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Wednesday, October 18, 2000

By Ed Bouchette, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Call it their Super Bowl-or-Bust strategy.

The Steelers will continue to work on improving the NFL's fifth-worst passing game or succumb trying.

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It doesn't matter whether their strength is on the ground, where they have the fourth-most productive running game in the league, the Steelers want to pass.

"If we want to go where we want to go," Coach Bill Cowher said yesterday, "we have to have the complement of both. We have to be able to throw the football efficiently."

Where they want to go is not 8-8, either. It doesn't matter whether getting to the Super Bowl sounds ludicrous for a team that probably needs to win seven of its final 10 games just to make the playoffs, their goal is getting there. They have believed, for five years now, that the only way to do that is to develop a reasonably successful passing game, no matter how good they can run.

The reason goes back to a strategy first developed here by Chan Gailey, who was hired in 1994 as an assistant coach. Back then, the Steelers had been relying more on their running game and playing good defense under Cowher's first offensive coordinator, Ron Erhardt, whose offensive philosophy, when asked, was simple: "Runit, runit, runit."

They hired Gailey as their wide receivers coach and told him to improve the passing game. He did that in 1995, although Erhardt was in his last season as their coordinator. The Steelers started spreading out more wide receivers on third down, and they threw it often. They went from 463 passes in 1994 to 592 in 1995. Their runs dropped from 546 in '94 to 494 in '95.

And they went to the Super Bowl. Gailey would later say that modern NFL teams cannot live by the run alone, because if a team cannot pass, it cannot get to the Super Bowl.

That strategy worked in 1995, but it backfired on them in the AFC championship game in the 1997 season. Leading 14-10 and driving toward another score just before halftime, Kordell Stewart threw an interception on second-and-one, and Denver came back to score a touchdown. The Steelers got the ball back, tried three passes in their hurry-up offense and punted. Denver scored another touchdown, giving them two in the final 1:47 before the half, and the Steelers lost by three points.

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Kevin Gilbride, in his second season as their offensive coordinator, believes in the same theory. The Steelers had been either unable or unwilling to throw the ball as much since Stewart became their quarterback in '97, but they did it over the past five games last season with Mike Tomczak and they're doing it again with Kent Graham.

Even though their passing game was poor last Sunday, Graham threw it 33 times and was sacked once trying. They ran it 32 times, including two Graham scrambles.

In the four games in which Graham has started, the Steelers have tried to pass 146 times and run 106. Stewart's two starts produced just 45 passing plays and 84 runs.

In Graham's starts, they have tried passes 57.9 percent of the time; with Stewart just 34.9 percent.

"We're just trying to evolve, really, as a football team," Cowher said. "I know you don't want to deviate from what you do and what you're bread and butter is."

Cowher said the team has the kind of receivers "who can make some plays," but they haven't been in sync.

"We're nowhere near where we need to be, but I like the direction we're going. We didn't take a step forward last week by any stretch of the imagination, but . . . . certainly it's something that's gong to be an ongoing process, and what we're going to continue to try to become is a balanced football team."

This Sunday, the Steelers play Cleveland in Three Rivers Stadium, and there might be a lesson from their home game against Cleveland last season they can take into this one.

They had a 5-3 record when they played the expansion Browns here Nov. 14 and led, 15-7, midway through the fourth quarter. Instead of trying to run out the clock, they tried a wide-receiver screen, and linebacker John Thierry intercepted it and returned it to the Steelers' 15.

The Browns scored a touchdown, missed the two-point conversion, and came back to kick a field goal with no time left to win it. The Steelers finished 6-10.

Last Sunday, against the second-worst run defense in the NFL, the Steelers came to pass. They did not run much until the fourth quarter, when they did so to use the clock.

"We tried to mix it up and we'll continue to try to mix it up," Cowher said. "We've been able to do that for the most part. You don't want to get away from what we do, but you have to have balance in your offense and we'll continue to strive to do that because that's how you become a complete football team.

"You don't do it at the expense of trying to win a football game and I don't think we did that the other day. At the same time, we're going to continue to strive to have the balance. I think it will help all elements of our football team."