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Pittsburgh – On a dreary, drizzling Tuesday morn, the Pittsburgh Steelers awoke, thinking thoughts of – Tuesday. Tomorrow’s forecast? More of the same.
It is a certainty that the Steelers will travel to Denver for Sunday’s AFC championship game against the Broncos, but not until they absolutely have to, sometime late Saturday. That’s about as far ahead as the team is willing to look. There certainly won’t be any thoughts on what possibly awaits – a berth in Super Bowl XL.
“We’re just trying to play another day, that’s how we look at it,” coach Bill Cowher said during a news conference Tuesday. “There are a lot of obstacles that go with that. For us to sit here and reflect on anything, or try to draw on anything … we just have to focus on this week.
“That’s very, very important. We have not played this football team. I’m not even sure how much we’ve seen them when we’ve studied other teams. Denver is going to utilize every bit of our time and thoughts and preparation, because if we don’t prepare well, we will not perform and we will squander an opportunity.”
Cowher wasn’t even in the mood to gloat over the NFL’s admission that the helter-skelter final five minutes in Sunday’s 21-18 divisional playoff victory over Indianapolis probably never should have happened. Safety Troy Polamalu’s apparent game-clinching interception, a play that eventually was overturned, should have counted, league officials said.
“We’ve had all our questions answered and so we move on,” Cowher said.
As for linebacker Joey Porter, who bellowed afterward that the call was an example of the league showing a bias towards the Colts, Cowher sniffed, “We have a 15-minute cooling off period after games – apparently, some of our guys need a little longer.”
Keeping to the here and now, as opposed to traipsing through the past, may be especially important for the Steelers. For all the talk of their playoff run, the No. 6 seed that has won twice on the road, there’s a tendency to forget that they are exactly where they were a year ago – playing for the conference championship.
That last season’s championship game didn’t end so well for the Steelers – coming off a 15-1 regular season, the No. 1 seed lost a 41-27 decision to eventual champion New England at Heinz Field – may be a microcosm of the frustration the franchise had felt in conference title games under Cowher. In 14 seasons at Pittsburgh, Cowher has led his team to six conference championship games. The Steelers have lost four of the previous five.
In each of those contests, the Steelers were the home team, which ostensibly would have made them something of a favorite. Three out of four times, however, the team that upset Pittsburgh – Denver in the 1997 season and New England in 2001 and last season – went on to win the Super Bowl. In 1994, San Diego lost to San Francisco after ousting the Steelers; the next season, Pittsburgh beat Indianapolis for the AFC title, but lost to Dallas in Super Bowl XXX.
Each of those conference championship losses carried its own little heartbreak. In 1994, Pittsburgh drove from its 17 to the Chargers’ 3 during the final five minutes, but couldn’t get the game-winning score. The Steelers led at halftime against the Broncos in 1997 and rallied to within three points with just less than three minutes to play, but couldn’t get the ball back.
The 2001 loss occurred after Pittsburgh had rallied from a 21-3 deficit, seven of the New England points coming on the return of a blocked field goal. Last season, there was an 87-yard interception return for a score by the Patriots’ Rodney Harrison.
However, in some ways, it’s all a matter of perspective. If you’re the Broncos, who before this season hadn’t won a playoff game since 1998, wouldn’t you take two appearances in the AFC championship game? If you’re the Colts, would the Steelers’ “failures” be a lot more palatable than the agony they’ve gone through over the past six or seven seasons?
“You know what? Every year is a new year,” Cowher said. “The only time it comes up is when people ask about it, and all I can say is that it is what it is. We’re just looking forward to the opportunity we have this year.”
After Sunday’s game, a number of Steelers players alluded to the idea that, given their poor results in hosting the conference championship game, perhaps they would be better served by taking their act on the road for a change.
“I don’t know if we planned on doing it this way,” said Hines Ward, a Steelers’ wide receiver since 1998. “Of course, you want to have home-field advantage, but we’ve had that before. Twice we’ve had home- field advantage and we came up short both times.
“A lot of guys last year said, ‘Man, if I could’ve done this,’ or ‘If I could’ve done that.’ Well, now let’s go out and leave it all on the field and let’s see what happens.”
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
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