The Ghost of Bill Cowher Lives

Bill Cowher might no longer be the Steelers coach, but we did see a little of his approach seep into the Steelers playbook Saturday night.

The knock on Cowher was that he was too cautious, too prone to pull the gameplan in at the first sign of a lead he could sit on. The result was some come-from-behind losses in AFC Championship games and comparisons to Marty Schotenheimer, at least until Cowher won Super Bowl XL.

Cowher might be gone, but his old wide receivers coach is still calling the plays in Pittsburgh, and with the game on the line, the Steelers got too conservative.
After taking a one point lead with five minutes to go, Pittsburgh's defense got the stop it needed, forcing a punt that gave the Steelers the ball back with three minutes to go. Two first downs and Pittsburgh can start booking its flight for next week. Heck, one first down and things get very difficult for Jacksonville.

First down was a Najeh Davenport run, which went for five yards. The Steelers went back to Davenport on second down for -1 yards and a third and six. Up to now, everything made sense. Pittsburgh had gotten into a doable third down situation and had forced Jacksonville to burn some timeouts.

But on third down, Pittsburgh had a couple of options. On one hand, they could simply hand the ball to Davenport again. There would be very little likelihood of him actually getting the first down, but it would force Jacksonville to burn its second timeout.

Or the Steelers could put the game in Ben Roethlisberger's hands. He'd gone 17 for 23 in the second half to lead the Steelers on a great comeback to take the lead. Admittedly he'd also thrown three picks in the first half, but in the second half he'd clearly shown he had a hot hand.

Arians tried to compromise, in a bad way. He called a quarterback keeper for Roethlisberger. It's the kind of play that would have been a fine call on third and two, but there was no way Roethlisberger was going to get six yards. He was stopped for one yard, Pittsburgh punted and a couple of minutes later the season was over.

The frustrating part of the play call was Arians (or Mike Tomlin's) lack of realization that time was on Jacksonville's side.Running three straight running plays in a game where Pittsburgh was held to less than 50 yards rushing could only be explained by trying to milk the clock. But even with that, when Pittsburgh punted, Jacksonville still had 2:38, a timeout and the two minute warning to go. There was virtually no situation where Jacksonville was going to run out of time. They could turn the ball over, they could lose the ball on downs, but needing only 20 yards, there was no was that they were going to find themselves running out of time.

That became even more clear when the Jags ran down the clock deliberately to the two minute warning, and wasted their last timeout on a failed challenge. Jack Del Rio didn't worry about losing the timeout because time wasn't an issue.

If the Colts or Patriots had been in a similar situation, they would have put the game in their quarterback's hands, watched them complete the short pass and walked away with a win. Ben Roethlisberger may not be in their class yet, but he's not too far away. At some point it's time to fully put the games in his hands.