Interesting to look back & see all the good fortune that NE needed to start their dynasty.

I know a similar look back at the other SB wins would be the same.

During Bill Belichick’s tenure with the Browns, he had been “owned” by Bill Cowher and the Steelers. A reversal of fortune was borne this fateful day at Heinz.

Cowher erred significantly on the Troy Brown punt return to the house. Belichick, ever the diligent peruser of film, knew that Troy Edwards habitually ran out of bounds while covering punts. He alerted the officials to this practice pre-game, and his thoroughness as a coach paid off, big-time, in the game’s first quarter.

Cowher, either didn’t know what his own player did on punt coverage…or…knew and did nothing about it. Combine this slovenly approach to coaching with two more errors, one mental, one physical, and the Pats were staked to a lead that they would never relinquish. Josh Miller, so taken with bitching about the placement of the ball, after the penalty (in the middle of the field rather than on the hash, or vice-versa) that he kicked poorly, and John-boy Fiala, missing the tackle at the point of the catch, provided the other two pieces to the Troika of Failure on this play. For the 2nd consecutive playoff game, the Steelers had surrendered a punt return for a touchdown.

The Pats, through Belichick, lined up a defensive end over Jerame Tuman, and kicked his ass all day long. The Steelers ground game did nothing. Kordell was the leading rusher; Bettis had 8 yards on 9 carries.

This is the genius of Bill Belichick, and as much as I despise the Patriots, his players know that he has them exceedingly well-prepared going into battle. I know, I know….he cheats. I’m of the mind that Belichick looks for any edge he can find, Nixonian in that regard, and his filming defensive signals really never gained him much an advantage.

My lasting image from this game though, as I flew back to NH among football’s most undeserving fandom, the New England Patriots fan, is that of Joey Porter having a Drew Bledsoe swing pass in both of his hands in the 4th quarter, with 20 yards of open field in front of him to the goal line, but the ball clanged off his facemask, and fell harmlessly to earth.

Oh….this one is #2 heartbreak in my book. Steelers were 11-point favorites. Once again, no way we could lose.

Good post swissvale,

A few other things that I remember or thought:

- Special teams were a problem all season.

- Bettis was having a great season that year until he got hurt against Minnesota. The AFCCG was his first game back. I don’t know if Bettis was just not healthy or if NE was well game planned to stop him (I tend to think that Bettis was not 100%), but regardless, I thought that Zereoue was far more effective that day, mostly because he was a dual threat due to his receiving abilities. If Cowher had turned to Amos earlier in the game, who knows?

- This game also cemented my opinion of Stewart. I had been a patient Stewart supporter until that game. I remember seeing him take his helmet off in frustration at the end of the game and tossing it angrily after he couldn’t lead the team to a tying td. At that time I thought that the Steelers would never win a SB with him starting.

- NE pulled off quite a trifecta that season. I thought they had little chance against the Raiders. They won. I thought they had even less of a chance against Pittsburgh on the road. They won. And I thought they had zero chance against the Rams in the Super Bowl in a game that was being played on artificial turf in a dome. They won again.

- Normally, it’s a good thing if you knock out the opposing starting qb. I’m not so sure in this case. Brady was essentially a rookie and was playing in his first AFCCG. I thought Bledsoe was more dangerous.

- 2001 was a great season. Not much was expected of the Steelers coming into that season, and especially after the season opening loss at Jacksonville. However, the 2001 AFCCG loss really made me view Cowher in a different light. This was at least the 3rd time that Cowher’s teams had laid an egg in the playoffs as a heavy favorite. In my eyes, the first two times were the 94 AFCCG and the 95 AFCCG. I know we won the 95 AFCCG, but the Steelers were lucky to win that game and were facing a Colts team that was decimated with injuries and should have been overmatched. Belichick has proven to be a great coach and Brady a great qb, but the Steelers should have won this game handily.

Cowher was not a perfectionist as a coach. Two things he never attempted to improve on while he was a steeler was special teams and pass defense. We were always exposed by the pass and our special teams were always suspect. Cowher never thought it enough to go and try to fix those two things. But then again he never was an X’s and O’s guys. But he always had good coordinators which shows that he was a good coach, part of being a leader is knowing your weaknesses. I’m just happy now tomlin has came in and fixed both problems and the level of expectations has not decline with the other areas. Can’t wait till robo kicker is back.

During the Cowher reign, I would advocate for things I knew were stupid. For instance, our kick coverage was so bad, I would advocate for sending kickoffs out of bounds.

I always suspected, though in the bottom of my heart I know this to be false, that Cowher’s “we’re going to do what we do” mantra was code for him not wanting to work hard enough to really determine the most effective way to attack respective opponents.

One of the nice things about last year, frequenting various Steeler websites, was seeing a fandom sometimes up in arms about this team being un-Steeler like, in terms of winning without having a great rushing attack. Last year’s team won though, by each week, doing what it had to do. THAT was the Steeler “personality” of 2008.

This is the only Steelers loss in the playoffs where I was actually depressed for about a week after the game. That didn’t even happen when the Cowboys beat the Steelers in the Super Bowl. Geez, the special teams had sucked all year and Cowher did nothing about it. And it cost them big time in this game with two touchdowns given up.

One of the big differences between Cowher and Tomlin is that Tomlin has paid more than lip service to special teams during his first two years. Cowher never liked to use starters on special teams where Tomlin said during his introductory press conference that special teams was an “all hands on deck” mentality. The Steelers have enough depth this year on its units that it might not have to use starters this year, but that was only after the team brought in several young players in that area that could get it done. I’m hoping that a backup lineman will practice some long-snapping during training camp, also.

Wallace and Burnett could put a lot of oommpphh back into the team’s returns this year. I can’t wait to see the Tank decleat someone on a return this year.

This loss hurt me from a couple of different perspectives. I was the manager of an office with about 25 employees. 99.5 percent of our group were die hard Black & Gold supporters. My supervising office which I had daily contact with was in Springfield MA. Get the Picture? Man it was hard to go to work for a couple of weeks. I suffered! If I remember correctly The Bus took a shot before this game, but whoever gave him the shot missed the point of injection. He was virtually ineffective. This loss led to my final condemnation of Cowher. His inattention to improve STs play and his continued inability to win the big game put him in my doghouse in which he remained until SB XL. The ’06 season put him back there without the possibility of parole. I was happy he retired.
I rank this game even with the 1994 loss.

How’s this for the dif in special team approaches.
Cowher was reluctant to play starters on special teams, whereas after the game, I said to a friend about the Pats second special teams touchdown, "What the f*** was Troy Brown doing on the field goal block team??

Telling you, I would’ve been even more of a nervous wreck if it were a Cowher-coached team kicking off with 35 sec left in the SB, kicking it deep.

Oh….comments on above posts. Your Boston story reminds me of a tale told by a Cleveland Browns fan friend of mine who was beign harassed in the mens room at foxboro. A big Pats fan came to his rescue by saying, "Watch this, and broke into ‘Yankess suck,’ and the mens room crowd immediately switched their focus.

The Boston fan will always, always, always care a whole lot more about doing in the New York Yankees than anything that goes on at Foxboro.

Oh….slight point of correction. JB took the misplaced needle the previous week agains the Ravens…..meant that his appearance in the AFCCG was his first action in 7 weeks.

Shocked that this didn’t make at least the top three. This game was a waking nightmare almost from the first play. Four turnovers and two special teams TDs allowed at home in a CCG.

We can probably guess what the top four on this list will be and I already disagree. The 95 Cowboys and 05 Patriots were great teams and while those games hurt it was no disgrace to lose to those teams.

The 2001 Pats didn’t measure up to the PS on talent, but they won on superior coaching and preparedness and that hurt.

This game has my vote as the worst PS loss of all-time.

Could’ve had Jevon Kearse…..I agree, ‘94-#1, ’01-#2. That said, as suggested by MaryRose, in the eye of the beholder. Some would argue that by defnition, our lone SB loss has to be the biggest heartbreak ever. Others have argued for the ’04 AFCCG, capping the best regular season in Steeler history. Personally, I wasnt’ real confident going into that game…..two teams going in very different directions based on the previous week’s contest.

Other two remaining clearly are the ‘82 Tournament first rounder (which I didn’t have a chance to actually see as there were a pair of AFC games broadcast at the same time, we got the Jets here in New England), and the ‘72 AFCCG…..for which my ass was in the house, and was pretty damn heartbreaking, actually….particulary when viewed in the context of the rest of that fateful New Year’s Eve. Getting ahead of the story….sorry.

Is this going to be like the mock draft on this site where I invest my time reading the whole thread and then we quit at number two?

…of the games i’ve seen since i really began to watch the steelers in 1994. this just hurt so much since special teams led to 14 pts for the pats & 3 less pts for us, meanwhile we only lost by 7.

i wouldnt go as far as to imply divine intervention had a role in the pats journey in the playoffs, when it should just be said they were the better team…special teams are the third part of a team a lot of ppl forget about.

lets not forget burress deserves his share of blame by killing our first drive in the 4th quarter. we were driving, 9 minutes left, the ball was on their 43 yardline, 2nd & 1. he got called for pass interference (remember his history of walking the line with those penalties) to make it 2nd and 11 and we couldnt pick up the first down. kordell didnt get another opportunity until 4:20 left in the game.

i dont blame kordell for the two ints and us not being able to come back. of course it was his fault for the two ints (or at least i think) but he was trying to accomplish something our team struggled with the entire season. forcing the steelers to make a big comeback was practically a death sentence. and by that point in kordell’s career, we knew he wasn’t nor would be a HOF playmaker like big ben is for us now.

This game broke my heart. It started my hatred of the Patriots as well. How in the hell did we lose that game? It still boggles my mind. I do like the write up though. It invokes those 90’s movies “Angel’s in the Outfield.”

I thought it was hilarious watching everyone cry in their towels….you fools need to remember YOU WOULD’VE GOTTEN DESTROYED BY THE RAMS

PATRIOT REIGN WILL RE-START IN 2009

This was an excrutiating game. Before you knew it we were behind by a couple of scores and that sinking feeling started to creep in. We were falling behind big against a team we were supposed to be beating, so every play took on this added significance, and Jerome just kept getting stuffed in the backfield. You just couldn’t relax. Every time we looked like we were going to get back in it, something bad happened, like the punt return, or an interception and the stadium would go silent. It was like, ‘Is this really happening?’. The Patriots weren’t dominating the game by any means and they were ahead big. The Steelers are supposed to be going to the Super Bowl and they’re going to lose this game. It was the most gut-wrenching Steelers game I have ever watched. There was no joy. Every time we scored, you couldn’t enjoy it because we were still behind, and it seemed like we were running out of time. Then to find out later that maybe the Patriots were stealing our signals or something. Hines Ward even said after the Spygate thing, that it seemed like the Patriots knew what was coming in that game. Oh, I really hate the Patriots. They cost us the Super Bowl that year, in my opinion. The Steelers were a superior team. Period. That loss was like a nightmare in which you can see your worst fear coming to get you and you can’t even run.

HATE THE patriot PUNKS. !!!!!!!!!