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Monday, December 10, 2001

Compiled by Ed Bouchette and Dejan Kovacevic

Steelers (10-2) vs. Baltimore Ravens (8-4), 8:35 p.m. Sunday, PSINet Stadium. TV, radio: ESPN; WDVE-FM (102.5), WBGG-AM (970). All that kept the Steelers from beating the Ravens in their first meeting Nov. 4 at Heinz Field was a forgettable performance by PK Kris Brown. As it was, Baltimore escaped with a 13-10 victory.

Hines Ward, Steelers WR, had a quadriceps contusion and a slight ankle injury but didn’t miss any playing time. “Every time I thought he was down, I looked in and he was in there,” Coach Bill Cowher said. “He may be a little sore for a few days, but I don’t think it’s anything serious.”

The Steelers deactivated RB Jerome Bettis (hip/groin), TE Mark Bruener (shoulder), CB Hank Poteat (ankle) C Chukky Okobi, OT Mathias Nkwenti, DE Chris Combs and DT Chris Hoke. The Jets played without WR Santana Moss (quadriceps), CB Aaron Glenn (knee), RB Chad Morton, OT Dan Goodspeed, CB James Rooths, SS Christian LeBlanc and DT Girardie Mercer.

Jay Hayes, the Steelers’ special teams coach, spotted a flaw in the work of Jets P Tom Tupa that led to many happy returns. Tupa has struggled with an injury lately and his kicks have been falling short. So Hayes had Bobby Shaw line up 10 yards in front of deep man Troy Edwards to field any short punts that might come off Tupa’s foot. It worked beautifully. Shaw returned one punt 20 yards and another 23. Edwards returned a punt 20 yards. “We were looking at film, and he had a lot of balls going 25, 30 yards,” Edwards said. “A lot of balls were bouncing at 25 yards and he was getting a good roll on it. Coach Hayes put Bobby back there to take the short ones and I took the deep ones. It worked good today.”

The Steelers’ problems in the red zone, or inside the 20, have dogged them all season and yesterday was no different. They scored one touchdown on five trips inside the Jets’ 20. They settled for three field goals and missed another on the other visits. “We’re playing solid football all game. We’re just not finishing stuff off,” FB Jon Witman said. “That’s the frustrating part about it. I think if we keep doing this, it’s going to catch up to us, we’re going to lose a game just like we did against Baltimore, when we’re driving and get stalled. Good football teams can’t do that. We’re coming down the stretch now, we have to win some key games. We have Baltimore next week, the Super Bowl champs. If we do what we did today, it could be turned around.”

QB Kordell Stewart was sacked once, but his line gave him an extraordinatory amount of time to throw, which helped the Steelers convert 18 of their third downs into 11 first downs. “The O-line is keeping everybody off of my back,” Stewart said. “I think we may have had only one sack and it was one going into halftime where I didn’t want to throw it away or put it up and cause an interception so that we would have an opportunity to get some yards on the next play. Wayne Gandy has been doing good since we’ve been playing together. This year in particular, the O-line has been playing very well based on how Coach Russ Grimm has been trying to put those guys in not-so-difficult situations as far as the blocking scheme is concerned. When you have a coach who has played the position not so long ago and had an opportunity to play in some championship games, I think he has a pretty good understanding of how to make it -- not so much easy -- but making it more understandable for those guys so that they can actually go out and react to the game.”

With 52 seconds left, the Jets were down by 11 with fourth-and-5 at the Steelers’ 12. Despite needing two scores, Coach Herman Edwards opted to go for the end zone. QB Vinny Testaverde’s pass for TE Anthony Becht fell incomplete. Game over. Edwards was asked why he didn’t kick the field goal in that situation. “We talked about it, but I just felt we needed a touchdown at that point. It goes into the guessing game. ... We had only one timeout left and hadn’t been down that close the whole day, so I wanted to try to score a touchdown. ... So, it killed us.”

Even though the Steelers didn’t have Bettis, the Jets seemed taken aback by how often their opponent passed. “They threw the ball a lot more than we thought they would,” LB James Farrior said. DT Steve Martin suggested a more aggressive rush would have helped: “We were just focusing on trying to keep him from scrambling. As you can see, when he gets out, he’s going to cause a lot of damage. We spent a lot of time practicing that.”

Jets LB John Abraham was even more impressed with the work of Steelers WR Hines Ward: “Ward was probably the MVP of the game for them. He decided the game.”

Oliver Ross started at right guard for the Steelers for a third consecutive game, but starter Rich Tylski replaced him in the second half. Tylski missed the past two games with a high ankle sprain. “We wanted to make sure that he was OK, so we’ll see how it is and it will probably be Rich who starts next week,” Coach Bill Cowher said.

WR Hines Ward moved three spots up the Steelers’ all-time receptions list to 11th with 203. He started the day at 14th and passed, in order, Eric Green, Roy Jefferson and Bennie Cunningham. Ward had 10 catches for 124 yards. Ward’s career-high 10 receptions gives him 79, six behind the single-season record of 85 set by Yancey Thigpen in 1995.

RB Jerome Bettis is a very large reason the Steelers entered the weekend leading the NFL in time of possession. They average 33:18 of a 60-minute game with the ball on offense. That’s nearly a full minute more than the No. 2 team, the 49ers at 32:30. Even without Bettis in the lineup, they were able to keep the ball away from the Jets yesterday. They had it for 36 minutes and 53 seconds, more than 13 1/2 minutes more than the Jets.

The Steelers are 10-2 for the first time since 1978, when they finished 14-2 and went on to win Super Bowl XIII. The only better start they had in their history was 11-1 in 1975.

The Steelers, who slipped one sack out of the NFL lead behind the Packers’ 42 last week, had no sacks for the second consecutive game. They’ve had three sacks in the past three games, none by linebackers.

The Steelers had no turnovers, marking the sixth time that has happened in the past 11 games, particularly impressive against the Jets, the NFL leaders with 33 takeaways.

QB Kordell Stewart’s 214-yard passing output marked the 21st 200-plus performance of his career, his fifth this season.

K Kris Brown’s missed extra point in the second quarter, wide left, was the third of his career.

Kris Brown, Steelers K, on kicking at Heinz Field: “There are no excuses. This is where we play. My job is to go out there and put points on the board. I need to start doing that.”

After two seasons in which they did not have a winning record at home, the Steelers clinched a winning season in their first at Heinz Field. They are 5-1 at home, with games remaining against Detroit Dec. 23 and Cleveland Jan. 6.

They were 4-4 in their final season at Three Rivers Stadium and 2-6 at home in 1999. They have been 7-1 at home four times under Cowher, most recently in 1997.

Establishing Heinz Field as an advantage was a goal of the Steelers this season, and it could become crucial if they maintain their position as the No. 1 seed in the AFC and have all their playoff games at home.

“That is key,” WR Hines Ward said. “Especially in late January coming to Pittsburgh, a lot of teams do not want to come up here and play here in this cold weather. Having home-field advantage, I am pretty sure our fans are going to be behind us. As players, we feed off that energy. We are going to go out there and step it up another notch. That is what we are playing for right now. We want to play all the playoff games here in our back yard.”