Sunday, January 06, 2008
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Peter Diana/Post-Gazette
Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger grimaces after he is intercepted for the third time late in the second quarter against the Jaguars. (vs. Jaguars 1/5/2008)
In an era when NFL coaches and personnel executives continue to scour the football earth for quarterbacks who can merely manage the game -- whatever that means -- what Ben Roethlisberger did to the game last night simply defied any kind of management methodology.
Alternative frantic mismanagement with sensational and even inspiring leadership, Big Ben wound up emotionally crushed when the music stopped, crushed to the degree that nothing in his 29 completions and 337 yards and two touchdowns, and four consecutive second-half scoring drives could console him.
"No one should blame anyone or anything other than myself for this," Roethlisberger said behind wet eyes 25 minutes after Jacksonville slipped past the Steelers, 31-29, in the wild-card round of the AFC playoffs. "I dug us too deep a hole and even though we came around in the second half, I'm ashamed of the way I played."
No one jumped up to protest.
With 6:21 to go in the game, it appeared as though Ben had outdone himself, and perhaps never had that common compliment been illustrated so literally.
With the Steelers on top, 29-28, No. 7 had outdone all the damage No. 7 had done in a rancid first half of careless throwing. He had outdone everything the Jacksonville Jaguars used to fill the fresh grave he had thrown himself and his team into in the first 30 minutes of the first home playoff game in Pittsburgh in nearly three years.
Because just as suddenly, the Pro Bowl quarterback righted himself, completing 17 of 23 second-half passes and leading four consecutive scoring drives after intermission. The Franchise erased an 18-point Jacksonville lead.
And still he lost.
PITTSBURGH - JANUARY 05: Ben Roethlisberger #7 of the Pittsburgh Steelers signals for a two-point conversion following a touchdown by Heath Miller #83 of the Steelers in the second half against the Jacksonville Jaguars during the AFC Wild Card game on January 5, 2008 at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Roethlisberger's fumble on the Steelers' final play let stand Josh Scobee's winning field goal, the one that made it 31-29. That's four turnovers by the quarterback, if you're screaming a home, four turnovers by a guy so many were screaming should have been the Steelers' MVP this season.
"He's a competitor," was about as much as Mike Tomlin would say when it ended. "There's a bunch of competitors in that room. We just fell short in terms of execution. You have to give credit to the Jaguars. They made one significant play more than we did."
Even in the miserable first half, there had been a flash of brilliance.
Roethlisberger would orchestrate a near-perfect, 10-play, 80-yard drive, but in those fast evaporating minutes -- five of 'em in the first quarter -- Roethlisberger might even have felt that this was his night.
Not really.
That opening drive 5 for 6 for 60 yards?
A mirage in the North Side mist.
The more telling symptom was his first throw of the night, a simple banana out to Hines Ward underneath Jacksonville's zone. Ben whipped it 10 feet over Ward's head, almost comically, had it not been the first pitch of the playoffs.
But that, not that crisp 5 for 6, was The Omen.
Three interceptions came off Roethlisberger's hand in the first half, a fourth barely averted when he tried to force a long out to Santonio Holmes between Rashean Mathis and Sammy Knight. That Mathis didn't catch it was one of the small miracles of the first 30 minutes, because he caught just about everything else Roethlisberger threw to his half of the lawn.
Of all the looming headaches Tomlin circumnavigated throughout his first week of playoff prep as a head coach, few if any posed a more difficult situation than Mathis.
"They played a little match-up football with Mathis regarding Santonio the first time," Tomlin said Wednesday. "We've got to try something there, whether it's Santonio or whoever, we have to recognize what Mathis is capable of doing as a shutdown corner."
Mathis offered a brutal reminder, shadowing Holmes so perfectly on a second-quarter slant that he needed only a quick step to take Ben's bullet from Santonio's hands and start down the sideline to his left. Sixty-three yards later, Mathis had snapped a 7-7 tie and put the Jaguars where most of the nation expected to find them last night, ahead.
The big, wet crowd had only begun to contemplate the implications of Mathis smelling blood when the fifth-year corner had another interception in his maw. Roethlisberger had rolled to his right on that one, finding nothing but Najeh Davenport floating deep on a broken route, though hardly alone.
Ben should have eaten it, but he alley-ooped a pass just enough that Mathis could come off of Holmes and drop directly into the ball's arc. Mathis got a nice return with his second pick as well, rumbling to the Steelers' 21, but he was ruled down by Davenport's incidental contact at the 46.
"The really frustrating thing was, of the three interceptions only one was a stupid throw," Roethlisberger said. "On the first, Mathis just made a great play, and on the third one, the defensive lineman just got in the way of the screen."
He hadn't thrown three picks in one performance since a year ago in November, when he did exactly that at Cleveland, then led a second-half comeback that sailed all the way to victory.
You shouldn't be able to get away with that twice. And he didn't.
Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com.
First published on January 6, 2008 at 12:45 am
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