, the Steelers demonstrated Sunday that although the NFC has dominated the NFL for 15 years, AFC players are now, suddenly, at least as gifted as theNFC’s.

And as coached by Bill Cowher, the Steelers became a Super Bowl rarity in this game’s second half: They never gave up. Down by two touchdowns, the Steelers fought back wildly, and they could have won, should have won.

Cowher’s heart kept them in the game.

But his head took them out.

On a 27-17 day, the Steelers lost because they’re an unsound team offensively. They lost because in a comparatively short season, it’s impossible for a pro team to master the multiple offenses their coaches want and used: a five-wide-receiver offense, four-wide-receiver offense, shotgun offense, power-running offense, quick-passing offense, dropback-passing offense.

And most obvious of all, they lost because, from first to last, their play selection was unbelievably faulty. This was a team that, for a while, ran almost all the time. Then it tried to pass almost all the time. And the Cowboys, catching on to that pattern, eventually won easily with those intercepted passes.

Pittsburgh quarterback Neil O’Donnell threw three interceptions on plays that were so certainly going to be passes that the Cowboys blitzed recklessly, destroying his aim.

The first was a third-and-10 pass after the Steelers had sought unsuccessfully to run theball.

The second interception, materializing on second and 10, came as O’Donnell tried to complete his 14th pass in a sequence of 19 plays. On orders from his coaches, he kept going to the well, in other words, and Dallas, finally outguessing him, blitzed him into the game’s decisive error.

The third interception came on the Steelers’ last, desperate play of the game.

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The Cowboys won on the momentum and memory of what they used to be. They weren’t the better team in this Super Bowl, but they called the better game, and they executed well enough because they have so often practiced the simple plays they still use in their simple, repetitious system.

Scorning multiple formations as usual, quarterback Troy Aikman took every snap under center and, in the clutch, completed the first-down passes that were barely enough to win:

--In the first quarter, he threw a first-down pass that wide receiver Deion Sanders carried into scoring position, where tight end Jay Novacek caught Aikman’s touchdown pass, also thrown on first down.

--Then in the third quarter, after the first of Cowboy cornerback Larry Brown’s two interceptions, Aikman threw a first-down pass to wide receiver Michael Irvin that set up the short touchdown run that was to prove sufficient, 20-7.

In other words, on a day when Pittsburgh was, as usual, calling ground plays on first and other running downs--and calling passes on third and long and other passing downs--the Cowboys were, as usual, mixing up their plays admirably.

That’s the way they did it under Jimmy Johnson to win their previous two Super Bowls. And they still remembered enough of that same sound system to score 27 points.

It was a good thing too. For the Pittsburgh defense played well enough to bring the Cowboys down, taking Dallas halfback Emmitt Smith, among others, out of the game.

Nor was Dallas’ coaching memorable. No self-respecting team is ever fooled on an on-sidekickoff.

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It is clear now that the Steelers have the talent to come back in a year or two and win this game provided, in the meantime, they improve their understanding of offense.

If they don’t blame O’Donnell for losing here, if they pay him enough to come back, if they give him a more modern offense, they can in the next year or two end the NFC’s Super Bowl monopoly. If, in Miami, Jimmy Johnson doesn’t beat them to it.

The Steelers showed that any cornerback, even Deion Sanders, can be beaten on an inside pattern. All you have to do is get between him and the ball. They showed that O’Donnell has the pass delivery of a winner. And they showed that with Yancey Thigpen and others, they can match the NFC in wide receivers. They’ve learned all that.

But they haven’t learned that when you send out five receivers, you don’t have anyone leftto pick up the blitz. They’ve got to do something about that offense.