The Steelers' Super Bowl window slammed shut on that one winter's afternoon against the Jaguars.
Like hell it has.
Hey, let's have some fun with this one, OK?
Because I'll promise that's what these guys, all 53 of them, were having following this 52-21 cranium-crushing of Cam Newton and a pretty good pack of Panthers on this enthralling Thursday night at Heinz Field.
"Man, we'll enjoy this long weekend," Mike Tomlin was fairly beaming afterward.
"We played a great game out there. We did," Cam Heyward was telling me in a way that, honestly, he never does. The man's never satisfied with anything. "We can be better. Every team can be better until they win a Super Bowl. But a lot of good things are happening. Things are starting to come together."
Together? For Team Distraction?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
"You know, with every distraction, weird as this might sound, it can help," Heyward came right back. "Football can be like a safe haven. This right here was a great game and, even though it was a short week of preparation, I thought we prepared very well. And I think part of the reason we prepare well is that, when we go out on the field -- not just for games but for practices -- we're totally locked in. We love when it's just football."
Neat, huh?
Like I suggested, let's have some fun. Let's set up all those myths, all those memes -- a total of 20 -- and knock them down like ... well, like a meek, bespectacled Clark Kent in the backfield:
• Ben Roethlisberger's close to retiring.
• Can't win without Le'Veon Bell.
Maybe this would still be true, but only if weighing the intangible impact of Mr. Upside Down suddenly tweeting up a storm of support for his former friends all evening long:
Juju is so special man...
— Le'Veon Bell (@LeVeonBell) November 9, 2018
James go crazy then!! ✊?✊?✊?
— Le'Veon Bell (@LeVeonBell) November 9, 2018
I think it’s safe to say, it’s time to pass the sticks...???
— Le'Veon Bell (@LeVeonBell) November 9, 2018
Before anything blows up, that last one was before James Conner had been sent off for concussion protocol. 'Pass the sticks' is a video game reference to forfeiting one's controller when one is getting pummeled.
Still ... dude, go away.
• James Conner is no Le'Veon.
Damned right he isn't. He's better than Bell. In every way.
And despite showing up for work on this short week of prep, he still pounded out 65 yards on 13 carries and a 2-yard touchdown that had the place falling all over itself:
Conversely, on those drives when Conner was being spelled -- Tomlin was doing a ton of that because of the short week -- the Steelers' offense mostly stalled. Which was telling.
Conner is this team's running back.
• JuJu's too 'lit' to stay focused.
I've had my own doubts. He's an unusual individual, not at all how he might appear from the social media prism. But I've also not seen any of that, good or bad, blend onto the football field, where the maturity of his actual performances stretches well beyond his 21 years of age. He's composed, both mentally and physically, and seeks out the big moment rather than shrinking from it.
Deep route on the first snap?
It's a snap, as he was all too happy to post -- where else? -- on Twitter well past midnight:
START WITH A BANG ? pic.twitter.com/mOPT9Sf63m
— JuJu Smith-Schuster (@TeamJuJu) November 9, 2018
More and more, he's looking like a potentially elite player. With the focus, incidentally, to match.
• Can't beat the best.
Fair for now, considering the Chiefs are the current class of the AFC, and the Steelers lost to them ... by five. When they still had, by their own admission, no idea what they were doing on defense.
But this Carolina team came here 6-2, completely legit, and this was the outcome.
I'd been interviewing Stephon Tuitt on another matter and, just as we were about done, he raised one eyebrow and changed the subject: "That's a really good team we just did that to. I hope you realize that. A really, really good team."
Hard to fathom at the moment, but he's right. And that could be sensed from the opposite perspective, too.
"We just got whooped, man," Newton spoke at the visiting team's podium. "It happens. You’ll have those type of games in the league. We played a very skilled and talented Pittsburgh team."
Maybe among the NFL's best?
How could they be out of the conversation?
• Nothing else they do matters because they'll lose to the Jaguars or the Patriots in the end.
They might. But the Steelers' next game is in Jacksonville, and the home team that day is currently 3-5 and hardly looking like a playoff team. And New England ... that's in December. That can wait.
• Can't take care of lesser opponents.
OK, the tie in Cleveland stunk, and the home loss to the Ravens was indefensibly flat. But they took care of business with both inter second meetings. And they took care of two other teams, Buccaneers and Falcons, at .500 or below.
Look, five in a row is five in a row:
• This defense will get picked apart by great quarterbacks.
This particular meme took root when they batted around poor Tyrod Taylor in Cleveland, then got picked apart by Patrick Mahomes, possibly the league's next great quarterback. It still might prove legit.
But for now, the Steelers will have to settle for having undone two former NFL MVPs through this five-game winning streak, Newton and Matt Ryan -- three total touchdowns between them -- as well as utterly nullifying Andy Dalton, Joe Flacco and, back when he was still sizzling, Ryan Fitzpatrick.
"Wait, two MVPs?" Bud Dupree responded when informed of that. "Wow, hadn't thought of it like that."
They should. With Philip Rivers, Tom Brady and Drew Brees still ahead, these are building blocks.
• Can't stop the run.
Can't they?
Visions of Leonard Fournette still trample through the collective head of the Nation, and I get that. Nothing damages the football psyche quite like getting hurt by the run. It feels helpless.
So it couldn't have felt a lot different when Christian McCaffrey and the Panthers' No. 2 rushing attack rolled right down the field to the easiest-looking touchdown drive the Steelers had conceded in weeks. McCaffrey ran for 40 yards, then caught a 20-yard, untouched touchdown to end it.
As Tomlin put it, "You saw that first drive. You saw how they went down the field."
We did. We also saw Tomlin and Keith Butler put Vince Williams on McCaffrey while not altering their primary game plan -- more on that in a bit -- and ultimately limiting McCaffrey to 37 yards the rest of the night.
"We got that under control," Tomlin said.
They've had it there all along, but for a couple spells. They're ranked sixth in rushing defense, allowing 90.3 yards per game.
• Vinnie is a bigmouth who can't play.
Except, of course, when he's neither.
Williams had an early pick-6 ...
... as well as a sack off a cleverly disguised blitz behind a Dupree rush off the right edge.
And when it was all done, as a strikingly large group of cameras and microphones gathered around Williams' stall to hear what he'd have to say, once he was dressed to the last button, he turned around and gently informed all that he wouldn't be speaking on this occasion.
With that, he began to stride out of the room. I gave him a bit of a quizzical look, knowing this couldn't have been some serious thing, and he approached, offered a handshake, a small smile and knowing wink.
This guy's good. He didn't say it, so I will. Again.
• Bud is the next Jarvis Jones.
Both were first-round outside linebackers. Both come with cool, engaging personalities. And that's it.
Not in Jarvis' wildest dreams was he sacking Newton ...
... much less being a central figure in the coaches' game plan. Which he was on this night. Either he or T.J. Watt was to go right at Newton on every snap, with Tomlin and Butler as wary of his feet as his arm.
There were no exceptions, as Bud would explain:
Watt backed his fellow bookend on all of that:
Bud's got 3.5 sacks, three other tackles for losses, a forced fumble, an interception, three passes defended and a touchdown. He's not a star, but he's not Jarvis. And maybe he just keeps getting better.
• Artie Burns is a wasted first-round pick.
OK, so that's still in play. But of the trio of the Steelers' most common defensive scapegoats, Burns now stands alone in deserving it. I mean, he finally makes it into the game in the fourth quarter, immediately gets scorched for a deep pass interference -- the team's first penalty all night! -- and the Panthers quickly put home their third touchdown.
This wasn't going to be all sunshine and roses. Artie's a mess.
• Chris Boswell's lost his mind.
All seven PATs and a 50-yarder?
• Tomlin's teams lack discipline.
Do they?
To repeat, the lone flag was on Burns, and he's become a flag waiting to happen. That's as disciplined as disciplined gets, at least for a night.
Which makes me wonder how much the NFL's out-of-control officiating has to do with this. Referee Walt Coleman's crew is known for being conservative with calls. They'll call what's really wrong but otherwise let the boys play. From this perspective, that's all that happened here.
• Tomlin never outcoaches anyone.
This one's still true. In these past five games, he definitely has not outcoached Mike Smith, Marvin Lewis, Hue Jackson, John Harbaugh and, now, Ron Rivera. Those guys are all smarter than Tomlin and all had their teams much better prepared than Tomlin did. In fact, all Tomlin did was open the locker room door and let Bill Cowher's players take the field and do whatever they wanted.
Am I doing this right?
• Tomlin is the root of all evil.
True as ever. I've seen the horns under the headset with my own eyes. Terrifying.
• Randy Fichtner and Butler are both in over their heads.
Maybe they aren't. Aside from the obvious positives to the point differentials, it's easy to see Fichtner's spreading his wings in the playbook when he's cleverly getting the likes of Darrius Heyward-Bey and Rosie Nix into the mix, just as it's easy to see Butler winning through the targeting of Newton.
"We had a really good plan going into this," Vance McDonald said of the offense.
"We made some good adjustments," Watt said of the defense.
Haven't heard a lot of that sort of talk in recent years about the coordinators, and I'm including Butler, even though he isn't new.
• The roster isn't deep.
There are exactly 32 NFL teams who fret over depth, and the Steelers couldn't have known what they had until ... Thursday Night Football?
Really, these are the games that test it. Tomlin acknowledged the obvious after this game, that he and his staff were ready to win or lose on a rotating basis. All night, from the first series to the last, players were shuttling on and off. Even Conner was spelled more often than the norm.
"We love that," Anthony Chickillo, part of the linebacker rotation, was telling me. "We're all involved, all feeling energized."
This was what I'd been asking Tuitt, by the way.
"To be honest, my body feels great right now," he said. "I wasn’t expecting that, but that's what you get from having so many different guys out there doing the job."
Here's another: Seven touchdowns by seven different players.
• The offensive line especially lacks depth.
Don't laugh this one off. It was prominent on the list of concerns as recently as camp in Latrobe, where Foster went down with a knee injury and had the more invested fans worried not only how B.J. Finney would fare at guard but also how Matt Feiler could handle either tackle spot, or how the rookie Chuks Okorafor could contribute.
Well, Finney's more than held his own, Feiler just wrapped up a third consecutive incident-free start for injured Marcus Gilbert, and Okorafor consistently works his way onto the field as a third tight end in the jumbo package.
In general, I could gush for multiple paragraphs or simply show you Roethlisberger ordering Chinese while waiting for Antonio Brown to find space 30 yards downfield:
I'll hand the mic to Foster for this one ...
"Give credit to the coaches," the big man replied, referencing Mike Munchak and his assistant, Shaun Sarrett. "What they’ve done with this O-line is legendary. You go back seven, eight years ago, and we were dogged."
Wait, dogged? As in woof?
"Yeah, we got dogged," he came back with a tilt of the head. "You know. You were there. We took a lot of heat. Ben was getting hit. We couldn’t run the ball. Well, look at us now. Look at B.J. and Matt and Chuks. To anyone who still doubts our depth, I’ve got one word: Ha!"
• AB's a selfish, self-centered dolt.
He is, actually. That won't change.
Here's hoping AB feels the full weight of the law after being cited for driving 100 mph yesterday on McKnight Road. Anyone anywhere who's OK with it either has no sense of football vs. life priority, no regard for what might have happened to another driver in his path or, most likely, no clue that McKnight comes with a red light roughly every 50 feet, no shoulders and all kinds of crazy curves and climbs.
It's not speeding. It's reckless driving. It's messing with people's lives. There's a colossal difference.
Not that he'd stand tall and discuss his dolt-itude.
At the same time, production is production, and that continued on this night to the still-harmonious tune of six catches on six targets, including a 53-yard backbreaking bomb:
He can't be a distraction if his idiocy is wholly anticipated, right?
Speaking of that ...
• Distractions will doom them.
Yeah, let's swing way back to that one, since it's the one issue that never seems to stop boomeranging. AB's latest act coming on a game day might have been a big deal in another locker room. In this one, it barely merited a mention afterward, even when a question arose.
Heyward spoke well to the distraction issue above. It won't be topped here.
But it's worth underscoring, I think, that when the Panthers' Eric Reid took that filthy shot at the head of a clearly sliding Roethlisberger, it wasn't just the noted enforcer David DeCastro -- or "De-Blast-ro!" as Foster was calling him -- who went rushing at Reid. It was half the roster, including Maurkice Pouncey grabbing Reid by the facemask in a manner that suggested he was about to separate it. JuJu got in there, too.
I mentioned to DeCastro that this could eventually cost him two minutes in a box somewhere. To feel shame.
"Yeah, I'm the hockey guy. I kind of like that," the city's other No. 66 would reply. "But seriously, you've got to stand up for your teammates. And I think we all do."
I knew better than to ask him about distractions -- he hates talking about Bell, in particular, as much as anyone hates it -- but I went ahead and did that anyway.
His reply was to purse his lips in a pfffffffffft way.
"That stuff ... you know, maybe people are starting to see now what we've known here all along."
And that is?
"It's special. What this group has is special."
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers vs. Panthers, Heinz Field, Nov. 8, 2018 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS