Back on top: the Steelers coach returned to the smash-mouth style of football he knows best and with stunning results

Football Digest, April, 2005 by Barry Wilner

BILL COWHER IS ANYTHING BUT a fool. Still, he knows he allowed himself to be fooled in 2003.

Cowher is as meat-and-potatoes as anyone in the Steel City. He'd fit perfectly on a construction site or in a coal mine. His kind of football has a Midwestern bent: a grind-it-out ground game and a ferocious defense.

When Cowher changed his ways in '03--enamored of a trio of wideouts who could be game-breakers and thrilled with a revitalized quarterback, Tommy Maddox, who was far more reliable than predecessor Kordell Stewart--he was playing with a raging furnace.

He got burned.

This season, he got even. No more game plans built around chucking the ball to Hines Ward, Plaxico Burress, and Antwaan Randle El. Sure, they were playmakers, but they would have to make their contributions within the tried-and-true scheme on which Cowher has built his coaching legacy in Pittsburgh--for almost all of his 13 years in charge.

Duce Staley was acquired to be the featured back, although longtime Steeler Jerome Bettis wound up being even more important in the backfield. The offensive line was healthy and led by two stars, center Jeff Hartings and guard Alan Faneca. A rookie QB with stunning maturity, Ben Roethlisberger, came in when Maddox went down in Week 2 and was unbeatable.

Overseeing it all, his magnificent jaw jutting out to midfield at times, was the brilliant Cowher, FOOTBALL DIGEST's Coach of the Year.

"Running the ball is what we do best," Cowher says. "Playing defense is also what we do best. When we put them together the way we did at times this season, we can be very successful."

Indeed. The Steelers, who sank to 6-10 in '03, were the most successful team in the league during the regular season. They put together a franchise-record winning streak, better than anything the champions of the 1970s managed, and finished 15-1, also a team record." Their only loss came in Week 2.

In consecutive weeks, with a rookie quarterback, they manhandled two unbeatens, the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles. When they were tested in close games, that kid QB brought them back to beat the Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Giants.

Roethlisberger, Bettis, Hartings, Faneca, Ward, Burress, linebackers James Farrior and Joey Porter, and safety Troy Polamalu got plenty of credit, but the man at the center of it all was Cowher. "We got back to our strengths," Cowher says. "I can agree that last season we got away from that and we threw more and it didn't pay off. It wasn't what we do, and I'll take the blame for being tempted into doing it. And we learned from it. You look at what we've done this year. It's what we've traditionally tried to do. We had the personnel for it, and we used those guys correctly. And it worked for us. We lined up and we didn't try any tricks--we came at you. We challenged teams to stop us, adapt to what we do, because we're going to keep doing it and, hopefully, doing it well."

After the '03 debacle, in which the Steelers ranked 31st in the league in rushing--yes, next-to-last, ahead of only the Detroit Lions--Cowher brought in the rugged Staley as a free agent He would be the main back, while the 32-year-old Bettis would be a complement. When it didn't happen quite that way--Staley was unable to stay healthy--Cowher wasn't afraid to turn to Bettis, confident "the Bus" had plenty of mileage left. Bettis responded with one of the best seasons of a brilliant career that could land him in the Hall of Fame.

"I've always felt it's important to have two backs like that, because taking that pounding every week wears you down," Bettis says. "Bill recognized that, and he knew Duce and I could share the load. It's an ideal situation for both of us."

The quarterback situation wasn't so ideal when Maddox hurt his elbow in a Week 2 loss to the Baltimore Ravens. While the Steelers were eager to get a young stud at the position in last April's draft, they were unwilling to move up from the 11th spot to do so. Cowher felt either Phillip Rivers or Roethlisberger would slip down that far if things broke right, and there were some other QBs the team liked, as well.

When Roethlisberger, a product of Miami of Ohio, was available, he quickly was snatched up by Pittsburgh. The plan was to groom him this season behind Maddox, but when Maddox went down, Cowher had little choice but to rely on the youngster. With each week's strong performance, Roethlisberger earned a more prominent role in the offense. So when the Steelers were stymied on the ground or their defense got leaky, he was ready to carry them.

Give Cowher tremendous credit for having so much faith in Roethlisberger. Brian Billick hasn't showed much of it with young Kyle Boller in Baltimore, and Cincinnati Bengals coach Marvin Lewis was scared stiff to play rookie Carson Palmer at all in '03.

Roethlisberger was praised for his work down the stretch of a comeback win at Jacksonville that lifted the Steelers to 11-1. But it was Cowher's skill at handling the clock that was just as impressive; it gave the Steelers a chance to turn the game around in the fourth quarter for a 17-16 win.