Gene Collier: Steelers get their kicks in every shape and size

Monday, December 19, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

MINNEAPOLIS -- In the minutes after Ben Roethlisberger executed his frat-boy-off-a-pool deck dive into the Minnesota end zone for the game's only touchdown, Jeff Reed popped up the kickoff, watched it fall near the 30 and took a track toward the Steelers' sideline that seemed prudently designed to take him as far as possible from Bill Cowher.

Cowher turned to find his kicker, the likelihood of a spittle shower and a verbal thunderstorm at about 90 percent, but, instead, he offered only a knowing nod and the good-job body language kickers crave from their head coach.

Something was afoot, and, on a day when there were more penalties than points, when neither team had a running back gain 85 yards or a receiver manage 60, the Steelers won as much on Jeff Reed's foot and Chris Gardocki's foot as anything, and Cowher's blueprint for the kicking game soon would be exposed as critical.

"At No. 4 in the NFL and No. 1 in the AFC, Koren Robinson is a special returner," Cowher said after his club smuggled an inelegant, 18-3 victory out of the Metrodome yesterday. "We didn't want to give them a big play to get back in it. Jeff did a great job today. Chris did a great job. We were just trying to disrupt their timing."

But they disrupted plenty more with a series of wildly varied kickoffs and monstrously effective punts, and, if Kimo von Oelhoffen is blocking a field goal and Antwaan Randle El is fleeing 72 yards down the far sideline on a punt return on the same workday, you're getting the kind of special teams play and vastly superior field-position politics that separate playoff teams from Norsemen pretenders.

Cowher didn't mind Reed's short kick at all, as it fell to running back Ciatrick Fason at the 27 and meant the Vikings would start that possession at the 31, but to start the second half, Reed went back to the deep kickoff, with Robinson quickly reminding the Steelers why you don't do that.
He ripped off a 43-yard return to the 46 that should have been a catalyst for a scoring drive (von Oelhoffen's field-goal block snuffed it). That's why, after Reed's second field goal put Pittsburgh ahead, 13-3, on the next possession, Cowher went back to the bloop kickoff and got the result that virtually vacuum-sealed his team's ninth win.

Robinson lined up inside the 5, but Reed lofted it toward the ceiling high above the 30. Robinson raced forward, looking frantically for Reed's kick against the dull gray man-made sky. Fason was parked under it, and the little collision between two Vikings and one football left the pig on the faded Minnesota carpet, where Steelers' special-teamer Tyrone Carter jumped on it.
"When you do a bloop kick, a lot of times someone who isn't used to catching the ball like that will have to catch it," Carter said. "He wasn't used to that."

Carter's recovery set up Reed's third field goal, the one that made it 16-3, and, while that 26-yarder flew into Steelers history as the one that lifted Reed past John Stallworth on the club's all-time scoring list, the 13-point cushion it established virtually guaranteed an end to Minnesota's six-game winning streak. In his head-coaching career, Cowher's teams have had a lead of 11 or more points exactly 100 times. They have lost once.

"I was trying to put it a little bit outside the numbers, but I didn't want to take a chance on it going out of bounds," said Reed. "I got good hang time on it."

The Steelers went into another must-win afternoon with every confidence that Reed could rescue an offense that again came up a little skittish in a domed setting. Asked what his indoor range was yesterday, Reed said he'd made a 57-yarder in the warm-ups.

"Fifty-nine," Roethlisberger corrected from the next locker. "I saw Jeff hit one from 59."

But, on a Minneapolis afternoon where the outside temperature was a blood-freezing three degrees, no one in black & gold seemed happier to be inside than Gardocki, who made the field-position issue his personal parlor game. He punted 47 yards to the Vikings' 17, 58 yards to the 8, 49 yards to the 36, 48 yards to the 2, 27 yards to the 14, and 53 yards to the five.
"Inside is good," he said.

Inside the opponent's 20 is even better, and Gardocki dropped it in there four times. The one that Chidi Iwuoma flopped on at the 2 led directly to a safety when Larry Foote and Joey Porter drilled Michael Bennett a yard deep in the end zone on the very next play.

"This game was about field position, and we knew going into it that we didn't want them to have good field position," said Vikes' defensive end Lance Johnstone. "That's our biggest disappointment."

The bigger one will come when Minnesota fails to make the playoffs in the dreadful NFC North, but the Vikings can save themselves a lot of what-if neurosis by realizing that the Steelers thumped them from one end of the roster to the other.

(Post-Gazette sports columnist Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.)