Steelers’ Problems a Mystery

Even though the NFL seems to have many other underachieving teams this year, along with a few overachievers, the Pittsburgh Steelers are clearly the season’s mystery team.

At 7-7 in the AFC Central, Pittsburgh can rise to 8-7 today against 2-12 Cincinnati, but that is far off last year’s pace.

Pittsburgh’s coach then as now was Bill Cowher. The quarterback was the same, Kordell Stewart. The running back was the same, Jerome Bettis. In 1997 these three, together for the first time, helped the Steelers win 11, lose only five, win their first playoff game, and lose the second by only three points to eventual Super Bowl winner Denver.

The Steelers’ mysterious collapse this fall, when they should have improved, follows the only major change they have made, a change of offensive coordinators. Last year’s, Chan Gailey, went to Dallas as head coach. He is 8-6 there with an offense that has disappointed. The new Pittsburgh coordinator, Ray Sherman, learned the West Coast offense during three years at San Francisco and three at Minnesota.

Stewart seems an ideal quarterback for West Coast formations but isn’t playing like it. A possible explanation: It takes time to learn a new system. At Denver, John Elway was 8-8 in 1995, his first season in West Coast football under Mike Shanahan. Two years later, Denver won the Super Bowl.

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Sioux Falls 49ers: The NFL keeps moving into smaller towns, Charlotte one year, Nashville the next, and, soon, Hartford. The Hartford Patriots? Could be. The Patriots, born in Boston, have signed on for a new home in Connecticut in 2002, meaning that they’re definitely, unquestionably, no longer the Boston Patriots. Hartford is closer to New York than Boston.

One conclusion is that in America today, you can succeed with an NFL franchise anywhere--Omaha, Hartford, Sioux Falls, wherever--if you field a competitive team. Thousands of high-income people reside within driving distance of Hartford or Sioux Falls, not to mention Sioux City.

Many other of the well heeled live near Peoria or wherever the Chicago Bears will shortly relocate. The sports fans of a town that sees the wisdom of a new stadium for baseball’s White Sox but not the Bears can start building their 21st-century entertainment plans around the White Sox.

Another conclusion is that Boston has apparently decided that it doesn’t need major league football now. What’s in doubt is whether the sports fans and newspapers of Boston will still feel that way about it five years into the new millennium.

Of the other cities that have regretted abandoning--or being abandoned by--the NFL in recent years, Houston is now fighting Los Angeles to get it back. St. Louis paid many millions to get it back, and Baltimore paid even more.

Boston will be sorry. The only U.S. city that can live without the NFL and still call itself major league, and mean it, is Los Angeles.

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No coaches: Instant replay progress is finally being made in pro football, which plans to have a new system in place for opening day next fall. Here are some of the things the NFL should build into its new system:

* The officials must have the power to change any play that, clearly, has been ruled wrong on the field, not just sideline or goal-line plays.

* They must make up their minds each time within one minute. The errors that have provoked the controversies this fall have all been noticed within a minute. File and forget any error that isn’t instantly obvious, that might or might not be an error.

* The coaches must be kept out of this. Any coach-challenge system is improper because officiating is an NFL responsibility. The coaches’ responsibility is coaching.

* Since instant replay can’t get everything right, the focus must be on the big obvious blunders, the potential troublemakers, the very errors that the country talked about this month--not the errors that might not even be errors upon review next week.

The officials who say with some truth that every error is potentially game-changing should not be hired for instant replay.