CINCINNATI -- The Steelers watched a 13-point lead tumble away in the fourth quarter yesterday, mainly because cornerback Dewayne Washington was having a hard time stopping anything with orange-and-black stripes and their pass defense allowed sore-fingered Jon Kitna to look like Joe Montana.
In the end, they still clinched home-field advantage in the American Football Conference playoffs after Oakland lost, but they had their seven-game winning streak come to a halting stop because Neil Rackers, who makes Kris Brown look like a beacon of stability, hit a 31-yard field goal in overtime for a wild 26-23 comeback victory.
But none of that would have mattered if the Steelers -- principally, wide receiver Bobby Shaw -- came up with an onside kick with 2:41 remaining.
What was especially bothersome to the Steelers -- principally Shaw -- was they said they did.
“I had it,” Shaw said. “I had it the whole time. It was a terrible call, a terrible call. I had the ball the whole time I was on the ground.”
But the officials awarded the ball to the Bengals at the Cincinnati 46 when linebacker Riall Johnson got up from the pile holding the ball. That allowed the Bengals to move 54 yards in 10 plays and tie the score on Kitna’s 18-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Danny Farmer, a former Steelers draft pick, with 37 seconds remaining.
Shaw contends the only reason Johnson had the ball was because he let go of it after the whistle blew and the officials were trying to clear players from the pile.
“I know they were peeling players off the pile, peeling players off me,” Shaw said. “Right then I heard them say, ‘That’s it, let it go.’ I’m thinking it’s the ref. It was so long after I was on the ground with the ball.”
“Bobby had the ball and the ref told him to let it go because the play was over,” said wide receiver Lenzie Jackson, a member of the hands team. “He let it go and they grabbed it under the pile.”
Earlier this season, the Steelers preserved a 17-10 victory against Tampa Bay when tight end Mark Bruener dived late into a pile on an onside kick and came up with the ball with 28 seconds remaining. Initially, the officials ruled the Buccaneers recovered the kick, but the play was reviewed and the call was reversed.
Referee Jeff Triplette said the kick yesterday was not a reviewable play.
To Shaw, it didn’t matter. He said this was different than what happened in Tampa.
“They didn’t even wrestle it away,” Shaw said. “The play was so over, it shouldn’t have even mattered [that I let go of the ball]. They said it’s over, let it go. I was thinking [the officials] saw I had the ball.”
“I was lying on top of Bobby and one of the refs said, ‘White ball, white ball,’” Hines Ward said. “Next thing you know, No. 50 is coming up with the ball. It was just like Philadelphia again.”
The reference was to a 26-23 overtime loss to the Philadelphia Eagles last year, a game in which the Steelers blew a 10-point lead in the final 3:42 after failing to recover an onside kick with 1:05 remaining.
The Steelers later received an apology from the National Football League, saying the officials failed to detect an Eagles player hitting into Bruener before the 10-yard, no-contact zone.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a call [today] with an apology,” Shaw said.
On a day when Brown missed his third extra point in four games, when Kordell Stewart threw a career-high four interceptions, when Rackers missed two field goals and the extra point that would have won the game in regulation, the Steelers’ failure to come up with an onside kick might have been the strangest happening in a very strange game.
Asked if he thought the Steelers recovered the onside kick, Coach Bill Cowher said, “I know we did.”
But, later he said: “We’re not even sitting here if we recover the onside kick. [Shaw] has some of the best hands on our team and the ball goes through his hands. We recover that ball and the game is over. I agree it should not have come down to that. But, the fact is, in this league it comes down to that. We did not execute that element of the game, which you have to be able to do.”
What Shaw did not execute is catching the ball the first time it came to him on the onside kick. After what happened last year against the Eagles, the Steelers changed the way they handle onside kicks in 2001. Instead of waiting for the ball to come to them, the Steelers put three players on the front line -- Jon Witman, Chris Fuamatu-Ma’afala and tight end Jerame Tuman -- and have them charge into the kicking team.
The purpose is to create space for the second line of players -- Shaw, Ward and Jackson -- to easily catch the ball. That part worked to perfection. Until Shaw leaped and dropped the ball in the air.
“Unfortunately, Bobby didn’t catch it when he should have,” special teams coach Jay Hayes said.
“It was in the air and I misjudged it,” Shaw said. “The ball got behind me and I ended up having to turn in the air to catch it. But I was laying on it the whole time until I heard them saying, ‘Let it go, let it go.’”
Ultimately, that was Shaw’s mistake -- letting it go.
“The ref grabbed the ball from Bobby and one of their players grabbed the ball from the ref,” Ward said. “It was on their side of the field. I don’t know. All their coaches were around the ref. The other guy came out with the ball. The coaches had a big part in that call, being on that side of the field.”
Play of the game: The onside kick 
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