The surprising, tantalizing Steelers have taken on a new role six games into the season.
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Bill Cowher
"It's a very focused team, it's a hungry team."
(Peter Diana, Post-Gazette) |
The hunters will now become the hunted.
The Steelers play the Baltimore Ravens Sunday at Heinz Field, but the defending Super Bowl champions are not the favorites. The team that missed the playoffs the past three years is.
Lee Flowers can hold all that talk about lack of respect because after Monday night, everyone in the league respected the Steelers. The upstarts have become the up-and-up and are even on pace to break Baltimore's defensive scoring record from last season.
"I don't know if we're the hunted," Coach Bill Cowher said. "Certainly, people respect where we're at, what we've been able to do and how we've been able to do it."
Not even Cowher thought his team would be 5-1 and riding atop the AFC Central Division after it was rubbed out in Jacksonville, 21-3, in the opener. Las Vegas oddsmakers pegged the Steelers' over-under victories at 7 1/2 before the season.
"Certainly after that first game, I don't know if I would have foreseen us being where we are today," Cowher said.
The Ravens have stumbled to a 4-3 start. If Baltimore loses, the defending champions will fall three games behind the Steelers in the loss column halfway through their season.
The Steelers might not be able to put the Ravens away with a victory Sunday, but they can damage them.
"We're playing the best team a year ago that existed in the National Football League," Cowher said. "They won it all. We want to see where we stand in regards to those teams."
Last week, Flowers said he believed the Steelers had a better defense than the Ravens, who were rated by many to have the best defense in he history of the league last season.
Today, at least two statistical categories support Flowers' opinion. The Steelers reclaimed their No. 1 ranking from Baltimore in overall defense, based on yardage allowed. They yield 241.3 yards per game. The Ravens rank No. 2 with 254.3 per game.
The Steelers also rank first in the league in points allowed, 10.2 per game. Baltimore ranks 10th at 17 points per game. Baltimore set the NFL's 16-game record for fewest points allowed last season, 165. The Steelers are on pace to allow 163.
One more? The Steelers, with 24 sacks, are tops in the league in sacks per passing play. The Ravens, with 18 sacks, rank 10th.
Baltimore's defense allowed 55 total points to Green Bay and Cleveland and has held opponents to less than 13 points just twice in seven games. The Steelers have done it four times in the past five games.
Cowher, of course, won't try to rile the Ravens before his team plays them. He played the respect card for all it was worth yesterday.
"I don't know where the points are coming from," he said. "That lineup looks pretty good to me. They are a good, good defensive football team. You can look at the stats, that tells you something. If people are getting points, they're working on a short field for whatever reason. There's no holes in that defense at all."
But one coach on a team that has played Baltimore said the Ravens do not look as physically in shape as they did a year ago. Perhaps they fed too much off the Super Bowl banquets?
That's not the case for the Steelers, who went from playing host to the AFC championship game after the 1997 season to three seasons in a row out of the playoffs.
"It's a very focused team, it's a hungry team," Cowher said of his ballclub. "When you don't experience something for a couple years when you're used to being there, it tends to put a lot of things in perspective."
While his offense has been reaping the benefits of an outpouring of points and the discovery of a passing game, Cowher praised what has become the most overpowering defense in the league through six games.
Rookie linebacker Kendrell Bell spearheaded Monday night's effort with eight solo tackles and his fourth sack, one behind team leader Joey Porter. The Steelers are on pace for 64 sacks. That would shatter the 1994 Blitzburgh team record of 55 set with the help of Greg Lloyd, Kevin Greene and Levon Kirkland.
When his team was running off six consecutive seasons in the playoffs from 1992-97, Cowher often talked to them and to the public about positioning themselves to get home playoff games. Now, despite an AFC-best 5-1 record, he won't mention "playoffs."
"We don't even talk about that word," Cowher said. "That exists, but it is way too early to think about that. We've put ourselves in position right now to compete with the top teams in the league, OK?"
Cowher preferred to talk about the five-game stretch the Steelers play against division foes which began Monday against Tennessee. After Baltimore Sunday, the Steelers take to the road at Cleveland, play Jacksonville at home and then at Tennessee. The Browns, another surprising team in the division, are a game behind the Steelers at 4-2.
"There are no more important games, in my mind, to find out where we stand in the mix," Cowher said.
"If you want to go anywhere, you better win in your division. There's no one in this division that is in awe of us."
Steelers' defense secures lead role 
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