A striking December sun splashed across the Steelers' South Side fields Friday afternoon, and the din, somehow, was almost a mano a mano match for it. The adjacent rail line rattled and rumbled with the passing CSX freight train. The construction workers atop a still-skeletal office complex being built across those tracks hacked and pounded, whirred and clattered. And because all of that apparently wasn't enough to envision how Heinz Field might erupt Sunday night, the young student the team employs to pump recorded crowd noise into practices was blaring four megaphone-sized speakers at 110 decibels squarely in the direction of the athletes.
"Red zone!"
That was Ramon Foster. Still can't believe I could hear him from 50 yards away.
"Red zone now! Red! Red! RED!"
The big man's got quite the big voice, suffice it to say, and it only got bigger as the Steelers' first-team offense strode closer to the goal line. At this point, the ball had just touched the 20.
"Red zone! Red! Red!" came more calls from around the field, then even more after a Le'Veon Bell sprint up the middle pushed them a few yards closer.
And finally, when Ben Roethlisberger rifled the ball to Antonio Brown on a slick slant pattern, it became a crescendo. Even Mike Tomlin piped up.
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