Jets visit Pittsburgh with mouths shut wary of Steelers proud NFL tradition, six Super Bowls

By Mike Lupica
The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
Friday, January 21st 2011, 4:00 AM


This isn't about a rivalry between the Jets and the Patriots that was treated like the Yankees-Red Sox last week, and thus overblown the way just about everything else was. It isn't "personal" this time between Rex Ryan and the other coach, whatever that means. The only real playoff history between the Jets and Steelers is because of a heartbreak loss for the Jets one time, but really, don't the Jets have one of those with everybody?

There is still a ton of history to this AFC Championship Game, because of the Steelers, as much history as there is in professional football in this country. It is the kind the Giants have in the NFL, just with twice as many Super Bowls. The Jets have been around since 1960. The Steelers played their first game against the Giants in 1933.

"As rich a history as there is," Rex Ryan says of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Steelers are the Rooneys the way the Giants, half of the Giants anyway, are still the Maras. The Steelers are three head coaches in the last four decades: Chuck Noll, the most underrated and under-discussed great coach in football history, and Bill Cowher and now Mike Tomlin. We really are talking about the aristocracy of the sport, even if the original seed money for the Steelers from old Art Rooney came after some longshot winners at Saratoga.

You don't go into Pittsburgh trash-talking the Steelers, or calling people names. You don't turn this one into the WWE. It hasn't been such a bad thing this week, the Jets having a sense of where they will be on Sunday, whom they are up against. And that means the varsity. They know all about Sundays like this in Pittsburgh.

These are the Steelers, four Super Bowl victories in six years in the 1970s, now two more in the last five years. Terry Bradshaw was the quarterback for the first four Super Bowls wins, Ben Roethlisberger has been the quarterback for the last two.

Somehow, even with the Super Bowl resumes of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, there was the idea last week, from so many Jets players last week, that they didn't respect the Patriots. They were still angry about the 45-3 beat-down the Patriots gave them the first Monday in December, and seemed hellbent on proving it was a fluke, which they sure did.

They haven't talked about the Steelers that way.

"I don't think we need a cause," Nick Mangold said.

"This is the way football is meant to be played," Ryan said. "Roll the clock back 30 years, that's the kind of game it's going to be."

It is the kind of game we have always gotten from the Steelers in the Super Bowl era of the NFL. It is Bradshaw and Swann and Stallworth and Franco Harris and Mean Joe Greene and Jack Lambert. It is the Steel Curtain defense. It is the kind of game they used to play against the Oakland Raiders especially, and the kind of games - "triple chin-strap games," as Rex Ryan said on Wednesday - the Steelers have been playing against the Baltimore Ravens for years.

It doesn't mean that the Steelers are more noble or pure than anybody else trying to win a championship in their league. Everybody knows the trouble Roethlisberger has been in because of his behavior with women in the past. Everybody knows that Santonio Holmes, who made the greatest game-winning catch in the history of all NFL championship games against the Cardinals in the Super Bowl, wouldn't be a Jet if his off-field behavior didn't finally punch his ticket out of Pittsburgh.

Tell me another time when two central figures in a game that ends a conference season - Roethlisberger and Holmes - both started that season suspended. They both did. Both ends of that catch in Tampa against the Cardinals.

It doesn't change the way the Steelers came back in that game, doesn't change the hard game of football they always play, and have always played, win or lose. You better believe James Harrison, the best they've got now on defense, kept getting fined this season for some of the bad hits he put on people.

But the Jets still beat the Pittsburgh at Heinz Field in December. They ran the ball just enough, got a kick return, got a safety, some big punts from Steve Weatherford. Got lucky when the refs missed an obvious pass interference late in the game. When they had to knock down two Roethlisberger passes in the end zone to preserve the victory, the Jets did that. They respect the Steelers but don't go to Pittsburgh afraid.

"You don't make too much of that game, but it is good to have that film to look at," Mike DeVito, the Jets' defensive end, said the other day. "It's good to have the memory of having gone up against these guys, knowing you can expect the same kind of offense. Knowing what to expect, period."

Then DeVito talked about Roethisberger, how tough he is in the pocket, how tough he is to bring down, how he almost acts insulted to take a sack.

"With (Roethlisberger)," DeVito said, "it's almost like the play is only beginning the first time you hit him. He's one of those guys who gets better when he gets out of the pocket."

Then DeVito said: "If you get a chance to grab him, you better bring him down."

Roethlisberger knows how to win the kind of game that gets you to the Super Bowl. So does his team. We find out on Sunday if these Jets do, if they can go into Pittsburgh and take a Sunday like this off the Pittsburgh Steelers.