When was the last time you saw a Bus in the passing lane? <gg>
Win streak now at 11; Steelers win AFC North
Sunday, December 12, 2004
By BOB LABRIOLA
PITTSBURGH – It’s often seen as trite by fans interested in a more detailed explanation for the outcome of a particular game, especially when it involves their favorite team, but Jets coach Herm Edwards was accurate with his assessment.
"They made the plays, and that's what good teams do, what championship teams do," Edwards said. "Their guys played better than us in the fourth quarter."
And so it was once again for the Steelers as they tied their franchise record with 11 straight wins with a 17-6 decision over the New York Jets on Sunday at Heinz Field. The win clinched the AFC North Division title for the Steelers, and it was the eighth such championship in Coach Bill Cowher’s 13 seasons with the team. It was the 17th division championship in Steelers history.
"It was a really hard-fought game," said Cowher. "We couldn’t do almost anything in the first half. We had some third downs that were makeable and we just couldn’t convert. We couldn’t get anything going. And certainly our defense did a super job with the takeaways, and they were big. We did a good job of shutting down Curtis Martin. He is a good back and that is a good football team. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them again."
The Jets defense walked onto the floor of Heinz Field determined to stop the Steelers running game, and it often lined up in what resembled a 4-4 defense to do that. Duce Staley started his second straight game and banged out 51 yards on 16 carries, but nothing was easy or simple.
The Steelers were locked in a 3-3 tie after three quarters, but then Jerome Bettis, who had come off the bench to give the Jets a fresher pair of legs to worry about, made a couple of plays that got the offense the only two touchdowns its defense would require.
Bettis (AKA - The Bus) flipped a 10-yard touchdown pass to Jerame Tuman three plays after surpassing the 13,000-yard rushing mark early in the fourth quarter, and that fooled what had been a stingy Jets defense to that point.
On a day Bettis and the Jets' Curtis Martin each broke the 13,000-yard barrier on the NFL’s all-time rushing list, Bettis also ran for his 12th touchdown of the season to set a career high in that department and account for the final points in a win that gave the Steelers a 12-1 record and allowed them to retain the top seed in the AFC.
"Everybody keeps waiting for us to have a letdown, but each week someone steps up and makes big plays," Hines Ward said. "Really, Jerome won the game by himself."
Maybe from an offensive standpoint, Ward was correct. But the Steelers were able to beat the Jets with only 17 points because the defense has allowed only two touchdowns over the previous 14 quarters, none last Sunday. And it was a defense that had to adapt to a style first utilized by Jacksonville and then copied by the Jets.
The Jaguars decided to try to neutralize the Steelers variety of blitzes by often keeping seven blockers in to protect the passer just to be sure, and the Jets thought it might work for them. But the Steelers accepted the challenge, simply changed tactics and intercepted Chad Pennington three times.
"They played well, you can’t say enough," said Cowher about the defense. "The play that Troy makes, that has been him. He’s an amazing player. You look at the front and all of a sudden Clark Haggans goes down with an injury and we put James Harrison in there on first and second down and we put Alonzo (Jackson) in there on third down to take his spot. I thought that those two guys played really well. James Farrior came up with another big play and Joey (Porter) played very well. And in the secondary, they hit the one long pass on Willie (Williams) but I thought for the most part that Deshea (Townsend) has played well, Chris Hope. I can’t say enough about our defense, they have been playing very, very well."
Polamalu and Farrior both had interceptions after reading Pennington and cutting underneath the receiver to make a play on the ball, and Hope was positioned perfectly when Pennington overthrew a receiver cutting across the middle of the field.
"It's up to me to steer the ship in the right direction," said Pennington, 17 of 31 for 189 yards. "Only a few plays separate the 11-1 teams from the 6-5 teams. A lot of teams have come close to beating the Steelers, but to their credit, they do a good job of making sure it doesn't happen."
For his part, Ben Roethlisberger completed 9 of 19 for 144 yards with no touchdowns and two interceptions, but he kept his unprecedented NFL rookie winning streak going with his 11th in a row.
The Jets' defense had shut out three consecutive opponents in the second half and six this season until Bettis' throw.
Bettis' third career touchdown pass in six attempts came on third-and-3. On the three previous plays, he had run for 12 yards, for 4 yards and then for 3 yards. The Steelers then lined up in a formation from which they always have run a counter play to the right side, and Bettis took the ball from Roethlisberger and seemed to head for the hole over the right tackle.
But this time he pulled up short of the line of scrimmage and tossed a perfect pass to a wide open Jerame Tuman for the 10-yard touchdown that gave the Steelers a 10-3 lead.
Bettis’ two previous career touchdown passes were for 21 yards to Hines Ward against the Baltimore Ravens on Dec. 12, 1999 and for 32 yards to Tuman against Tampa Bay on Oct. 21, 2001.
"I got behind the safety and I couldn't see him (Bettis), I could just see the ball coming," Tuman said. "When we practiced it Friday it didn't look good, the throw was a little low, but he got it up today. We had it set up perfectly; we could hear their defense calling out (a run)."
Bettis ran for 57 yards to push his career total to 13,037. Curtis Martin had 24 carries for 72 yards to move past Bettis into fifth place with 13,046 yards in the first game in NFL history in which two backs each surpassed 13,000 yards.
Only four others have more than 13,000: Emmitt Smith, Walter Payton, Barry Sanders and Eric Dickerson.
"We got together after the game and I told him congratulations and he told me congratulations," Martin said. "You have to appreciate consistency, and that's what he's done."
Consistency also has been a characteristic of the 2004 Steelers as a whole.
"Well it’s the first step," said Cowher about clinching the AFC North title. "You have to enjoy it, and we have talked about it before. This football team has been a very focused team, and they understand that it’s a journey. But you have to take it one step at a time, and this is the first step. We knew that this was a good football team that we were playing; we knew that it was going to be a battle.
"We knew it was probably going to be low-scoring, and
you just have to keep grinding away. You have to keep believing. You can’t start
questioning yourself. It’s almost like a battle of wills that took place out
there; who was going flinch first. And I think that we came up with a couple of
more big plays than they did, and that was really the difference in the
game."
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