Thursday, October 13, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
There in the roiling din of Qualcomm Stadium the other night, with the clock running out and the red eyes of a football-jonesing nation awaiting the verdict on some 208 minutes of ultra-violent programming, the brand of elemental football from which the NFL had evolved long ago was suddenly alive again in its purest form.
The game's leading coaches have long since rethought and redirected the game's basic physics, just as the NFL's implied contract with America's insatiable, expanding entertainment demands severely have devalued the rough beauty of the basic off-tackle plunge.
You can't sell video games on three yards and a cloud of pixels.
But, sometimes, the elaborate geometric calculus that conceives and sustains a game plan makes itself irrelevant in the crucial, final moments. There is a clearing away of the game's complexities, and there, in that pristine clearing, stands Jerome Bettis.
"That's a luxury," Bill Cowher said. "That's what you'd like to have in an ideal world. The one thing I knew when we were handing the ball off to him -- it would not be a negative play. On one of the third downs, a [San Diego Chargers defender] got into the backfield, and he still got two yards."
Two yards?
The editing suite software of every highlight show in America has its digital trash bin choked with 2-yard runs, even in those situations where two yards seem like two miles. America scoffs at two yards, just as some fools dismiss the 33-year-old Bettis as a rusting anachronism.
"Write this down, put this in there," Duce Staley barked as Bettis accommodated a writer yesterday. "Jerome is going to play six more years. Got it? Duce said six more years."
Done. But before we project the offensive politics of, say, the 2011 Steelers, let's focus on this question. How many athletes can do what Bettis did Monday night? How many running backs can be put in an offensive formation in which he is the only option and still get the two or three or four yards every defender expends every ounce of energy to prevent him from getting?
Second-and-goal from the San Diego 1. Up front, everyone tight, including third tackle Barrett Brooks, a formation that forms essentially a human can-opener. Everyone on defense, everyone on both sidelines, all 68,537 in the seats, every last couch coach knowing what's coming.
Bettis is coming.
A giant knot of hyper-muscled humanity shifts almost imperceptibly as No. 36 disappears into it. One yard. Touchdown. Steelers 14, Chargers 0.
That's a yard Willie Parker doesn't get, a yard Verron Haynes wouldn't be asked to get, a yard even Duce might not get. That's a pure Jerome moment.
"People were telling me that the Monday Night Football show had some interesting stat on that," Bettis was saying after practice yesterday. "Something like 77 percent of third-and-1's I've converted. In my career."
Frequency is great. Timing is better.
For some real resistance, put the Chargers ahead by a point, 4:42 on the clock, 62 yards between their goal line and the Steelers. Third-and-1 at the Pittsburgh 47, and again everybody knows it.
Bettis is coming.
Two yards. Sticks move. Clock runs.
Second-and-6 from the San Diego 47. Bettis straight ahead. Five yards. Third-and-1 from the San Diego 42, and everyone knows it again.
Bettis is coming.
Four yards. Sticks move. Clock runs.
Second-and-1 from the San Diego 29.
Bettis off tackle. Two yards. Sticks move. Clock runs.
"I've had plenty of games like that, but it's just that it's been so long since I had so many plays like that toward the end of the game," Bettis said. "It's not really like you have no options there. I know everybody knows what's coming and it's up to them to stop me, but, in that formation we have two tackles on one side and two tight ends on the other. It's up to the defense to figure out which side to focus on.
"I went to the two-tackle side on the touchdown and just cut it back."
The defense could put 20 people on the field in these situations, and its chances of stopping Bettis from doing something positive still would be dubious.
"I just remind myself I'm an inside runner," Bettis said about accepting the ball in these battering-ram situations. "I know about cracks and crevices and soft spots and defensive guys who might not have good position on you because of the blocks. I know if a guy comes free I need to get skinny and find a way to use his momentum against him."
This is the kind of thing that maybe comes with nearly 3,400 carries, but it just as likely comes with having a heart like a Clydesdale.
Looking at a 44-yard field goal with 57 seconds left, Cowher wanted about 50 seconds off that clock and five more yards out of an increasingly desperate San Diego defense.
Can-opener formation. Bettis for two. One more time. Bettis for three. Clock down to 0:10. Jeff Reed's 40-yard field goal wins it.
You see what Bettis does, what Bettis means, and you're slapped with a clear understanding of what moved Hines Ward to tears last January when the Steelers could not put Jerome Bettis in a Super Bowl.
(Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.)
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