KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The fog was as thick as split-pea soup, and it was rapidly descending on Arrowhead Stadium, and there were 75,678 folks, most of them clad in red, who were desperately throwing their voices against the fog, against the mist, against the chill. It can be a very simple thing sometimes, playoff football.
You make a play.
Or the other guy makes a play.
The other guy’s name in this instance was Ben Roethlisberger, and he had the ball in his hands, third-and-4, a minute and a half left in this frosty rock fight. He had taken the snap and rolled left, and the noise reached a crescendo: so many Kansas City football ghosts lurking, the Chiefs having already lost five of the seven home games they’ve played in the postseason, almost every one of the losses excruciating.
“I liked the look in our eyes,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said. “I liked what I saw.”
The 70,000 or so Chiefs fans here, and the others with their eyes desperately clinging to television sets all over town, probably were the only ones hoping those eyes would soon turn misty and filled with doubt. For much of America, Steelers-Patriots was the predetermined, pre-christened Game of Next Week, the Steelers hoping to make their 16th AFC Championship Game since the merger, the Pats already qualified for their 12th.
But America had to wait for the result of this play, watching Roethlisberger scan the field, searching for another white jersey. The Steelers hadn’t scored a touchdown all night, had six times settled for field-goal attempts, and six times Chris Boswell had bisected the goal posts.
The Chiefs actually tied the game for about eight seconds a few minutes earlier, Alex Smith finding tight end Demetrius Harris all alone in the back of the end zone to tie the game at 18-18 … for about as long as it took referee Carl Cheffers to turn on his microphone and explain why he had tossed a flag on the play: holding on tackle Eric Fisher.
Arrowhead grew silent.
Later, K.C.’s star tight end, Travis Kelce, was anything but.
“That was horses–t, flat out,” Kelce said. “We had our jugulars ripped out because the ref felt sorry for James Harrison. [Cheffers] should not even be able to wear a zebra jersey ever again. He shouldn’t even be allowed to work at f–king Foot Locker.”
So, you know, it was pretty emotionally charged at Arrowhead.
Roethlisberger: “It’s all about getting the first down. We get the first down on that play, it’s all over. You have to make those kinds of plays.”
And he did. He found Antonio Brown. Most weeks, Roethlisberger runs out of adjectives describing what a treat it is to throw touchdown passes to his favorite target. But this one was every bit as important, every bit as sweet as six. This one clinched the game. The Chiefs were out of timeouts (because in big games, let’s be frank, Andy Reid teams are always out of timeouts at the worst possible time), and soon they were out of season.
Steelers 18, Chiefs 16: It may not have been as thrilling as the Cowboys-Packers classic that preceded it, but the Steelers weren’t searching for style points. If anything, they were trying to get on the bus as quick as they could, so they could get on the plane as quick as they could, so they could start to prepare for the Patriots as quick as they could. The Pats, after all, already had a day on them.
Tomlin, for one, seemed eager to start the work week as soon as possible.
“They went down he field on us on their first possession and we didn’t blink,” Tomlin said of the Chiefs’ early 7-3 lead. “I like that resolve. And then we took that resolve and went out and continued to play on a high level.”
High enough, anyway. Field goals won’t be good enough next week in Foxborough, Mass., but the good news is the Steelers will bring Roethlisberger and they will bring Brown. They will bring Le’Veon Bell, who methodically picked apart the Chiefs, rushing 30 times for 170 yards. And, of course, they will bring the mystique of Steelers Nation.
That might mean less in Foxborough than just about anywhere in the world, of course, but that won’t matter to Pittsburgh. For sweet No. 16, the Steelers will bring their fists and a puncher’s chance, and they’ll be glad to take their chances with that.
