Ravens looking to snap Heinz postseason skid

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

Once again, two games in a season weren’t enough for the Ravens and Steelers, division opponents who can’t stand each other yet can’t seem to stop playing one another.

For the second time in three seasons and the third time in a decade, they’ll meet in the playoffs — their eighth game in the last three seasons alone.

And it will be in Pittsburgh, where January football is about as uninviting as it gets for an opposing team. And where the Ravens have never won in the postseason.

Somehow, both teams figured it would come down to this: beat the other, and advance to the AFC championship game. Any other scenario almost would have been incomplete for two rivals who finished the season with 12-4 records, and whose two previous games ended in a combined score of 27-27.

The Ravens figured they might not be done in Pittsburgh when they won there 17-14 on Oct. 3, against the Ben Roethlisberger-less Steelers.

The Steelers guessed this wasn’t over even after Troy Polamalu’s forced fumble led to their winning touchdown and a 13-10 victory in Baltimore on Dec. 5.

That game wound up deciding the AFC North — Pittsburgh won the tiebreaker based on division record — and forced the Ravens to beat the Chiefs 30-7 on Sunday for the chance to play a rematch of their rematch against the Steelers.

“The Jets and Patriots are great teams, but they’re just getting started,” Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward said, referring to the other AFC divisional matchup. “This has been going on for years.

“We play them two, sometimes three times a year, and every one comes down to the end. I’m sure we’ll see them again in the playoffs.”

He sure was right.

If history is any indicator, Saturday’s game will be close, low-scoring and violently physical. The Steelers’ 23-14 victory over Baltimore in the AFC title game two years ago featured a half-dozen ‘Oh, wow’ hits and is regarded by Pittsburgh players as the gold standard for taking aggressive hitting a step higher than that seen during the regular season.

On Monday, the Ravens’ Terrell Suggs described Ravens-Steelers games as being like “Armageddon.”

That AFC title game two years ago is the only one of the seven matchups since 2008 not decided by three or four points.

The winning margin during each of the four regular-season games since 2009 has been three points, and the average score between them since Mike Tomlin became Pittsburgh’s coach in 2007 is 18-17, Steelers.

Back-and-forth verbal repartees once were common between the two. The Ravens once referred to Steelers receiver Plaxico Burress as Plexiglas, and they supposedly put a bounty on Ward for his succession of borderline hits.

But the chattering has become more respectful and less personal the last two seasons, partly because former Ravens defensive coordinator Rex Ryan left to coach the Jets.

Former Ravens coach Brian Billick and ex-Steelers coach Bill Cowher disliked each other and it showed, but current coaches John Harbaugh and Tomlin have developed no such public feud and probably won’t.

On Monday, while Ryan was emphasizing that the Jets-Patriots rivalry “is about Bill Belichick vs. Rex Ryan,” Tomlin wasn’t about to drop his own name while heaping praise on the Ravens. Tomlin said nothing remotely controversial, and his players — who had the day off after practicing Sunday — likely will follow a similar path when they return today.