Monday, January 24, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
You could wander around the New England locker room for a good 15 minutes after last night's AFC championship game without bumping into a guy who hadn't intercepted Ben Roethlisberger, but it wasn't the Patriots' redoubtable defenders who shattered Pittsburgh hearts 60 minutes short of the Super Bowl.
It was David Givens, Deion Branch, David Patten and the entire fleet of streaking New England receivers at the disposal of gifted big-game quarterback Tom Brady who put Bill Belichick's team in the big game for the second consecutive year and the third time in the past four seasons.
"Deion really gave us a big lift," Belichick said after a 41-27 cadenza that left little doubt as to the identity of the best team in the conference, and easily the better team in the building last night.
After a week of hand-wringing all over Western Pennsylvania due to the availability of running back Corey Dillon, who missed the Halloween massacre won by the Steelers, it was Branch, who also missed that game, who proved to be the perfect poison for a 15-game Steelers winning streak.
New England had converted the first of three Roethlisberger interceptions into a 3-0 lead thanks mostly to a pretty 14-yard reverse that Branch ran to the Steelers' 34, but no one thought the Steelers were in any particular trouble when Branch went one-on-one with Deshea Townsend on the next Patriots possession.
Uh, wrong.
Branch ran a textbook post from his own 40, and Brady threw a classical Patriot missile that found him in stride a step behind Townsend for a 10-point lead that would hang like black crepe in the bone-chilling air all night. But on the occasion of the coldest game in the four-year history of Heinz Field -- 11 degrees at kickoff with a wind chill of minus-1 -- Branch stayed white hot.
The third-year greyhound out of Louisville caught four balls for 116 yards, each in a critical jackpot of yardage that doomed Pittsburgh's flagging opportunities.
"We try to throw to the open guy," Belichick said. "What you try to do is not throw it where there are a lot of defenders."
Oh yeah, another burst of genius from the somnambulant Pats coach, whom you could dismiss as virtually inconsequential to this New England win if it weren't for the nettlesome arithmetic that now finds him 8-0 in the postseason in his current job, and 9-1 overall.
That 9-1 stat, by the way, ties Belichick with none other than Vince Lombardi, who has a famous trophy named after him, for the best career playoff winning percentage among coaches who have been in at least 10 postseason games.
The only thing more valuable in New England's jewelry case might be Brady's 8-0 record as a postseason starter, which is unprecedented.
Brady's first perfect long toss to Branch was just the teaser. He followed it with a 45-yard laser between Steelers safeties Chris Hope and Troy Polamalu that put New England on the verge of a 17-3 lead midway through the second quarter.
One play later, Brady whipped a flat pass to Givens at the Steelers' 9, where the famously reliable corner Willie Williams was slipping on the cold lawn, and Givens danced to the end zone.
"There is no quarterback I would rather have," said Belichick. "He's a smart guy and a tough guy and great competitor. He's always prepared. He's always on top of the game plan. He sees things well on the field. I don't think the magnitude of the game or the crowd noise or the situation bothers him.
"He's able to focus on what he has to do and usually does a pretty good job on it."
Really.
If Brady's best big-play friend was Branch, his most reliable connection was Givens, who caught five balls, one more crucial than the next. It was Givens' 18-yard catch, to which a 15-yard personal foul call against Clark Haggans was attached, that moved the ball to the Pittsburgh 25 after the Steelers had closed to within 24-10. When Dillon ripped a simple off-tackle for 25 yards and a score on the next play, everything that happened afterward was mostly an exercise in wishful thinking for those among the 65,242 who hadn't already left.
Five hours before that, on the sidewalk outside Heinz Field, stadium personnel were making this announcement: "We apologize, but some of the locks on the gates are frozen."
Would those be the locks on the gates that keep Bill Cowher's team out of the Super Bowl? Just askin'.
(PG sports columnist Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.)
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