Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters
Last-Minute Drive Pushes Steelers to Sixth Title
TAMPA, Fla. — Few football franchises have so many great alumni who appear on the field to whip up the fans each time the team appears in the Super Bowl. But there was Lynn Swann, the great Pittsburgh Steelers receiver, a Terrible Towel in his hand, right before kickoff Sunday, just the way that Franco Harris, the great Steelers running back, had appeared three years ago in Detroit. Swann and Harris delivered Super Bowl titles as part of the Steelers’ dynasty a generation ago, and Swann was a subtle reminder that while the Arizona Cardinals were the team dusted with magic in these playoffs, the Steelers had history on their side.
That history got a few new heroes on Sunday night to stand beside Swann and Harris, Joe Greene and Jerome Bettis. After a frenetic finish, the Steelers won their sixth Super Bowl title — more than any team in the National Football League — not because of their defense, but because an oft-maligned offense allowed them to defeat the Arizona Cardinals, 27-23.
After the Steelers lost a lead they had held since after the first possession of the game and which once ballooned to 13 points, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and receiver Santonio Holmes connected for a 6-yard touchdown that Holmes grabbed as he was falling out of bounds behind three defenders.
The touchdown came with 35 seconds remaining and just two minutes after the Cardinals moved ahead on Larry Fitzgerald’s 64-yard touchdown reception. The victory capped a season that began with a question about whether the Rooney family would own the Steelers much longer, traveled through the league’s toughest schedule and concluded with the team’s chairman, Dan Rooney, holding the Lombardi Trophy, the Steelers’ second championship in four seasons, to add to a crowded trophy case.
“We’ll make room,” he said.
Rooney, the son of the team’s founder, Art Rooney, said he could not remember a Steelers game with such a memorable finish. That takes in an awful lot of great games, but for go-figure endings, this one stands alone.
The Steelers had reached the Super Bowl largely because of a defense that had been compared to the Steel Curtain unit that won the franchise’s first four Super Bowls in the 1970s. For most of the game, this defense had played up to billing, thwarting one of the N.F.L.’s most explosive offenses and removing the dynamic Fitzgerald almost entirely from the Cardinals’ game plan.
And it was the defense that had given the Steelers a 10-point advantage when the Cardinals were threatening to sneak into halftime with a lead despite being dominated in the first half. Linebacker James Harrison, the N.F.L.’s defensive player of the year, intercepted Kurt Warner’s pass at the goal line and rumbled 100 yards for a touchdown as the final seconds of the half ticked away. He scored as time ran out on the longest play in Super Bowl history, swinging what had seemed a practically certain 4-point Cardinals lead into a 10-point edge for the Steelers.
Dick LeBeau, the Steelers’ defensive coordinator, who is in his 50th year of pro football, called it the greatest defensive play in the 43 Super Bowls.
But the Pittsburgh defense spent the night defending the deep play and, in the fourth quarter, Warner mined the open middle of the field on hurry-up drives. Fitzgerald, who had four 100-yard receiving games in the postseason, scored with a leap over a defender, Ike Taylor, for a 1-yard touchdown that cut the Pittsburgh lead to 20-14 midway through the fourth quarter.
Then the Steelers committed a mistake. Pinned deep in their own territory, center Justin Hartwig was called for holding in the end zone — an automatic safety — trimming the lead to 4.
The Steelers’ advantage didn’t last much longer. On the second play of the Cardinals’ next drive, Warner, who completed 31 of 43 passes for 377 yards, hit Fitzgerald short, in the middle of the field. Fitzgerald took one step beyond a scrum of defenders and was gone, sprinting so freely he watched himself score on the big screen in the stadium.
The Super Bowl crowd of 70,774, fiercely tilted toward the Steelers, fell silent. On the sideline, Coach Mike Tomlin was relieved that the Cardinals had not taken more time off the clock.
“This has been our story all year,” Tomlin said. “Steelers football is 60 minutes. It’s never going to be pretty.”
Roethlisberger was a disaster in his first Super Bowl in 2006 even as the Steelers won. Rattled by his own nerves, he completed 9 of 21 passes and threw 2 interceptions.
In this Super Bowl, Roethlisberger was calm enough to gather his offense before its final drive and remind the Steelers of the film study they had done all season. “I said, ‘It’s now or never, guys,’ ” Roethlisberger said. “ ‘You’ll be remembered forever if you do this.’ ”
All night, Roethlisberger, criticized this season for taking too many sacks and fumbling too many times, kept plays alive by scrambling out of trouble and dodging sacks, by leading two surprisingly easy drives to build a quick 10-point lead. On the Steelers’ final drive, he operated the no-huddle offense like the veteran he has become. In all, Roethlisberger completed 21 of 30 passes for 256 yards. Holmes, the game’s most valuable player, caught 9 passes for 131 yards.
Roethlisberger and Holmes connected for one pass of 14 yards, then another for 13 yards. Later, Roethlisberger scrambled for 4 yards and hit Holmes again for 40 yards. Finally, he found Holmes in the back corner of the end zone for the winner, Holmes dragging his feet inbounds while his body fell out.
“Oh my God, I don’t believe it,” Harrison said. “They won us the game. Our offense came through for us when we really needed it. We went out there and gave up a big touchdown, and our offense came through at the end.”
Not many people would have figured that if their defense gave way, the Steelers would still win. But even in Pittsburgh’s great 1970s years, the offense made enough plays to make the highlight reel and to get Harris’s Immaculate Reception immortalized in a statue that stands sentry at the Pittsburgh airport.
At the entrance to the Steelers’ offices, there is a room that houses the five Lombardi Trophies the franchise has already won. Players walk by them every day on their way to meetings, a daily reminder of the legend they can only hope to add to.
The Cardinals, in their very first Super Bowl, dispelled the gloom that had surrounded their franchise for years with this run. But in the final moments, the magic dust blew away, and it was the Steelers who added more luster to their glittering history.
“You are seconds away from my crying in the locker room and them being out here,” safety Troy Polamalu said. “That’s how amazing this game is.”
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