"Football," Mike Mitchell was musing, "is a game of passion."
He shook his head as he'd finally begun peeling off his pads, nearly a half hour after he and the rest of these remarkable, resilient Steelers proved precisely that: They'd just participated in possibly the finest football game played in Heinz Field's 16-year history, they'd just prevailed, 31-27, with a cinematic comeback past the archrival Ravens, and they'd just put away both an AFC North Division championship and home field for the first round of playoffs.
You'd better believe there was passion.
If there were a holiday dedicated to passionate displays, you might even say this would have been Christmas.
There was Ben Roethlisberger grabbing Le'Veon Bell by the helmet after the first of his two touchdown runs, urging him on for "More, more, more!" per Bell's recollection:
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• Has gone 102-57 to tie Tony Dungy (102) for the fifth-most wins by anyone in his first decade as an NFL head coach.
• Has gone 29-13 in December, including 19-6 at home, easily the strongest indicator that, as with all good football teams, his get better over the course of a season.
• Has won one Super Bowl and was stopped a touchdown shy in another.
Oh, wait, that latter one was with "Cowher's players." Just like Mike Sullivan and the Penguins just won the Stanley Cup with Mike Johnston's players, except that no one anywhere ever makes any such reference because the value of quality coaching couldn't have been clearer than in that context.
Say what one will about Tomlin, the "cheerleader" accusation was abominable. And good for him and for the team, though it couldn't have been even a remote priority in a game with infinitely more meaningful implications, to seize this stage on this particular week and make a lot of people, Bradshaw above all, look spectacularly stupid.
The Steelers' players swore Bradshaw's remarks weren't a factor before the game, but they sure did go to bat for Tomlin afterward, and they swung a heck of a lot better than .700 in the process.
"I don't want to get into too much because I know he's a Hall of Fame quarterback who played here," Mitchell said. "But Coach T is just a fantastic man from the ground up, the best coach I've ever had. I get pissed off when I hear those comments."
"He's one of the best coaches in the league," Maurkice Pouncey said. "I'm not even sure how you'd argue that."
“I stand by him," Lawrence Timmons said. "If I think of the premier NFL coach, I think of Mike Tomlin.”
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MATT SUNDAY / DKPS
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