The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
Monday, January 24th 2011
PITTSBURGH - There was none of the confetti that Rex Ryan had talked about all week, the confetti he said meant you had won the game that took you and your team to the Super Bowl.There was just all this Steelers noise now at Heinz Field, and the stage for the trophy presentation being rolled out, and this crazy, loud, barroom singing about the Super Bowl as Rex Ryan took the long walk past the stage and into next season. The singing was about somebody else's Super Bowl, again.
The play that finished the Jets for good was one more scramble from Big Ben Roethlisberger, third-and-six from the Jets side of the 50, the first play after the two-minute warning and the Jets out of timeouts. If the Jets could stop the Steelers here, then they would get the ball back, and have a chance to write one of the great football comebacks any team has ever had around here in a big football game.
One stop after being behind 24-0 with two minutes left in the first half. One stop after coming all the way back, against the Steelers in Pittsburgh, to 24-19 and giving them this improbable chance to make it to the first Jets Super Bowl since Namath. One stop, even after the Jets had shown you this truly pathetic goal-line offense in the fourth quarter when they really could have put the Steelers on the ropes.
One stop and maybe they could change all the bad history they had shown their fans in all games like this in the 42 years since Namath won it all.
One stop to get them one more game, a Super Bowl against the Packers in Arlington, Tex., two weeks from now.
But one last time on this night, even after the way they had come back, they could not stop Roethlisberger. He started this season on the suspended list because of gross misconduct - gross in all ways - with a drunken and underage co-ed in a club in Georgia. He has been a tremendous disappointment off the field for so much of his life. But he is a tremendous winner as a quarterback, two Super Bowl titles already and now working on three, 10-2 in the playoffs in his career.
The Jets got him out of the pocket again. David Harris was there. Some of the other tough, fast guys from Ryan's defense. They chased him toward the right sideline and maybe they could chase him out of bounds or make him throw it away and give Mark Sanchez, the kid, a chance to write a comeback story they would talk about forever in New York and Jersey, bring his team back from 24-0 and beat the Steelers 26-24 somehow, and take the Jets to the Super Bowl.
But getting Roethlisberger out of the pocket was just the start of the play. Again. He ran to his right and before he ran out of room at Heinz Field he looked down the field and saw a kid named Antonio Brown. He threw the kind of strike to Brown that big players throw in moments like this. Brown caught it. There was no way for the Jets to stop the clock now, no way for them to stop the Steelers from going to the eighth Super Bowl in the team's history.
"We needed a stop on third down," D'Brickashaw Ferguson of the Jets said in front of his locker. "We didn't get it. No timeouts. Game over."All around him, the season was being packed away for the Jets in what is always the same quiet of the losers' locker room on nights like this. LaDainian Tomlinson, who couldn't get a yard on the goal line when the Jets needed him to, the yard they had brought him here to get, was already dressed now, back to the room, as if trying to disappear into his locker.
There was this fire drill, and amateur play calling, when the Jets had the ball second-and-goal on the 1-yard line, still down only 24-10, plenty of time, having just driven the ball 80 yards and used up eight minutes of clock. But Sanchez couldn't hear the play being called and ran toward the sideline and then back and threw incomplete to Dustin Keller.
Third down from the 1-yard line. The Jets don't try to run the ball, they throw again. Sanchez nearly throws an interception to LaMarr Woodley. Fourth-and-goal. Still a chance. Now the Jets try to run the ball, finally. Tomlinson gets slam-dunked by Casey Hampton and Brett Keisel.
"We don't design plays to fail," Ryan would say later, but these plays sure didn't look as if they were designed to succeed, even though there was a safety on the next play, Roethlisberger fumbling the snap from center, the score 24-12 now.
The Jets would score one more touchdown with three minutes left, Sanchez to Jerricho Cotchery. But it was too late. They needed to stop Roethlisberger one last time. They could not. He keeps playing. The Jets do not. One yard short on the goal line. One stop short. No confetti for Rex, no T-shirts, no trophy, no hats. No Super Bowl. Just the long walk away from this game into next season. Again.
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