There’s Little Sneaky About Steelers’ Win

There is one big reason why nervous Pittsburgh Steeler fans had to squeeze the life out of their Terrible Towels until the final tick of the clock had squeezed the life out of the New England Patriots on Saturday afternoon, enabling the Steelers to escape with a 7-6 victory in an AFC divisional playoff game at Three Rivers Stadium.

And it had nothing to do with the fact that the Patriot defense effectively road-blocked the Steeler running game for most of the day, or that New England quarterback Drew Bledsoe kept his injury-riddled team in a game in which it figured to get blown out.

No, the reason the game was so close was simply because the Pittsburgh coach made a horrible, indefensible blunder.

Says who?

Says the coach.

Halting the anticipated onslaught of media questions as effectively as the Patriots halted the charge of his best running back, Jerome Bettis, Steeler Coach Bill Cowher opened his news conference by saying he was wrong not to go for a field goal and on a crucial fourth down late in the game, thus keeping the Patriots alive.

Pittsburgh quarterback Kordell Stewart, who wound up as the game’s leading rusher with 68 yards and scored the game’s only touchdown on a 40-yard run in the first quarter, was stopped short of the goal line on Cowher’s fourth-quarter gamble from the one-foot line.

“I’m a young coach and I screwed up,” Cowher said. “I should have kicked the field goal. I really feel that way. There is no way I shouldn’t have. I got caught up in the emotion of the game. I’m 40 years old. I made a mistake. They [his players] bailed me out.”

And by doing so, they advanced to the AFC championship game next Sunday. It will be back at Three Rivers if the Denver Broncos defeat Kansas City today.

Cowher had called for a quarterback sneak rather than calling on Bettis, his leading rusher in the regular season with 1,665 yards.

Stewart, crashing into the middle of the line and then trying to springboard over the top, was met by a wave of Patriots led by Ted Johnson. Bouncing back but still on his feet, Stewart was about to seek another route when outside linebacker Tedy Bruschi pulled the quarterback to the turf.

Given life with 3:24 to go, Bledsoe took over with the nose of the football about a nose away from his goal line.

Bledsoe didn’t have much to work with. He was without his best running back, Curtis Martin, who was a key figure in last year’s improbable run all the way to the Super Bowl. Martin was out for the fifth consecutive game because of a separated right shoulder followed by a groin injury.

Bledsoe was also without his two key receivers--tight end Ben Coates and wide receiver Terry Glenn--on that final drive. Coates sprained his right knee in the first half and Glenn injured his left collarbone, perhaps breaking it, at the end of a 39-yard pass play on the final play of the third quarter.

But, thanks to Cowher, Bledsoe, on that desperation drive in the fourth quarter, needed only to get into field-goal range rather than all the way to the end zone.

Bledsoe came out firing, completing his first three passes to give him some operating room.

With just under two minutes to play, Bledsoe had driven all the way to his 42-yard line. The sellout crowd of 61,228, fearful that their team was about to fall on their collective faces on their first step into the postseason, was imploring the defensive unit that had held the Patriots without a touchdown all afternoon to do so one more time.

Was Cowher second-guessing himself as he watched the Patriots roll past him?

“I had already done that as soon as we didn’t get the touchdown,” he said.

But on first down from the 42, Bledsoe, rolling right and about to throw, was caught from behind by Steeler defensive end Mike Vrabel, a rookie from Ohio State.

“It was just kind of a straight rush,” Vrabel said. “I was fortunate enough to find some kind of speed around the corner. . . . I was lucky enough to catch his arm as it was coming up.”

Before Bledsoe could bring that arm forward, Vrabel had squeezed the ball out of it. It hit the artificial turf and linebacker Jason Gildon fell on it to kill the Patriot drive and ease Cowher’s guilt.

No one could have envisioned it would come to this in the first quarter on an unseasonably warm January day in Pittsburgh (52 degrees) when Stewart culminated the Steelers’ first drive by rolling out to his left on a designed run, breaking one tackle, getting a key block from tight end Mark Bruener, and then taking advantage of it to race down the left sideline into the end zone.

“It was run all the way,” Cowher said. “We told him to pump it to get them to hesitate, but there weren’t any receivers out there.”

Stewart, making his first start in a playoff game, admitted he was surprised at how successful the play had been.

“I couldn’t believe I had that much room to run,” he said.

But just as quickly as the Patriot defense had opened up, it shut down. New England held the Steelers, the league’s best running team during the regular season, to 145 yards on the grounds, including 67 yards in 25 carries for Bettis.

And while the Patriot defense was plugging the gaps, Bledsoe was plugging away, getting close enough for Adam Vinatieri to kick field goals of 31 and 46 yards.

After his devastating fumble, Bledsoe got one more shot from his own four-yard line with 34 seconds to play. But on the last play of the game, his desperation pass was picked off by linebacker Levon Kirkland.

Had it turned out differently, it might have been the first time in football history that the winning team felt like carrying the other coach off the field on its shoulders.