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Pittsburgh – There are times when, no matter how much you hurt, or ache for precious relief, the Fates don’t cooperate and alleviate your pain by opening a hole in the earth big enough for you to crawl into.
So it was last Sunday, shortly after watching her son do the unthinkable – fumble in the last minute, an error that would seemingly provide the Indianapolis Colts with their means of escape in the AFC divisional playoffs – Gladys Bettis took the only route available to her.
She ran away from the nearly 70,000 suddenly delirious fans at the RCA Dome and hid in a bathroom.
“She felt bad for me. She just couldn’t watch anymore,” Jerome Bettis said.
Of course, the Fates are a fickle lot, so when Mom emerged from her self-imposed exile, there was just enough time to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers, having miraculously survived her boy’s gaffe, run out the remainder of the clock and emerge with a 21-18 victory, sending the team into Sunday’s AFC championship game against the Broncos.
Perhaps the whole thing was a case of the powers-that-be showing off their sense of humor, because more and more, it’s beginning to appear that the Steelers and Bettis, their 13-year veteran, the NFL’s fifth all-time leading rusher, are destined to make it to Super Bowl XL. That game will be played at Ford Field in Detroit, where Gladys and her husband Johnny raised Jerome.
The sense of destiny is heightened by the idea that, according to Bettis, this could well be his last season in the league. While clearly one of the most bruising backs in the NFL, generously listed at 5-foot-11 and 255 pounds, Bettis looks more like a pulling guard than a ball carrier. He’s concerned about overstaying his welcome.
“If you don’t feel like you can perform at the same level as you’ve done before, you have to walk away,” said Bettis, who will turn 34 just 11 days after the Super Bowl. “If you don’t, it’s doing a disservice, not only to you, but to your organization. They expect the guy who’s coming out here this year. … They don’t want a guy whose skills have all diminished.”
In some ways, Bettis, who has rushed for 13,662 yards in his career, has become a specialist, not unlike the New York Yankees’ Mariano Rivera. Teammate Clark Haggans calls Bettis “the NFL’s best closer,” a tribute to Bettis’ ability close to the goal line.
In the past four years, Bettis has just eight runs of 20 yards or more. However, of his 793 carries in that time, 38 have been for touchdowns, approximately one score for every 21 runs.
That figure also doesn’t take into consideration the times he’s given the ball to run out the clock against defenses who know he’s coming, but are, more often than not, powerless to do anything about it.
“I’ve hit Jerome once, last year in a scrimmage,” Pittsburgh safety Chris Hope said Wednesday in the Steelers’ locker room. “It was one on one, and I got a lot of praise from everybody for doing it, but I’m still feeling it to this day.”
Hope takes the viewpoint that, with the rise of starting running back Willie Parker, and the subsequent lessened playing time – Bettis had only 110 carries in the regular season – he could continue to play for a number of years.
“He’s still the life of the party; he’s still the life of the locker room,” Hope said. “He still can run and move. I think he’s becoming healthier and stronger because he’s not taking that big load every week.
“He hasn’t really been hit at all this year; I can remember when he was the starting running back, he rarely practiced because of all the hitting he took on Sundays. Now, he’s out there every day, he’s getting his rhythm back and he’s a lot more rested than he was back in the day.”
There’s also Bettis’ impact off the field. When wide receiver Hines Ward held out in a contract dispute at the start of the season, he said he was worried about how his teammates would react, perhaps feeling he was deserting them or putting himself over the team.
At one point, Ward said, he called Bettis. Ward kept calling him every day until he returned to the team.
“Each and every day, Jerome is always teaching me something about being a professional,” Ward said. “I really want to win the Super Bowl more for him than for me personally.”
As far as Hope and Ward are concerned, now isn’t the time for The Bus to be garaged for good. Bettis hasn’t made any definite decisions, but it’s clear the internal tug of war between memories of what used to be and acceptance of what’s happening now is very much at play.
“That’s the scary thing with athletes; sometimes it’s hard to get us to walk away,” he said. “But if you go out there and can’t play the way you used to, what are you? Just the shell of the athlete you used to be.
“For me, knowing when to walk away is about the physical; it’s not a question of ability or whether or not I could do it – if you gave me four days of rest, I could go out and do it – but I don’t know if that works in the scope of a team concept.”
Of course, about this time a year ago, after the Steelers lost to New England in the AFC championship game, Pittsburgh’s third such loss since Bettis’ arrival in 1996, the veteran began muttering about retirement – this after making the Pro Bowl with 941 yards rushing and 13 touchdowns.
“There were rumors that he was going to quit,” guard Alan Faneca said. “When we were at the Pro Bowl, I pulled him aside and told him to give me one more chance.”
That shot at the Super Bowl is now at hand – even if it took something along the lines of divine providence in Indianapolis for the Steelers to get there. On Wednesday, Bettis was asked if any part of him felt he had been given a mulligan.
“No, all of me understands that we still have an opportunity to do something really special,” he said. “I’ve been on the losing side of quite a few of these games. That’s what driving me more than anything, not that the Super Bowl is in Detroit.”
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or at acotton@denverpost.com.
