Obligatory Steeler Rant
As one who was born, bred, and deep-fried in the 'Burgh, it's incumbent on me to add my contribution about this Sunday's victory by the Steelers over the Indy Colts into the blog stew. This post was inspired by Kelly's post over at Paradoxes and Problems. Thanks for the inspiration, Kelly!

Kelly described it the most exciting game she'd ever seen, but I can't legitimately describe my experience in those same terms. For me, a game such as this can only be described as exciting when I don't have a vested interest in the outcome. This year's NCAA BCS bowl games fall into that category for me, but only because I could genuinely appreciate fine play from either team, despite my individual preference. I was rooting for Penn State and West Virginia, who won, and Notre Dame and USC, who lost. The games where 'my team' lost where nonetheless compelling to watch. Not so with this week's Steelers' game. Words fail to describe the gut-wrenching experience of having endured the final five or six minutes of clock time, where defeat seemed to be snatched from the jaws of victory at least three times before one of the most accurate place kickers in the game pushed his game-tying attempt sideways to seal our advance to the conference championship game in Denver. It was neither fun nor exciting for me to contemplate another culmination of the NFL season with my beloved team sent home early with their tails between their legs.

Kelly also made the observation that the game put on display the worst sort of officiating ineptitude ever seen in the NFL playoffs. Right on target there. Considering that the lead official had to first pull his head out of his ass before he put it under the replay hood to review the Troy Polamalu interception, I'm guessing his vision might have been a bit blurred from the remains of his previous day's meals, to the point where his ability to see and think clearly were undeniably impaired.

Finally, I must continue to beat the drum in protest against the tendency of Pittsburghers to overestimate the coaching prowess of Crafton's own William Laird Cowher. There are some who insist on enshrining Coach Cowher into the pantheon of the football gods. While I believe firmly, and have stated so on this blog, that he will most likely end up in the Hall of Fame, history has given me no reason to utter his name in the same breath with legendary names like Lombardi, Brown, Halas, Shula, Landry, Noll, Walsh, Gibbs, Parcells, Johnson, and Bellichick. All of these men have a sustained history of winning in the NFL, like Cowher, but they also have won multiple league championships. Until Cowher puts at least two Super Rings on his fingers, he is -- and will remain -- a second-tier coach.

While those who must love the man or feel dirty and ashamed in order to be true fans of the Black and Gold, this label is far from a bad thing. There are plenty of current and future Hall of Fame head coaches with whom Bill Cowher can comfortably be named. Ditka, Holmgren, Dungy, Gruden, Switzer, and George Allen, to name but a few. Of course, with the exception of the honorable Messrs Dungy and Allen, all of these guys have also won a Super Bowl.

To put this past weekend's game into perspective, the better team on the field won. The coaching contribution was made well before kickoff. Great game plan, on both sides of the ball. No doubt. But what makes a coach a football 'god' is not their ability to game plan. Every coach in the NFL does that, or their careers have the same lifespan as a fruit fly. Sorry to have to continue to say this, but the reason why coaching greatness continues to elude Cowher is his historic inability to adapt to adversity in MID-GAME and successfully match wits with the greatest minds in the game.

Tony Dungy, as much as I love the guy, is also stuck with Cowher on the second tier of NFL coaches. I challenge anyone to name another coach in the past 15 years who has put their teams into the playoffs as many times as either of these two, yet has not won a Super Bowl. You can't, because there are none. Yet both have the same problem. Get up early on either of these teams, and victory is almost guaranteed. That's what happened here. Before Peyton Manning had completed a single pass, Big Ben had thrown two TD's, primarily because for once, Cowher didn't come and do what he always does -- and what Dungy and his staff undoubtedly expected. For that fact, he gets a tremendous attaboy from me for doing the one thing he needed to do to defuse the Indy offensive juggernaut. Get a big lead early and force Manning to step up to the plate and be a true great. Which, at this point in his career, he is not.

The fact that the Steelers only managed one other score for the rest of the game is a testimony to what I intensely dislike about Coach Cowher. He retreated into a conservative style to try and protect the lead, depending on his defense and time of possession to clinch the deal. Add to that an inexplicable, borderline psychotic tendency to greenlight risky play calls -- such as onside kicks to open the second half when your defense has been containing the opposition or running the Bus anywhere but straight up the gut on first and goal with less than two minutes to go, a 3-point lead, and Indy holding all 3 of it's timeouts -- that it makes you wonder if there's a bottle of unused medication laying around somewhere in the Cowher home.

And it almost cost us the game.

Never mind the horrible calls by the officials. Forget about the fact that the early defensive game plan kept Manning from getting comfortable until near the end of the first half. Don't even think about how 'uncharacteristic' Jerome Bettis' fumble on the goal line was, since that would be ignoring the fact that he did the same thing in the championship game against New England last year. Forget about all of that.

The difference between the Steelers teams of Bill Cowher and those of Chuck Noll's four championship teams of the 1970's is that when Noll and his staff found an opponent's weakness, they exploited it over and over again, pounding the opposition into a demoralized surrender, while Cowher tries to get an early lead and hang on, refusing to let his players gain confidence and strength by continuing to pulverize their opponents. What happened to Heath Miller over the middle? In the Cowher formula, an unnecessary risk with a two-score lead. Under Noll? Three more touchdowns and Peyton Manning crying openly while lying on his back.

While I desperately hope that Cowher gets lucky again with his opening game plan this Sunday at Invesco Field and builds a big lead early, he's facing a whole different animal in Mike Shanahan. Shanahan is at the top of the waiting list to join the pantheon to which the loyal, but misguided 'Burgh fans have already mistakenly enshrined Cowher. A quick comparison of Shanahan's record to Cowher's reveals that he is 26 regular season wins short of Cowher in 3 less seasons, making him pretty much as successful. Of course, then there's the two Super Bowl rings he gets to wear. In his eleven seasons running the Bronco's ship, he's produced one thousand-yard rusher after another. Running backs who were virtual unknowns before taking their stances behind one of the most successful run blocking schemes in the history of the game. Hell, I think I could rush for a thousand yards in that offense. This year, Denver came about 50 yards from producing TWO thousand-yard rushers, something that has only been done three other times, and NEVER by two backs who never appear on the field at the same time, both being tailbacks, whereas the other three combos have had one being the tailback and the other being a fullback.

That is the kind of record, my chipped, chopped, fellow Pittsburghers, of an NFL coaching legend.

Of course, Shanahan is being denied his godhood status by virtue of the fact that John Elway was his quarterback when the Super Bowls were won, and the failure in recent years to get beyond the Colts. Never mind that before Mike Shanahan showed up, John Elway was the losing quarterback in three Super Bowls, the same number as Fran Tarkento and one less than poster child for Super Bowl futility, Jim Kelly. Without Mike Shanahan, Elway may now be holding that dubious honor, assuming he had still appeared in five Super Bowls.

So this weekend is a pivotal one for both coaches. Will Shanahan cement his place in the NFL Olympus, or will Cowher take the first step to finally earning what so many of us here in the Steel City understandably want to give him?

Stay tuned, and pray that Bill finally decides to win and not just survive.

Oh, just to cement my own conception of myself as a football pundit, check out http://blogs.foxsports.com/Carnac/NFL_Bill_Cowher_Steelers_Jimmy_Johnson_Cowboys_William_Shakespeare_Henry_V.
- posted by The Drake @ 12:03 PM