Monday, November 27, 2006
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
BALTIMORE -- The final score was 27-0, a margin of victory that is not unexpected when one of the best teams in the National Football League plays one of the worst.
And that's precisely what the Steelers are -- one of the worst teams in the NFL. That's not an opinion, it's a fact, and it's one borne out by their 4-7 record and their performance yesterday, a humiliating loss to the Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium.
There was a time when this Steelers team had us fooled. Through September, October and much of November, they were a mystery team. We couldn't figure out how the defending Super Bowl champs could play so well one week, so poorly the next. There was no explaining the avalanche of turnovers that kept costing them games. Surely, this would even out. Beyond doubt, they would rally to make a run at the playoffs.
But after 11 games, and most particularly after this most recent game, we know precisely what's wrong with the Steelers. They're not a mystery team at all. They just not very good.
"A pitiful performance," said coach Bill Cowher at the opening of his postgame news conference, and that summed it up to near-perfection.
"I accept full responsibility," Cowher continued. "They outplayed us, they outcoached us."
Really, no one should have been surprised by this outcome.
Overlooked in the euphoria of the comeback win against Cleveland last week was that the Steelers not only came close to losing to a hapless opponent but they were unable to run the ball against one of the worst run defenses in the NFL. If they had trouble competing with the Browns, how could they expect to compete with the Ravens, who are proving themselves to be one of the elite teams in the NFL?
No one should look at this result and consider it a by-product of a magnificent Baltimore defense. Although great linebacker Ray Lewis is still around, this Ravens' defense is not in the same class with the one that won Super Bowl XXXV. In their five games previous to this one, the Ravens held only one opponent to fewer than 20 points. This shutout was, in fact, the equal responsibility of a very good Baltimore defense and a very poor Steelers offense. The Steelers have been held without a touchdown in seven of the past eight quarters.
Once again, the Steelers gave up early on the run. Willie Parker carried the ball only 10 times for 22 yards.
It has become more clear with almost every game that offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt is losing confidence in Parker, and that's understandable. Although Parker gives the Steelers the big-play back they've never had, he doesn't give them the ball-control runner that has been the key to the team's success in the Cowher era.
With Parker pretty much out of the game -- six carries in the first half, four in the second -- the offense fell to Ben Roethlisberger, and the Ravens were relentless in hunting him down.
Roethlisberger was sacked nine times and intercepted twice. He completed 21 of 41 passes for 214 yards and had a miserable passer rating of 46.2. His fumble, while back to pass late in the third quarter, was picked up and returned 57 yards for a touchdown by linebacker Adalius Thomas.
That score, at 3:04 p.m., not only ended the game, it ended the season for the Steelers.
What had to be particularly galling to the Steelers was the way the Ravens dominated them by running the ball. Time and again in the first half, Baltimore backs Jamal Lewis and Ovie Mughelli punished Steelers tacklers with powerful hits that gained them extra yards and enabled them to control the game.
In the first half alone, Lewis bullied the Steelers for 61 yards on 13 carries and Mughelli 17 yards on three carries.
"That felt like old times," said Lewis, once one of the most feared backs in the NFL but now clearly in decline. "When the lanes open up like they did, it's just you and the safeties and you and the corners, so you have to deliver that punch and make it easier for the third and fourth quarter."
Steelers inside linebacker Larry Foote had never seen anything like it. "That wasn't Steelers football," he said. "One of those drives in the first half, the way they went down and scored, I've never been a part of that here."
But it was Steelers football yesterday. The team that answered the challenge every time for eight weeks last season, could not muster a decent effort when the season was expiring.
"We didn't show up today," Hines Ward said. "We had guys with their heads down. That's very uncharacteristic."
Ward was asked why, with so much at stake, could the team be so not ready to play.
"I can't speak for other guys," he said. "I don't know. That's why I took all the extra steps [to recuperate from an injury] because I wanted to play in this game. But we went out an laid an egg. We didn't show up. For what ever reason, they wanted it more than us."
(Bob Smizik can be reached at bsmizik@post-gazette.com. )
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