Man of Steel

He has always been Slash.

Once upon a time, that stood for quarterback/running back/receiver.

But then, as Kordell Stewart’s career took a serious downturn, it came to stand for losses/interceptions/miscommunication.

And for the growing number of Stewart critics, Slash ideally would have stood for benchwarmer/NFL Europe/Arena League.

Anywhere but behind center for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Yet that’s exactly where No. 10 will be positioned Sunday when the Steelers play host to the New England Patriots in the AFC championship game.

And nobody with a Terrible Towel in his or her hand is complaining these days.

What happened? How did Stewart go from a man whose reputation, on and off the field, had been slashed to the role of hero? How did a man whose relationship with his teammates was cool at best, become the leader on offense, ahead of even Jerome Bettis, on the road the Steelers hope will lead to New Orleans and the Super Bowl?

There was no miracle cure, no revelation through hypnosis, no operation to repair some secret injury.

All it took was a pat on the back and some tender loving care.

All it took was an offensive coordinator, Mike Mularkey, and a quarterback coach, Tom Clements, who were attentive, sympathetic and supportive.

And that’s no malarkey, according to many close to the team.

One incident best illustrates that. At the start of the season, Clements took instant photos of the opposing defense before the snap and after and took them to Stewart on the sidelines to study.

No big deal.

“I have always done that,” said Clements, who had been a quarterback coach with the Kansas City Chiefs and New Orleans Saints before joining Pittsburgh this season.

Maybe it was no big deal for Clements, but Stewart said he had never had a coach do that for him before.

It wasn’t as if Stewart were a running back/receiver in college, who tacked on the additional slash as a quarterback when he became a Steeler. He was an established, accomplished quarterback at Colorado, where he set all kinds of passing records.

The lasting image of Stewart from his collegiate days is the 64-yard touchdown pass he threw to Michael Westbrook on the final play of a game against Michigan to pull out a 27-26 victory.

At first, there were plenty of highlights as well with the Steelers, who selected Stewart in the second round of the 1995 draft.

In the conservative world of the NFL, where everybody is a specialist, the idea of a guy who could effectively throw a pass, catch a pass or run with the ball was intriguing.

Especially in Pittsburgh, where the strategy had so often been for the offense to just hold onto the ball until the defense could come up with a way to win the game. Since Terry Bradshaw was named to the Pro Bowl in 1980, the Steelers had gone 13 seasons without a Pro Bowl quarterback until Neil O’Donnell won that honor in 1993. But O’Donnell was a shooting star at best. There was hope Stewart was going to have longevity.

He even added an extra slash in his first pro season, in a playoff game against the Buffalo Bills, when he booted a 41-yard punt out of the shotgun formation.

By his third season, Stewart was the starting quarterback. He went 11-5, threw for 3,020 yards and 21 touchdowns and the Steelers made it to the AFC championship game, which they lost to the Denver Broncos, 24-21.

Chan Gailey, the offensive coordinator that season, had a good relationship with Stewart, whose fragile personality had always been high maintenance. Gailey boosted Stewart’s ego and praised him often.

The trouble began when Gailey left to become coach of the Dallas Cowboys. He was followed at offensive coordinator by Ray Sherman in 1998 and Kevin Gilbride in 1999-2000. Stewart’s decline coincided with their arrival.

In a 1998 game at Tampa Bay, Steeler Coach Bill Cowher, seeing his quarterback struggle and throw three interceptions, pulled him. Stewart, the growing frustration finally bursting, very publicly disputed Cowher’s decision on the sideline, wagging a finger at his coach. When Stewart’s anger was spent, there were tears in his eyes.

But even that wasn’t the low point. It came a year later when Cowher removed Stewart from quarterback with five games to play and made him strictly a receiver.

Adding the ultimate insult, Cowher forbade Stewart from attending the quarterback meetings.

Stewart figured he couldn’t win with Gilbride looking over his shoulder. The quarterback remembered a game in Jacksonville when he took off out of the pocket and gained 34 yards. When he came back to the sideline, he expected to be praised. Instead, Gilbride questioned his decision.

There were unsettling issues to deal with off the field as well. Stewart was booed and he once had a beer thrown on his head.

Cowher could have given up on his troubled quarterback. Instead, he made an extra effort, not only bringing in Mularkey to replace Gilbride this season, but also hiring Clements, the first time the Steelers had had a quarterback coach since Babe Parilli 30 years ago.

“Every other position player has a coach watching out for him,” Clements said.

“Why not have one for the quarterback?”

The results have been spectacular. After finishing 2000 strong, Stewart has come back with his best season yet in terms of passing yards (3,109) and passer rating (81.7). He was named to the Pro Bowl for the first time, was named the team’s most valuable player, smoothly kept the Steelers on course at the end of the season when Bettis was sidelined by hip and groin injuries, guided the club to a 13-3 record and home-field advantage throughout the postseason and has them back in the AFC title game.

“You can burn my house down,” Stewart told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, “but that will not cause me to run or be afraid.... My mom and dad did a wonderful job of raising me. I’m not going to change my thinking because people in a stadium think I’m a bad guy or less than an athlete. I won’t allow that to happen. I’ll just stand strong.”

He got that advice from Bettis.

“He has developed and matured,” Bettis said. “I told him when they were booing him, he could either stand up or stand out. I told him, you can’t worry about what other people want. You got to do what you got to do.”

Slash and burn?

Instead, Stewart now envisions completing a new slash: Team MVP/Pro Bowl/Super Bowl.

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