HEINZ FIELD Surging clubs collide; Vick takes on Maddox

Two quarterbacks with contrasting styles from different generations will spearhead today's battle.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- They couldn't be playing much better for teams that couldn't be much hotter after an opening month that couldn't have gone much worse.
They are from different generations, with wildly contrasting backgrounds and methods of doing business, yet they will be linked forever to a coach who embraced both of them.
Now, they will oppose each other in a duel of diverse styles in a match-up nobody would have foreseen before the season -- and in a game with far more importance than would have been predicted even a month ago.
Michael Vick, who threatens defenses as much with his legs as with his passing arm, takes the surging Atlanta Falcons (5-3) into an intriguing game today in Pittsburgh with the equally hot Pittsburgh Steelers (5-3) and comeback kid Tommy Maddox.
Vick vs. Maddox
Vick is mercurial and often magical, a slashing, super-fast runner on one play, a polished passer on another who found stardom and a starting job after only one year in the NFL.
Maddox is the one-time 'wunderkind' who needed 10 years, ego-deflating trips to the minor leagues and a totally unexpected terrible start by the Steelers to find his way back into an NFL lineup.
What they have done in their dissimilar ways is rally their teams from 1-3 records to four-game winning streaks, lifting both into playoff contention.
Vick seems to be expanding the role of the combination runner-passer each week, leading the Falcons in both rushing and passing.
So fast and unpredictable, he is forcing defenses to throw out their traditional game plans to build totally new ones for him.
"Wow!" Steelers defensive coordinator Tim Lewis said. "Wow is all I can say. Barry Sanders used to make a lot of people miss, and I remember watching Michael Jordan dribble a basketball through three, four, five guys. He was going at one tempo and everyone else was at another. That's what this guy does. He's a superior athlete in a game of great athletes."
Opposite of Stewart
Maddox is slow and stay-at-home, a pocket passer who rarely thinks of abandoning it. He's the exact opposite of Kordell Stewart, the Pro Bowl quarterback he supplanted six weeks ago.
Yet no Steelers quarterback since the days of Terry Bradshaw has been so responsible for such a dramatic turnaround in so short a time.
With the Steelers on the verge of an 0-3 start, Maddox rallied them to a comeback victory over Cleveland, leading two scoring drives despite not being called on until the fourth quarter. With Maddox throwing at least two touchdown passes in all but one game since, he is 5-1 since replacing Stewart.
Changed the team
Just as importantly, Maddox has changed the mindset of a team that was jolted badly by early season losses to New England and Oakland, but now is beginning to look at itself as a Super Bowl contender again.
"He's got that charisma you look for in a quarterback. He's always had that," Falcons coach Dan Reeves said. "He's always had that natural ability, and now he's playing with an awful lot of confidence."
Reeves should know. He drafted Maddox for Denver in 1992 after the quarterback's sophomore season at UCLA.
Then Reeves took him along for short and equally unsuccessful stops with the Giants and Falcons. It wasn't until this season that Maddox began to prove Reeves knew what he was doing.