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Wearing the brave face
Steelers receiver Hines Ward continues to lead the AFC in receptions
Chaz Palla/Tribune-Review
James Farrior
Chaz Palla/Tribune-Review
Yet, somewhere in all of that gloom, doom and apparent hopelessness, Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward has detected a silver lining of sorts.
"What better way to play Cleveland?" Ward said.
What better way, indeed, for the Steelers to launch a resurrection than against their long-time, bitter rivals from Ohio, the team the Steelers beat three times last season, including once in the playoffs, when even a 33-21 fourth-quarter deficit wasn't too much to overcome?
The initial meeting with Cleveland this season, when the Browns had possession for 37:28 and quarterback Tim Couch hit 20 of 25 passes for 208 yards and running back William Green rumbled for 115 more on the ground, is part of the problem.
The Steelers are hoping to make this second chance at the Browns part of the solution and parlay it into a winning streak that salvages their season.
"It's so bad that you can dwell on it and look at it and you could easily say things, but it's to no avail," punter Josh Miller said. "I think everyone's just putting the hard hat back on and getting after it, I can speak for everybody on that.
"Everybody's doing their thing to get better. No matter how badly things suck right now, we're not out of it."
Nor are they willing to concede otherwise.
"We have the character and the personality on this team to never give up," Ward said. "It's one of Coach (Bill) Cowher's teams, you just fight to the end. Things aren't what we want them to be, but there's still hope.
"We've dug ourselves a deep, deep hole, but we still get an opportunity to pay all three (AFC North) teams again. If we just take care of that, take care of our division, we'll have a good chance."
The Steelers' best -- and perhaps only -- chance is to defeat the Browns, the Bengals (Nov. 30) and the Ravens (Dec. 28 in Baltimore), the three teams ahead of them in their division, and then let the playoff chips fall beyond that. Cowher's message to his team in the wake of the San Francisco game was to concentrate on regaining control within the division first and foremost (the loss to Cleveland on Oct. 5 snapped a nine-game AFC North winning streak).
Cowher has sent other messages, fullback Dan Kreider said, by not getting on his players as he has in years past after losses. Kreider interprets such uncharacteristic benevolence as an indication that Cowher has been satisfied by his team's effort, if not the results that effort has produced.
"I think Coach is doing a good job putting things in perspective every week," Kreider said. "You can't really look at the games and say guys aren't playing hard. I think we feel like, 'Hey, we keep playing the way we are, hard, we might have an opportunity to turn this thing around.'
"We've done well in our division, and all we ultimately have to do is win our division. I don't care what our record is going into the playoffs. At that point, hopefully, we'd be playing our best ball."
The Steelers haven't played their worst ball of late, despite losing six of seven, according to quarterback Tommy Maddox.
The San Francisco loss was typical of the way things have gone of late, Maddox suggested. The Steelers had opportunities to make plays and assume control but for some reason or another couldn't make enough of them.
"We were hanging in there and playing smart and doing the things we needed to do, and all of a sudden, you look up and you're down 17," Maddox said. "We had our opportunities offensively. A play here and a play there (and) that game's a whole different ballgame. You can look back at a lot of our games and say that, unfortunately.
"That's the thing, we gotta continue to play the way we've been playing, but when we get in the fourth quarter and have an opportunity to win, we gotta seize those opportunities."
The Steelers seized such opportunities often a season ago. This time around, they've failed to do so in Denver, against the Rams, in Seattle and at San Francisco throughout their slide to the AFC North cellar.
"You can't sit there and look back on what we should have done, what we could have done," Ward said. "That's over with. We have to look at what's ahead of us.
"We're going to go up to Cleveland and see if we can steal one up there."
Added Maddox: "It breeds upon itself. You do it a couple times, and all of a sudden ... "
Such a belief has fostered a business-as-usual attitude at practice and in the Steelers' locker room, even as their outlook has turned bleak.
"We're playing like a 3-7 team, but we can play much better," Ward said.
Such a devastating record "doesn't make sense," Miller said. "You can't imagine how it happens. You watch the tape and you see how it happens.
"It's sad to say but we're only two games out, so maybe this isn't over yet."
The Steelers are running out of time to be able to make such a claim, and they know it. But they also realize they're a winning streak away from getting back into contention.
"We don't have a lot of room for error, but that possibility is still there," linebacker Jason Gildon said. "We just have to go out and take advantage of it.
"You have to go into it from that standpoint, as a team. Individually, each player knows what they have to do to go out there and be effective and help us win as a team. We all have to believe the same thing, that we still have a chance."
