Resurrection Or Doom
Schedule's Most Difficult Month Will Tell The Tale
By Jerry DiPaola

October could be a horrifying month for the Steelers, and it has nothing to do with the holiday at the end of it.

The Steelers failed to take a winning record into October for the sixth time in coach Bill Cowher's 11 seasons, and that wasn't the worst of it. They started the season with lofty expectations that included hopes (more accurately, demands) of earning a Super Bowl berth—not just from the fans, but from themselves.

Instead, they turned into bumblers and fumblers, leading the league in turnovers (10) after two games. The next-most inept team had six. Runningbacks

Plus, Plaxico Burress, a wide receiver who insisted he wanted to "dominate" this season, caught only two passes in the first two games and couldn't keep his feet in bounds while catching a pass near the back of the end zone in a game against the New England Patriots. More fundamental errors that also included holding penalties and false starts shoved the Steelers to the bottom of the league in penalty yards (169 in the first eight quarters of the season). Do the math. That computes to the equivalent of two 10-yard sacks per quarter.

The loss to the Patriots exposed the winners as true champions—as if their Super Bowl title wasn't proof enough—and the Steelers as paper champions, a phrase Lee Flowers once slapped on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The loss the following week to the Oakland Raiders featured three lost fumbles and Raiders 32-year-old running back Terry Kirby returning a kickoff for a touchdown—all in the fourth quarter of what was a close game.

"You can't turn the ball over," offensive coordinator Mike Mularkey said. "We didn't turn it over last year and we're turning it over this year."

Mularkey could do no wrong last season, his first as coordinator, but this season his offense was ranked 27th in the 32-team NFL after two games. "If you want to call it honeymoon over, I don't know what to call it," he said. "I just know we didn't make mistakes like that last year."

The Steelers have time to make things right, but they are faced with a challenging schedule that includes four road games in the next five (Oct. 6 in New Orleans, Oct. 13 in Cincinnati, Oct. 27 in Baltimore and Nov. 3 in Cleveland).

The only game at Heinz Field in that stretch is a Monday night affair against the Indianapolis Colts and their (ouch!) potent passing game featuring quarterback Peyton Manning and wide receiver Marvin Harrison. In two games, the Steelers' secondary showed itself incapable of handling a good passing attack.

But the Steelers need to leave Cleveland with a 5-3 record to take into the second half of the season. That would give them a sufficient cushion in the case of a second-half collapse. More realistically, however, it would afford them an opportunity to earn a home playoff game by winning six of their final eight games (not an unreasonable goal considering they have home games against Atlanta, Houston, Carolina and Baltimore).

There is certainly precedence for the Steelers recovering from a slow start to earn a playoff berth. Only about 10 percent of the teams that started 0-2 since 1978 reached the playoffs, and the Steelers are two of them.

In 1993, they opened the season by losing to the San Francisco 49ers, 24-13, and the Jerome Bettis-powered Los Angeles Rams, 27-0. They recovered so well and so quickly that they were able to finish 3-3 and still make the playoffs.

Four years earlier, the Steelers suffered two of the most horrific back-to-back losses in franchise history—51-0 to the Cleveland Browns and 41-10 to the Cincinnati Bengals. Again, the Steelers made the playoffs, and they even won their first game in that postseason by recording a 6-1 record from Thanksgiving through New Year's Eve.

In those seasons, the Steelers had a potent, two-headed running game.

First, it was Tim Worley and Merril Hoge, who rushed for 770 and 621 yards, respectively, with a total of 13 touchdowns.

Four years later, it was Leroy Thompson and Barry Foster (763 and 711 yards), with a total of 11 touchdowns.

The Steelers of 2002 may yet evolve in that same manner, but Jerome Bettis and Amos Zereoue started the season slowly. Bettis had only 76 yards on 18 carries and Zereoue 26 yards on 10 carries. Neither player had a touchdown in the first two games. Coaches appeared to be spelling Bettis, 30, at too-frequent intervals in an effort to extend his career two or three years into the future.

Mularkey said it was not a newly conceived plan. "For some reason, people think it's a new scheme," he said. "It's not new. We alternated 21 (Zereoue) in there last year, too."

The Steelers also were leaning more heavily on their passing game, thanks to a strong preseason aerial showing. But that summer-time fling was accomplished, largely, without starting quarterback Kordell Stewart, who missed nearly half of the preseason with a concussion. As a result, he struggled to get in sync with Burress during the first two regular-season games, and the Steelers found themselves falling behind with not enough resources for an successful comeback.

Meanwhile, the defense turned out to manned by mere mortals, and left many people wondering how it was able to lead the league the previous season.

The offense used to make the defense's job easier by possessing the football. The defense used to help the offense by converting the opponents' third downs into punts. Instead, the Steelers were an average of nine minutes behind 2001 in time of possession and the defense allowed first downs on 17 of 33 third downs.

"We didn't complement our defense very well," Mularkey said. "(The opponent) was holding onto the football and we weren't. Our job is to keep it out of the hands of the opponent. We did not do that.

"Last year we didn't turn the ball over like this and we controlled the football. It's tough to score when you don't have it and we just keep handing it back to (the other team) and giving them the opportunity to score. We can't do that."

It's a good lesson to take on the road in October.

Jerry DiPaola covers the Steelers and NFL for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.