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Last year’s play fueled a rivalry rife with emotion
Mike Logan
Christopher Horner/Tribune-Review
Steelers defensive back Mike Logan
AP Photo
Rob Rossi is the Penguins beat writer. He can be reached via e-mail. Also check out Rossi's blog or follow him on Twitter.
Wind-blown snow. Soggy turf. Eerily quiet. Noticeably empty yellow seats. The playoffs? Browns 24, Steelers 7. What the ...
"Look," Logan said only to himself, "we cannot lose this game."
And they didn't, as anybody who stayed or stayed tuned beyond the third quarter of the Steelers' blood-pumping 36-33 victory against the Browns in an AFC wild card playoff game at Heinz Field this past January can attest. But for a few minutes there on that near-disastrous Sunday afternoon ...
"It looked like the Cleveland Browns were going to come into Pittsburgh and beat the Steelers ... in the playoffs, right?" Logan said, recalling the moment days before tonight's nationally televised rematch at the scene of the near-crime. "Well, that was never going to happen. I never thought we were going to lose that game."
If so, he is amongst the few and proud. Some guy named Kelly Holcomb was lighting up the 2002 version of the Steel Curtain. Tommy Maddox wasn't exactly doing his best impression of Terry Bradshaw. And in all the years following, defending against and for the Steelers, Logan had never heard what he was hearing from the North Shore on a football Sunday: dead silence.
"Look, I couldn't think like that," he said. "Get to the point where I could see the Steelers losing at home ... in the playoffs ... to the Browns! Couldn't happen. So, I told myself, 'This can't happen. This won't happen.' We had to win the game! It wasn't just the playoffs, it was the playoffs against the Browns!"
Soon after his moment of defiant self-realization, Logan's playoffs ended on a play that ironically saved the Steelers' season. With the Browns driving down the Steelers' side of the field early in the third quarter -- their comfortable lead seeming a sure ticket to Tennessee and a divisional playoff game against the Titans -- Logan brought to life a team by living out his childhood dream: intercepting a pass in the playoffs and sending Steeler Country into a Terrible Towel-waving tizzy.
"Only my pick came against the Brownies," Logan said with a super-wide smile. If only for a moment, thoughts of the season-ending knee injury he sustained on the return never showed. After his interception, the Steelers outscored their arch-nemesis 29-9 -- handing the Browns and their fans a bitter defeat that rivaled John Elway and "The Drive" or Earnest Byner and "The Fumble."
No? Think about how the Steelers losing that wild card game would have compared to those crushing defeats in the AFC Championship games.
"Can't. Didn't. Won't."
At the very least, Logan is sure of at least this much concerning this Turnpike Rivalry and the prior 102 meetings: Every game matters to the fans in a way that casual observes wouldn't understand. And even though the Steelers trail the all-time series, 48-54, Logan -- with an admitted allegiance to the Black n' Gold (translation: unshakable despise for the Brown n' Orange) steeled from a scarring childhood encounter with Cleveland's Dawg Pound -- quickly pointed out: "We've got the two that matter most."
Playoff wins last season and in 1995.
"You just know the Browns fans hate that!"
Former Pro-Bowl tackle and current Steelers broadcaster Tunch Ilkin described Steelers-Browns as "the only game in pro football in which you're playing for the pride of your city." Ilkin finished his career in Green Bay, experiencing Packers-Bears, and, "it's not even close."
"The worst game of my career was when we lost to the Brownies, 51-0, at Three Rivers to start the [1989] season," Ilkin said. "I was hoping Pittsburgh would close the bridges because I was afraid people would jump. Really. They took it that hard."
Former Steelers coach, Hall of Famer and Cleveland native Chuck Noll would, in Ilkin's words, "tense up during Cleveland week." His predecessor, Bill Cowher, quite conversely tends to play the role of a child the week before Christmas.
Cowher, who played and served as an assistant in Cleveland, usually makes a point to acknowledge how special the rivalry is to him, often assessing that, though divided, the fans of each team have two main traits in common: a blue-collar work ethic and a deep devotion to their football clubs.
While making this pitch, his trademark serious demeanor usually disappears in the moment. Sometimes, his eyes bug-out a little. Every once in while, he smiles.
This week, however, nothing. Instead, Cowher almost appeared to empathize with the Dawgs.
"This franchise is storied in tradition ... and we've never lost any of the continuity that Cleveland lost when the Browns left [for Baltimore after the 1995 season]," Cowher said. "I'm sure they are still trying get over not having the team for those years."
Why, if Logan could only hear his coach ...
"But, I'm sure the playoff game has rekindled a lot of the passion from their end."
From this end, too. For example, those "Cleveland Still Sucks!" T-shirts some of your co-workers flashed Friday.
"You grow up here, and that's the way it is," Logan said. "It's those colors, man ... you're just taught to hate them. I do."
Or in other words, life, as Mike Logan knows it, is all good.
