Steelers Show Giants How It’s Done
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
As the Giants and their fans continue to suffer the pains of watching Eli Manning grow up before their eyes, they will be asked again and again for patience and understanding.
Great things take time to develop, they will be told. Progress in the NFL comes slowly and painfully, and often at great cost. Yes, the present looks bleak, but the future holds rewards the likes of which Giants fans have not experienced in, oh, 15 years or so. You just need to sit back and wait and it will come.
Don’t you believe it for a moment. It’s all excuses, an elaborate smoke screen to buy time for a front office that has no idea how to win or what to do next.
A year ago today, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New York Giants were virtually the same football team. After Week 14, the Steelers were 5-8 and about to suffer their most humiliating loss of the season, a 6-0 defeat to the Jets. The Giants were 4-9 and in the midst of their season-ending eight game losing streak.
Both their head coaches, Bill Cowher in Pittsburgh and Jim Fassel in East Rutherford, were on the verge of being run out of town. Both starting quarterbacks, Tommy Maddox and Kerry Collins, were the targets of scorn in the stands and the press. Both teams were eagerly looking for help in the upcoming NFL draft.
A year later, everything has changed for Pittsburgh and nothing has for the Giants. Coming off their 17-6 win over the Jets on Sunday, the Steelers are 12-1 and arguably the favorite among the three AFC teams that have a chance of meeting the Eagles in the Super Bowl.
Coming off their 37-14 loss to the Ravens, their sixth straight defeat, the Giants are spiraling down the same drain their season washed out in last year. Only this year, they can’t even look to the draft for a savior, since they gave away their first-round pick in the trade for last year’s savior, Eli Manning.
Meanwhile, Ben Roethlisberger, the QB the Giants could have had outright with the fourth pick last year, has led the Steelers to 11 straight victories.
This week, the best of the NFL and the worst of it will meet at the Meadowlands, where their similarities, but mostly their differences, will be on display for all to see. Cruel fate or dumb luck? As the man used to say at the two minute warning, you make the call.
The 2004 Steelers are basically the same outfit that staggered home 6-10 last season and nearly cost coach Cowher his job. But Pittsburgh’s ownership was smart enough to do two things: Draft Roethlisberger after the Giants and nine other NFL teams let him pass by, and hold onto The Jaw and allow him to make the necessary changes to his staff.
Cowher’s key move, it turns out, was to fire his defensive coordinator, Tim Lewis, and replace him with Dick LeBeau. Operating with essentially the same personnel Lewis had, LeBeau switched to a 3-4 scheme and a more aggressive, blitz-heavy program that was the polar opposite of the relatively passive Lewis approach.
Under LeBeau, the Steelers have the stingiest defense in the NFL. Lewis, meanwhile, caught on with the Giants, who boast some impressive yardage statistics but have allowed 95 points in their last three games. “Aggressive” is a word not normally associated with Lewis or his Giants defense, even before the loss of Michael Strahan and surprising rookie DB Gibril Wilson.
The Steelers also added RB Duce Staley from the Eagles, and that was basically it. The new Steelers were pretty much the old Steelers, the same in every respect but results. The only apparent similarity is that once again, they allowed the Jets to score six points against them. This year, though, it wasn’t nearly enough.
The Giants, on the other hand, traded away four draft picks to get Manning. They swept out Fassel and his entire staff and replaced them with a quasi-military force under the command of Tom Coughlin. They dumped Collins and signed former MVP Kurt Warner as a backup for Manning. They shed a half-dozen parts of the 2003 defense, including all the linebackers, and rebuilt with spare parts collected from around the league. They tested and cut three place-kickers before settling on Steve Christie. They tried to patch and staple together their leaky offensive line through the free agency and the draft.
By the time the season began, the 2004 Giants bore very little resemblance to the 2003 Giants.
Except here we are, heading into Week 15, and all the Giant maneuverings have bought them exactly one more win, and they will be lucky to get another. They certainly won’t get it this week. Despite the Giants’ protestations to the contrary, the Steelers are living, breathing proof that change in the NFL doesn’t have to come slowly, that great improvement does not necessarily have to follow a prolonged period of great suffering.
The case can be made that the 2004 Steelers are an abberation, that Roethlisberger is a freak, and that, generally speaking, NFL rebuilding is a long, slow, painful process. But clearly, it is not impossible to go from mediocrity to contention overnight. The Steelers have done it. The Giants could not.
It is too early to blame the coach; even the hard-nosed Coughlin can’t seem to get more out of the players than his mild-mannered predecessor did. You can’t blame Warner for getting old, and you can’t blame Manning for the sin of being too young.
What you can blame is the belief among owner Wellington Mara, GM Ernie Accorsi, and their staff that in this NFL of false parity, good things will eventually happen to those who wait, that incremental progress is a cause for celebration. The Pittsburgh Steelers put the lie to all that kind of talk, and this Sunday, the Giants will get to stare their lies, excuses, and justifications squarely in the facemask.
Mr. Matthews is the host of the “Wally and the Keeg” sports talk show heard Monday-Friday from 4-7 p.m. on 1050 ESPN radio.