What a Steel

Roethlisberger: 'Made of the stuff of greatness'

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Stunned; wrung out; incredulous; exhausted. And that's just how it felt in the press box. How both sets of players must have felt after that momentous night in Tampa we can only imagine.

The emotional energy of the final eight minutes would probably have been enough to power a small city, with such wild swings of fortune that you could barely keep up. It was the kind of roller-coaster ride where you just clung on for dear life, and then looked around in disbelief at the end.

The massed ranks of the TV pundits were equally discombobulated. In all the myriad of predictions and imagined scenarios, no one - and I mean absolutely no one - had postulated anything like that which we had just witnessed.

And of course, no one would have done. It was too wacky and way out. You would have been laughed out of court; dismissed as a candidate for the funny farm.

We all knew Pittsburgh possessed a great defence, but there was little suggestion it was likely to start scoring record-breaking 100-yard touchdowns (step forward James Harrison).

We were all well aware Arizona possessed a quick-strike scoring capacity, but no-one could really see them unravelling the Steeler defence to the tune of 16 points in five fourth-quarter minutes, especially having struggled to put points on the board for so much of the game (step forward Larry Fitzgerald),

And we all suspected Ben Roethlisberger was made of the stuff of greatness, with his league-leading fourth-quarter comeback record, but we didn't dare to anoint him quite yet as the heir-apparent to Joe Montana, the acknowledged master of the Super Bowl miracle finish.

But all those unexpected outcomes - plus many more besides - were left swilling around in Raymond James Stadium as we tried to digest the events of the previous three-plus hours.

Tried and failed, fairly miserably. Because the more you looked at it, and evaluated what you had just witnessed, the more it seemed just totally unlikely, improbable and inconceivable.

Tension

This time last year, I sat in breathless awe in the aftermath of the Giants-Patriots game, convinced we had just been part of something special on that final drive, and the whole of America marvelled at the late, late heroics.

This time, we had a whole fourth quarter of the seemingly impossible; 15 minutes where the pure theatre was ramped up with each successive play, taking the tension and drama to new heights by the minute.

"Dumbfounded" was how Pittsburgh safety Ryan Clark described that frantic final stanza; and America agreed with him whole-heartedly. Commentators struggled for words (briefly - you don't keep the TV talking heads speechless for long over here!) and there just wasn't an adequate description for Holmes' big moment in 'Pittsburgh South' as it was dubbed by ESPN.

(Indeed, it must have felt like a home game for the Steelers as they had at least 80 per cent of the stadium, which made you think the local touts must have done some great business with the folks in black-and-gold for those fans to be SO dominant in numbers - yet each team receives just 12,600 tickets each)

It was pretty unanimous, though, that this was one of THE great games - ironically on the 20th anniversary of Super Bowl XXIII (just XX different, you see), which marked the great Montana-to-John Taylor last-minute touchdown. Holmes won it with his miracle catch from Roethlisberger to draw immediate parallels with the 49ers' legendary quarterback.

This 'Terrible Towel'-twirling bunch made things incredibly difficult for the underdog Cardinals right from the start and it took them most of the first quarter to find their feet. The second quarter belonged to Arizona - apart from that fateful James Harrison interception return - while the third was another Steeler-dominated time period (albeit with only three points to show for it).

Weird

And then things really went loco - which was only to be expected, I guess, considering how I have lauded the utterly weird and wacky nature of the season.

So, in all honesty, we should have seen it coming all along; a game of such complete unpredictability, it defied the imagination.

The only real question from my perspective, having had the NBC coverage to watch rather than the Sky Sports team, was exactly how ballistic did Nick Halling go at the end? Did the unabashed Pittsburgh fan rein in his natural instincts and put on a carefully neutral face? And has he come down off Cloud Nine yet?

I saw him several times around the Media Center but never managed to corner him for long enough to find out the answers to the day's most pressing questions (like, was he nervous at sharing a commentating booth with Jerry Rice?).

In the end, we should have realised there was just too much Steeler karma in that stadium, too much offence and defence, and too much Santonio Holmes. Just about the only thing Pittsburgh didn't do well was call correctly at the coin toss. Otherwise, they had either offence, defence or special teams play to spare, and all the ice-cool approach that a Super Bowl demands.

Which, again, makes those comparisons between Montana and Roethlisberger all the more intriguing. Except that the former 49ers legend never won two Super Bowls in his first four years in the league.

And that at just 26, he has plenty more time to put the record out of sight. Somehow, you just feel we haven't seen the end of gridiron's Big Ben, and, under coach Tomlin, they are heading for a genuine Promised Land of many more days like this to come.