Victory over Ravens would be a Great Christmas present for Steelers
By Jim O’Brien
It looks like it will all come down to the 15th game of a 16-game NFL schedule for the Steelers.
If they can perform like they did in the second half of their 24-20 hard-fought victory over the Bengals in Cincinnati last Sunday, they surely will win the AFC North Division crown and gain an automatic bid to the Super Bowl playoffs. It would be a great way to celebrate Christmas. They have to beat the Baltimore Ravens here this Sunday.
I am assuming, of course, that the Steelers will start 2017 off on the right note by beating the still winless Cleveland Browns in the regular season finale on New Year’s Day. The Steelers finish up with their last two games at Heinz Field.
I thought from the outset last Sunday that the Steelers would beat the Bengals. I just thought they would. The Bengals made it tougher than it had to be, but self-destructed in the second half just like they did last year. Thugs are tough, but they are usually also stupid.
“Life’s hard, man, but it’s twice as hard when you’re stupid,” or so goes a line in the book and movie “The friends of Eddie Coyle.”
The Bengals just happen to have more thugs than most teams in the NFL. Every team has a few.
It was cold and blustery and uncomfortable for fans in many NFL cities, especially in the East and Midwest, last weekend.
Dan Fouts, who offered the expert analysis on the Steelers’ telecast, could have told us it was nothing compared to the “Freezer Bowl.”
I covered that memorable game for The Pittsburgh Press at Veterans Stadium in Cincinnati on Sunday, January 10, 1982. Fouts was the quarterback for the Chargers in that playoff contest with the Bengals.
The “Ice Bowl” game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Packers in Green Bay was the coldest day temperature-wise in NFL history when it dipped to minus 15 with a revised wind chill factor of minus 36 on December 31, 1967. That was for the National Football League championship.
Ray Scott of Johnstown and Jack Buck did the play-by-play on the national telecast. Frank Gifford offered analysis and Tom Brookshier offered sideline reports. Remember how succinct Scott was in his delivery?
It felt even colder in Cincinnati because of the wind chill factor. It was nine below zero, but the wind chill factor made it feel like minus 59. That’s cold.
I thought my U.S. Army tour of 10 months at Fort Greely, Alaska would finally pay off. The Army’s Cold Weather Testing Center was located there, about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks. I knew better than to run through the parking lot to the stadium. At Fort Greely, you could be court-martialed for running when the temperature dipped that low because by running you were increasing the wind chill factor.
The average winter temperature was minus 2, with extremes as low as minus 63, at Fort Greely. It was in one of the coldest areas in Alaska. It was great for summer training, if not sleeping, when there were nearly 24 hours of daylight. You could play softball or tennis at midnight without the benefit of light towers.
The writers covering the game in Cincinnati were at no risk, which is only right. We were in a warm press box with hot coffee and hot chocolate in the dining area.
The San Diego team was at a real disadvantage. They had played in Miami the previous weekend, and the team’s travel party, for the most part, was dressed for San Diego and Miami but certainly not for Cincinnati in mid-winter, not at the stadium alongside the Ohio River.
It had been 76 degrees in humid Miami on Saturday night and it felt like 88 degrees. Some of the Chargers complained that it was like playing football in a sauna.
The Chargers did not return to San Diego after the game in Miami, but came directly to Cincinnati.
I had covered a playoff game in Cincinnati the previous Sunday when the Bengals beat the Buffalo Bills. I could have covered another playoff game that same weekend, but asked my boss if I could go directly to Cincinnati, and give someone else on the staff a chance to cover an NFL playoff game.
So, Ernie DeFillippi dispatched Dan Donovan, who normally covered the Pirates, to Miami for a playoff game with the San Diego Chargers on Saturday. Any reference to that game in any football encyclopedias refers to it as “one of the most memorable games in NFL history.”
I watched it on TV in my hotel room in Cincinnati. I felt bad the next morning when I ran into national telecast icon Lindsey Nelson in the hotel lobby. He had broadcast the Cotton Bowl and an NFL playoff game the previous two days (“Hello, everybody. I’m Lindsey Nelson.”) He was 62 at the time; I was 39. Suddenly, I felt like a loafer.
The Chargers beat the Dolphins 41-38 in a back-and-forth aerial battle. It went into overtime and the Chargers won on a field goal. The game set a record for accumulative points and yardage, and Kellen Winslow, a wide receiver for the Chargers, had 13 catches for 166 yards. It was dubbed The Kellen Winslow Game.
There was a difference of 135 degrees in the temperature in Cincinnati compared to Miami. The Bengals linemen went bare-armed, something the Steelers liked to do in those days to intimidate the opposition. The Bengals had hot water bottles inside their jock straps or protective cups. During stoppages in plays, the Bengals would stick their hands inside their pants which prompted some jokes in the press box and probably in the crowd as well.
Dan Fouts, the quarterback for the Chargers, had ice form in his beard that afternoon. I knew what that was like.
I didn’t have a beard in Alaska – it was not permitted – but I did have a handlebar mustache, which I liked to twirl at the ends. One day I was walking through the door at our media headquarters at Fort Greely and I wasn’t paying attention and the next thing I knew half my mustache was missing.
It was frozen stiff and the right half just dropped to the ground when I clipped it going through the door.
Another cold weather story…
I covered a playoff game on Sunday, January 11, 1981 in Philadelphia between the host Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys.
It was cold that day, “bitterly cold” in the reports, and it felt colder because of brisk winds. The Eagles won 20-7. After the game, Phyllis George, the former Miss America turned sports reporter, held a microphone to the mouth of Cowboys’ coach Tom Landy, a stoic sort.
“Have you ever coached in a game when it was this cold?” asked Phyllis with a Miss America smile.
Landry looked at her with those narrow eyes of his and asked her a question in return: “Have you ever heard of the Ice Bowl?”
Phyllis had no answer.
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I think many fans, especially older ones, are offended and turned off by some of the shenanigans that have become routine in the National Football League, as well as every other sports league.
Commissioner Roger Goodell and the team coaches could put a stop to it, if they wanted to, but the NFL features such chest-beating and end-zone dances during timeouts and in its promotional pieces.
There’s no place for the constant taunting and trash-talking and late hits that were so obvious in the Steelers-Bengals game. Some high-profile players are saying that there’s no sense in guys trying to hurt one another, but the beat – and beatings – go on.
More offending players should be sent to the sidelines, kicked out of the game.
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Jim O’Brien has a website that can be reached by Googling Pittsburgh sports author Jim O’Brien. His latest book is “From A to Z: A Boxing Memoir from Ali to Zivic.”