DENVER -- The visiting locker room at Sports Authority Field is roughly the size of a small gymnasium, but it's bisected by a wall that spans three-quarters of the space. It's not needed. The requisite 53 stalls easily could have fit around the room's perimeter. But it's not an accident, either. Professional teams build these billion-dollar palaces with every infinitesimal advantage in mind, and the intended psychology of this sort of construction is that the wall will divide the opponent, will discourage camaraderie or accountability.
It failed on this Sunday afternoon.
The Steelers failed, too, of course. They fell a drive short, a carry short, a stop short of the AFC Championship Game by blowing a late lead to the Broncos and losing, 23-16.
But in the immediate aftermath ...
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" came a piercing scream from the stall of Mike Mitchell. And yes, you'd better believe it could be heard over that partial wall, probably across the Rockies.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" came another.
A few feet away, in a scene that somehow spoke even louder, James Harrison sat on a stool, a white towel covering the lower half of his face, then slowly raised up to his eyes. He held it there for several minutes.
I don't even want to know what was happening under there.
Marcus Gilbert threw something. At something. I couldn't tell what it was because it was on the other side of that wall. But it was Gilbert, I'd later learn.
Shamarko Thomas, who hardly ever plays, couldn't pick his chin up from his chest. A defensive assistant had to speak with him for a long spell, repeatedly patting his back as he whispered directly into his left ear.
And way back in the most remote corner of the room sat Fitzgerald Toussaint.
In the very same stall where, four years and eight days ago, Ike Taylor sat.
It was as if time stood still.
Ike, you'll recall, was devastated in that playoff game by, of all people, Tim Tebow. Tormented for 204 passing yards, including an 80-yard touchdown to Demaryius Thomas on the opening snap of overtime. He barely moved for nearly a half-hour, head between hands, not reacting in the slightest to anything around him. Teammates took turns shielding him from reporters, Ryan Clark at one point barking at us to "Get away!" But it wouldn't matter. Ike left without speaking. Probably flew all the way home without speaking, too.
That was the end of an era, that loss. I ended my column that night with four words about the old, slow defense that had just been exposed: "Those Steelers are done."
Well, these Steelers aren't done.
Because to fully appreciate the frustrating finish to this most tumultuous of seasons, it might be telling to applaud how it was absorbed afterward.
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Toussaint did fumble. He did cost himself and his team what was shaping up to be a hammer of a drive, one that would send them all to Foxborough:
There's nowhere to run from that. Credit the Broncos' Bradley Roby for the sharp poke, just as everyone rightly credited Ryan Shazier for doing likewise to Jeremy Hill last week in Cincinnati, but, then as now, I'll restate that the onus is almost always on the runner. And it was here.
And Toussaint knew it. Which is why he reacted as he did. Why he sat there with not one piece of his game equipment removed except his helmet, as if hoping he could still sprint back out there and make it right.
Like Ike in that very same stall, he didn't speak, didn't react.
Like Ike, he was shielded again by teammates.
DeAngelo Williams, whose injury followed Le'Veon Bell's injury and necessitated the likes of Toussaint and Jordan Todman getting promoted from running back oblivion, stood guard the longest. Even after he left the corner for a bit to finish dressing, Williams returned and plopped himself back down.
"Here to take care of my man," Williams told me. "Y'all be good to him now."
Toussaint asked the team's media relations officer if he could shower before addressing the growing crowd around his stall. The wish was, of course, granted.
And once he returned, it was Ben Roethlisberger's turn to pre-empt. He squeezed through us, pulled up a folding chair and had a private word with Toussaint.
"I told him, I said we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him," Roethlisberger recalled later. "This is not all on him, by any means. It's on all of us. I'm so proud of the way he played ... and Jordan, I think, was awesome, too."
That's an understandable overstatement in the moment. Toussaint and Todman, set up by the coaching staff to be a true tandem, combined for 123 yards rushing in Cincinnati, but only 45 here despite 17 carries.
Still, Toussaint did set up the Steelers' lone touchdown with this 15-yard run:
He then finished the job, tidily following a big David DeCastro push:
Shortly after being consoled by Roethlisberger, Toussaint at last was ready to face questions. And he more than held it together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDyWmChLqaE
So good for him.
But here's the harsh reality that I feel has to be injected into this, and I don't write it to be mean: Toussaint had no business being in this setting because he just isn't that good.
If he were, he wouldn't have gone undrafted in 2014 despite starting for a high-profile college program at Michigan, he wouldn't have been cut by the Ravens after just a month in their camp, he wouldn't have been released again by the same team after another month in 2015, he wouldn't have been placed on the practice squad once the Steelers picked him up in September, and wouldn't have been held off the 53-man until late November.
Our photographer, Jared Wickerham, was shooting from field level and noticed during the game that both Toussaint and Todman were juggling every other handoff. His thought at the time was that they looked nervous and that one or the other was a fumble waiting to happen.
Well, of course they were!
They're practice-squad running backs!
On one play late in the third quarter, Toussaint was granted a hole through the left side of the line large enough for William 'The Refrigerator' Perry to have waltzed through for a 33-yard touchdown. If it had been Le'Veon or DeAngelo, as one offensive lineman told me, "automatic six points." As it was, Toussaint was easily dragged down after just 9 yards when the Broncos' Danny Trevathan laid a single hand on his hip.
On the first play of the fourth quarter -- same drive -- Todman was spun around like a dollar-store top for a 5-yard loss when he only needed to keep running to turn the corner.
The Steelers punted on that drive, and their lead remained a paper-thin 13-12.
This is what practice-squad running backs do.
And this also is why, beyond the emotional protection of Toussaint after this game, it's absurd to ascribe this loss -- much less this season -- to this single mishap.
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Finding fault for the loss, other than the running backs, is crazy easy.
Much of the focus is sure to be on Mike Tomlin, if only because it always is. This one, I'm betting, will be on his fourth-quarter decision to forgo what would have been a 51-yard field goal attempt for Chris Boswell in favor of a punt.
I get that. It's not an easy call, and Tomlin's might have been wrong. Boswell has been sensational. Even with the 30-mph winds gusting through the place, he was booting them from that distance effortlessly in warmups. If he makes this one, it's 16-12, the Steelers hold their lead and their momentum, and maybe the Broncos' throats start tightening. But at the same time, Jordan Berry had an abysmal day punting, and Roethlisberger, even with a fourth-and-20, was at the 34 and could have taken a what-the-heck shot at the end zone.
Bottom line via hindsight: Either would have been better than Berry plopping the ball into the end zone for a touchback and a paltry 19-yard net.
"I'm not getting into that," Tomlin replied when asked about his comfort level with Boswell in that situation. "That's not fair to him. He kicked when we asked him to kick."
Other focus will be on the defense for completely flat-lining on Denver's decisive drive. Say what one will about Toussaint's fumble, the Broncos still had to go a long way to score, and they did precisely that on 13 plays and 65 yards leading to C.J. Anderson's 1-yard touchdown and a 20-13 lead.
Cam Heyward, who had a rare no-show performance at an individual level, summed up that miserable drive better than anyone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kr3c_ZBFJM
"There's not one play that signifies this loss," the man said up there. And he couldn't be more right. The offense could have capped long drives with touchdowns rather than kicks. The receivers could have clung to more catches than they did. Markus Wheaton's punt returns were ... hilarious. The officials, the perpetually easiest target of all, could have thrown a lot more pass interference flags on both teams, and that might have benefited the Steelers most given that Peyton Manning couldn't throw past his nose.
But to Heyward's statement, there also isn't one play that signifies this season.
At least there shouldn't be.
No one will want to hear this yet again, but this is a team that lost its placekicker in a pre-preseason game, lost its All-Pro center shortly thereafter, lost its franchise quarterback for nearly a quarter of the schedule, lost the game's best running back before the midpoint, lost its burgeoning left tackle right after that, then for the KO punch to the gut, lost the game's best wide receiver.
Tomlin predictably wanted nothing to do with the topic when it was raised.
"We're not into that," he began and concluded.
Others at least touched on it, no one using stronger terms than the quarterback.
"We dealt with a lot of issues this year," Roethlisberger said, right before explaining that he believed the Broncos readjusted their entire defense because of Antonio Brown's absence. "A lot of injuries. A lot of 'next man up.' A lot of teams would just quit, and we didn't. We stepped up and got to this point. Obviously, we're disappointed we didn't go further, but we made it to this point with a lot of young guys stepping up, today especially."
Exactly. And that's why this is nothing like the Tebow game.
Bell will be back. So will AB. So will Maurkice Pouncey. So will the youngsters Roethlisberger mentioned, from Martavis to Markus to Alejandro Villanueva to, hey, did anyone else notice Jesse James doing what Heath Miller visibly no longer could in getting big yardage over the middle in the fourth quarter?
"We know how it ended, and we don't like it," DeCastro, maybe the team's most improved player at any position, said. "But we also know how far we got despite a lot of adversity and a lot of people thinking we couldn't even come close to something like this."
And that's just the offense. Stephon Tuitt, Ryan Shazier, Jarvis Jones and Bud Dupree made strides on a defense that's now so painfully in need of secondary help that not even this stubborn management team can ignore addressing it this spring and summer. Draft seven cornerbacks and carry the rest of the positives into Saint Vincent.
The rest will take care of itself.
I wrote this throughout the season, and now seems like the best time to repeat: This is the tightest, most together set of Steelers I've covered. That held through this. Oh, boy, did it ever. It held through the hanging heads, and the openly shed tears, not least of which, by every account, came from the eyes of the head coach when he spoke to his men afterward.
"Never saw Coach T like that," Ramon Foster recalled.
That silly wall achieved nothing.
"Our guys played their hearts out. Not just today. All season," an emotional Jones said. "It's one heartbeat in this locker room. We all beat the same. We know what we put out there this year, and we know we laid out our hearts from the start and ... it hurts. But we'll be back."
"If anything, maybe we learned even more about ourselves with how all this happened," Gilbert said. "We had to push ourselves. We had to go way past what anyone thought we'd be capable of doing without all the people we were missing. When we look back on it, I think that's what this season will be about for us, the way we got so much stronger with that culture of picking each other up when we most need it."
Yeah. It'll be about Toussaint, basically. Just not the way most might think.