The Steelers' history over the past half-century is rich to the extreme that it's fair to ask which of two decades -- the 1990s, when they repeatedly challenged for Super Bowls, or the 2010s, when they dominated their division -- wrought the greatest disappointment.
I mean, think about it.
Want to see what a decade of disappointment looks like two hours up the Turnpike?
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Football-Reference.com[/caption]
Let's not insult anyone by having me point out which team that was.
That's not just disappointment. That's devastation. That's despondency. That's wondering why in the world you'd ever invest emotionally in sports, much less that team.
So yeah, it feels appropriate to offer some context before carrying through with Jeff Hartman's point-counterpoint challenge over the weekend. And if you missed Jeff's entry, this arose from a reader asking me in my Live Qs at 5 session Saturday exactly what's in the opening sentence above: Which was more disappointing, the 1990s or the just-completed 2010s? I immediately replied that it was the former, and Jeff, with whom I was speaking on a Zoom call, replied, in essence, that I was certifiable.
Hence, this.
I won't get into the 2010s. Again, Jeff did that, with no shortage of strong points.
But sorry, I'm going to battle here with an armada of Alfred Pupunu and the added artillery of years and years of being awfully close to recapturing the glory years of the 1970s, again and again and again, only to have it repeatedly rubbed in the Nation's collective faces.
I was there for the hard, inevitable fade of Chuck Noll in 1990-91, after two more seasons of 16-16 mediocrity prompted him to retire. And if that guy couldn't lead the Steelers back, the common wisdom went, no one could.
I was there for Bill Cowher's first six years, 1992-97 during which he won the division five times, finished second once, reached the AFC Championship Game three times ... and won not a damned thing at the end of any day. Two crushing losses in the AFC Championship, both at Three Rivers Stadium, along with Neil O'Donnell handing Super Bowl XXX to Larry Brown and the Cowboys. Cowher was that guy who could succeed Noll, but he couldn't finish, couldn't win the big one.
And after that last AFC Championship loss, to an aging John Elway elbowing across the goal line to carry the Broncos, there'd be two seasons of 13-19 that had Cowher's critics howling not about winning the big one but about winning any one.
Before I focus on the worst of all that, it's critical to grasp the broader setting here.
Noll's Super Steelers weren't just the greatest football team ever. They were Pittsburgh. They lifted our city at our lowest ebb. They defined us. They'd even become a parallel for ways to define the country. Well, things didn't get snap-of-the-finger better around here with four Lombardis. It took time. It took further pain. And there were times we really could've used another Lombardi to validate that old sentiment, the whole 'City of Champions' thing. But along came these perennial failures, pummeling us back to a new reality each winter.
Jeff wrote of all the talent the Steelers of the 2010s squandered, and he couldn't be more correct. On offense alone, it's criminal that the triumvirate of Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown and Le'Veon Bell only reached one AFC Championship. I'd never dispute that.
But the Steelers of the 1990s had some players, too: There were four Hall of Famers in Rod Woodson, one of the best the NFL's ever seen, as well as Jerome Bettis, Dermontti Dawson and Kevin Greene. That's a hell of a start, and it's not even mentioning Carnell Lake, Greg Lloyd, Eric Green, Barry Foster, Yancey Thigpen, Chad Brown and many more.
They achieved this:
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Football-Reference.com[/caption]
Sure, I'm leaving out the quarterback, and I hope that was noticed. Because I also know that the easy counter to my argument is pitting Roethlisberger against O'Donnell and/or Kordell Stewart. And it's a fair one. A franchise quarterback should raise expectations.
But here's where I differ on that specific element: Ben did win it all. Twice. Plenty. of his teammates in the 2010s won it all. They got to experience that, and so did their fans.
Not so in the 1990s. And if literal disappointment is the criteria here, it's be crazy to avoid the emotion of some of these scenes.
One in particular.
On Jan. 15, 1995, the Steelers faced the Chargers as hilarious 11-point favorites in an AFC Championship before 61,545 Towel-twirling maniacs at Three Rivers that should've been the one to end it all. Everyone in there knew it, too. I was among them, up in the press box. The atmosphere was unlike anything Heinz Field has ever seen or will ever see. An hour before kickoff, it was already a din. And that's because San Diego had no chance with fringe quarterback Stan Humphries against a man-eating defense, with one franchise that'd never been to a Super Bowl against another that held the trademark, and it only emboldened the environment.
In the first half, the Steelers outgained the Chargers, 229 yards to 46. They ran as many plays as the Chargers had yards. Humphries had completed one pass to a wide receiver. But the lead was only 10-3. And after that, a Foster fumble, a string of penalties, other miscues and -- of all things -- Humphries finding Pupunu, his middling tight end, for a 43-yard touchdown down the right sideline over a lagging Tim McKyer to take the stunning lead.
Even then, O'Donnell led the Steelers to the San Diego 3 for a last gasp that still somehow made it seem certain they'd prevail. But the Chargers' Dennis Gibson twice batted away passes in the end zone, the last of those on fourth down.
The full condensed game is below. Don't watch this:
Remember McKyer's reaction when it ended?
If you're old enough, you'll never forget it. Dude collapsed. Needed to be helped off the field. Could barely speak afterward.
There's disappointment, and then there's that. To this day, it's the worst loss in franchise history. Actually, all three mega-losses in the 1990s, each one of them, was uglier, more unsettling than any single loss in the 2010s.
Want to measure disappointment?
Check out that dude up there in the old box seats at Three Rivers. The AP photo at the top. That's always, always the gauge. And there was way more of that in the decade I'm describing.
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