T.J. Watt heard it. Then he felt it.
Then he breathed it in, exhaled it out and experienced an exhilaration, as he'd later tell me, he'd never experienced at Heinz Field.
This was the fourth quarter. The Steelers' defense had just taken the field. Four-point lead. A once-promising season seemingly on the line. Tom Brady in the far huddle, Bill Belichick on the far sideline. And in this minute and change, with all outside eyes tuned out because of a TV timeout, Pittsburgh and its football franchise, two entities that cannot exist without each other, had themselves a bit of a moment.
The 65,280 on hand rose to their collective feet, whipped up a small wind with their Towels and, my goodness, did they cheer. And scream. And probably belch somewhere in there, too. And eventually, all that cacophony cranked up into one of those majestically coarse roars that once were so common around here.
You know the sound. It's different. It's got the same decibels, but it's defiant.
"That's not for us. Not when it gets like that," David DeCastro was telling me, referring to the crowd's common reactions for the offense. "That's for our defensive guys. That's the only time you'll hear it like that in here."
Been a while, huh?
Watt loved it. And he wanted more. So he stepped out to the left of the line of scrimmage, the TV timeout still going, and waved both his arms. Then more animatedly. Then to the point he was whipping up his own small wind.
I had to ask:
That guy's something, huh?
No, hang on: Pittsburgh 17, Patriots 10.
Because on this day, my friends, these two entities were again one and the same:
A fan and T.J. Watt, Sunday evening at Heinz Field. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS____________________
So much has gone so weirdly for this team. Won six in a row, then lost three in a row. Chased the AFC's top seed, then got chased by the Ravens and even the Browns. Drama's been followed by apparent stability, then more drama, then who-knows-what's-next. It's been harder to read than the Raiders' X-ray machine.
But the one constant, at the risk of inflating an intangible, is that they haven't connected with their own city.
Seriously, I'm a lifer here, and I can't recall any point at which this team's first and last name have been this far apart. The Steelers used to be who we were, for crying out loud. They were Pittsburgh. But the sentiment's been soured over the past decade, despite successful regular seasons, by playoff shortfalls, by all that drama and, above all, by mounting bitterness toward Mike Tomlin. Even the iconic Rooneys don't escape criticism anymore.
Some of that's sunk so low that a bizarre but vocal faction of the fan base comes across as actually inviting further failure upon the team, if only to strengthen their stance that the Steelers do everything wrong.
Especially, of course, when compared to this particular opponent.
The Patriots have become Big Brother or the bogeyman to this group, built up as this utopian model of revolutionary strategy, of relentless discipline, of inevitable victory. I read and hear these people on social media and talk shows daily. They speak of New England in tones more reverential than a born-and-bred Bostonian. And nothing else the Steelers achieve mattered if it didn't involve the Patriots. Even after the loss to the Jaguars in the playoffs a year ago, the civic insecurity/inferiority complex meme regarding New England never changed scripts. Everything in 2018 would still be defined by the same measuring stick.
It's been sickening, if I'm being candid. And embarrassing. For as long as I've breathed, that's never been what Pittsburgh sports fans have been about.
Maybe that'll change at least a little now. Maybe it won't.
But I'm here to tell you that the people who populated this one small, yellow patch of the planet got behind this team. Early in the second half, the crowd broke into a spontaneous 'Here we go Steelers!' chant that was the first of the entire season that anyone on our staff could recall. The aforementioned minute and change came next. And then all the rest.
Maybe someone will respect that Tomlin legitimately outcoached Belichick, aside from the usual clock/replay hiccups. Because he did. The Steelers made vital adjustments on both sides of the ball after the Oakland debacle, they were prepared and focused beyond words and, oh, my sweet Lord, were they more disciplined: His men had four penalties to the Headmaster's 14.
Maybe someone will respect that Ben Roethlisberger legitimately outperformed Brady. Because he did. He picked apart New England's lousy defense for touchdown drives of 75 and 96 yards, allowing a rookie, Jaylen Samuels, to run for 142 yards. Brady found one touchdown on a badly busted sequence by the Steelers' defense, then went punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, field goal, interception and turnover on downs.
Maybe someone will respect that the offensive depth remains to perform at a championship level, even with James Conner out and with Belichick desperately trying to key on Antonio Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster.
I sought verification from JuJu:
Maybe someone will even offer a little love for the wayward kicker:
OK, maybe not. But it sure sounds like Tomlin's keeping Chris Boswell after his late redemption field goal from 48 yards.
One of the assistant coaches pulled me aside afterward and spoke of how much the head coach's faith will mean to Boswell, but also how much it meant to hear support from the crowd as he stirringly took the field. Sure, those same people were crushing him earlier for his latest shank, but hey.
Oh, and you know who else might get some love and respect?
Right. The real reason this crowd bought back in.
____________________
The 1970s devastated our city on so many levels, but they also saw us lifted up on the Super Steelers' broad shoulders. And as a result, we'll always be Chuck, Myron, Mean Joe and the gang, and they'll always be us.
That was about defense. And that coarse roar I mentioned, that took root amid the concrete echos of Three Rivers Stadium, when the games were a break from the mills and a ticket didn't run high into triple-figures.
It was different because it was defiant.
It was our way of letting the world know Pittsburgh wouldn't die when Big Steel left and took with it jobs, population and vitality. I was a child, but I remember it so very vividly. We were angry all the time. And the Steelers' defense was our conduit for that anger. They hit people. They scared them. They liked it. So did we.
Those days are gone, of course, in every conceivable way. The NFL itself has changed. It's smarter, safer, and defense has fallen off across the board because of that. The local team's no exception, but it probably wounds us here more than in most places. We see some nobody of a quarterback casually flicking passes for a dozen yards at a time, and we see a show of weakness, of fragility.
And then came this day, when the most accomplished quarterback in football history and the most accomplished coach in football history came here to wound everyone yet again. The Steelers' offense had stalled, the lead was slim, and it had become clear -- painfully so, I'm sure, for most -- that this defense that had been utterly emasculated three weeks in a row would need to finish this off.
That's when the chants and cheering started. Not after. Before.
"You feel it. You really do," Cam Heyward was telling me. "You're out there as a defense, and you know what people are saying what they think of you. Especially here in Pittsburgh. So when you hear that support, when you see it like this ... look, we haven't been good enough on defense, and we haven't been good at home in general. That needed to change."
It began to change in the quarter that had been killing them.
Tomlin and Keith Butler had bungled just about everything in Oakland, but nothing more than in holding back the defense from doing the one thing it does consistently well: Pressure the quarterback.
That up there was a Brady prayer, the kind seldom seen in his unparalleled career. And Joe Haden, completing one of the finest performances by a corner I'd witnessed on this parcel of land since Rod Woodson, did well to bring down that ball before Rob Gronkowski or Julian Edelman could converge.
But Haden was the first to give credit where due.
"The push up front was what made the play," he'd say, and he was right. The entire pocket collapses around Brady, buoyed by a beautiful bounce-off by Heyward to the right edge, where he'd reach out with the big paw upon approaching.
The same principle applied to the Patriots' fateful final three plays, these following a 5-yard gain on first down and two penalties that pushed them back to the Pittsburgh 21:
Incomplete to Gronk. Heyward on the pressure. A big-time bull-rush from the defensive captain, to be precise, followed by Brady flinging up a souvenir.
Then third down:
Incomplete to Gronk. Heyward on the pressure, adjusting even after Brady stepped up in the pocket, followed by Brady trying to nail a security guard.
Then fourth down:
Incomplete to Gronk and/or Edelman. Watt on the pressure. Morgan Burnett with the pass defended.
Actually, reducing Watt's role here to a pressure doesn't do it justice. That's the rush of a madman, with such ferocity and effectiveness that poor Marcus Cannon, who'd spent the evening getting eaten alive by No. 90, had to -- illegally -- yank Watt from behind to throw him to the grass. But it was plenty enough to prompt yet another lame throw from Brady, who tellingly falls back away from Watt with his release.
Burnett, like Haden, deferred credit, telling me, "All of that happened up front. I just had to get a hand on the ball."
Say what one will about this defense's past or its prospects for the immediate future, but this was a near-total shutdown of the Patriots, conceding one touchdown on a miscommunication for which Tomlin took "full responsibility," because, as he'd explain, he was still busy sorting out on the sideline how the previous play saw the Steelers get penalized for having half the roster on the field. Moreover, Artie Burns -- who was absolved on the play by Tomlin -- didn't play another snap, coincidence or otherwise, so the Burns-free defense also went touchdown-free.
That's one game, but that's beautiful football.
____________________
"I told you, DK. I told you."
This was, of course, Vince Williams. I find him to be grounding in both good times and bad, so I'd turned on the recorder to interview the man, and this was where he went. Turned out I was lucky his kids were present, so he'd keep it clean.
"You don't believe in us. You doubt me. You doubt us."
I could tell he wasn't being excessively serious, so I played along. Reminded Vince -- and his toddler boys -- that I once laughed when he told me he'd pile up a bunch of sacks in 2017.
"The man laughed!" Vince spoke to these children. "Laughed in my face! And what did I do?"
He had 8 1/2 sacks, I told the kids, paying penance. He's got 4 1/2 this season, too.
"And now, he gives up on us after we lose a couple games. Just like the city. Just like everyone else."
I did. Really ripped the Steelers out in Oakland. Called the defense an embarrassment, if only because it was.
"That's OK. Because we're still here. We're still standing."
They are. And judging by all those tooting car horns around the stadium more than two hours after the final gun, it would appear they're doing so with their city behind them all over again.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers vs. Patriots, Heinz Field, Dec. 16, 2018 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS