Dismal effort ends, likely, playoff hope
Hines Ward said the loss to the Ravens may have been their worst ever.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The Pittsburgh Steelers may have played a worse game under coach Bill Cowher, may have been more overmatched at the line of scrimmage, may have given their quarterback less protection, may have mounted less offense.
Just don't ask them to name specifics, not after a 27-0 loss to the Baltimore Ravens Sunday not only ended any faint hope they had of repeating their Super Bowl championship but exposed the very reasons why they won't.
"This was maybe our worst game -- ever," wide receiver Hines Ward said.
These Steelers have never begun to play the way they did in winning their final eight games and the NFL championship last season. Even if they do play well in their final five games -- and there is nothing about a team with a 4-7 record to suggest it will -- it is much too late to save this season.
Repeat as Super Bowl champions? This team never gave itself a chance.
It all started early
Maybe it was all the bad karma following Ben Roethlisberger's helmet-less and seemingly unnecessary motorcycle crash injuries in June. Or maybe it was the questions raised and the confusion caused by coach Bill Cowher's refusal to clarify his status past this season.
Or maybe, as running back Willie Parker presciently suggested a few weeks back, maybe this team simply wasn't as hungry to win as last year's team was.
Whatever the reasons, the Steelers will have plenty of time to assess how much could go so wrong so quickly only 10 months after this almost identical cast did almost everything right.
"We didn't show up," Ward said of the Steelers' worst shutout loss under Cowher since a 27-0 defeat to the Rams in 1993. "We fell behind and guys had their heads down. That's very uncharacteristic for us. When we fell behind, we started pressing and we couldn't get anything going."
It kind of describes their season, too.
Best would be 9-7
Even a five-game winning streak to end the season would get them only to 9-7, a record that probably wouldn't be good enough to make the playoffs.
Now they're playing for next season, for draft position, to figure out what their biggest trouble areas are, and how to address them. Maybe they're also playing for their coach to decide if this was his final season with them.
"These next five games should mean a lot to the guys on this team," Ward said. "We're going to find out who will be here next year. We will find out who will keep practicing hard and keep working hard. We have to keep working and keep fighting."
The Steelers must win three of five, a pace they haven't kept yet, merely to finish 7-9 and avoid matching their worst record under Cowher, the 6-10 marks of 2003 and 1999.
There were negatives aplenty in the Ravens loss, one that ranks with a 37-7 defeat to Dallas in the 1997 opener as the worst of the Cowher era. The difference is that 1997 team came back to reach the AFC championship game and fell four points short of making the Super Bowl.
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