Football
Steelers rally beats Cardinals rally
Super Bowl 43 looked like a grinding Pittsburgh win before the two teams started trading thrilling comebacks.
Did someone make sure the Arizona Cardinals realized the Super Bowl has ended? If not they’re probably in an airport lounge somewhere trying to figure out how they’re going to come back one more time against that tough Pittsburgh Steelers defense.
The Cardinals got to Tampa by answering Philadelphia’s second-half comeback in the NFC Championship Game with a magnificent game-winning touchdown drive. Sunday night they played the opposite role. Down 20-7 in the fourth quarter the Cardinals scored a touchdown and a safety before Larry Fitzgerald raced 64 yards for the go-ahead score with 2:37 to go. But that was enough time for Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to collaborate with receiver Santonio Holmes on a trophy-winning drive.
Steelers 27, Cardinals 23. Super Bowl 43 was a beauty, not quite a match for the historically significant upset of a year ago, but a similarly thrilling game at the end, the would-be winning score one-upped by the real winner.
The record books will say the Steelers won it by going 78 yards in eight plays, capped off by Holmes’ toe-dance catch at the right sideline near the back of the end zone. But they really went 88, since the first thing they did after taking the kickoff following Fitzgerald’s long TD was back up 10 yards on a holding call.
Holmes caught four passes on the drive for 73 yards, including a 40-yard catch and run that turned the possession from a quest to get into field-goal position and force overtime into a shot at winning in regulation. First-and-goal at the 6. Holmes had a chance to catch the game-winner on the left side but the ball went over his head and through his outstretched hands. Catchable, but it would have been a nice one.
The next play was harder. Holmes got behind three defenders on the right side, snared Roethlisberger’s throw en pointe, inbounds, and hung on as he fell to the sidelines, Arizona safety Aaron Francisco hitting him as he went down. There was a review but little doubt. Touchdown, and the Steelers led 27-23 with 35 seconds left.
That was enough time for Kurt Warner to add one last drive to his legend. Ceded the middle of the field, he hit Fitzgerald and J.J. Arrington on back-to-back passes for 33 yards, from the Arizona 23 to the Pittsburgh 44. But the Cardinals had to use their last two timeouts after those plays and were left with just 15 seconds.
On the next play Warner was hit by LaMarr Woodley before he could get his arm going forward. He fumbled, the Steelers recovered and that was it.
It was a finish all the more remarkable because the game looked in the third quarter like it would devolve into a grinding beatdown by the Steelers. They’d opened the game with two long drives that resulted in a field goal — after an apparent Roethlisberger rushing touchdown was overturned on a challenge — and a touchdown for a 10-0 lead.
The Cardinals had run only five plays when they took possession a minute into the second quarter. They’d gained 13 yards and given 10 back on a penalty. But they got back into the game with an 83-yard drive highlighted by a 40-yard catch and run by Anquan Boldin to the 1. Warner hit tight end Ben Patrick for the score.
Then the Cardinals actually had a chance to take the lead late in the half following the game’s first turnover, a Roethlisberger pass batted into the air by defensive end Bryan Robinson and intercepted by linebacker Karlos Dansby at the Steelers 34 at the two-minute warning. Seven plays later Arizona had a first-and-goal at the 1 with 18 seconds left in the half.
Warner tried to hit Boldin for the score but linebacker James Harrison, who had taken a step in to fake a pass rush, bounced back and intercepted the pass at the goal line. He then rumbled 100 yards, tumbling over the opposite goal line as Fitzgerald wrestled him down. The longest play in Super Bowl history gave the Steelers, who’d been about to fall behind by four, a 10-point halftime lead.
When the Cardinals couldn’t get their powerful offense going in the third quarter, it looked like Super Bowl 43 had already settled into a long denouement. Fitzgerald, the game’s best receiver, hadn’t caught his first pass until the final minute of the first half, and, blanketed by Pittsburgh’s defensive backfield, he wouldn’t catch another in the third period.
Arizona’s running back by committee, Edgerrin James, Tim Hightower and Arrington, wasn’t finding any room to run. Meanwhile the Steelers offense chewed up most of the third quarter with a 16-play, 79-yard drive that ended in a Jeff Reed chip-shot field goal and a 20-7 lead. Harrison’s interception was looking like it would go down as the back-breaker, the play that turned a competitive game into a slow march to victory by the superior team.
But if there’s one thing the Arizona Cardinals, a thoroughly ordinary 9-7 team during the regular season, have shown in the playoffs, it’s that they’re no ordinary ordinary team.
Warner began finding Fitzgerald on quick slant routes that exploited Pittsburgh’s willingness to let the Cardinals throw underneath. Fitzgerald’s second, third and fourth catches of the game, along with gains on passes to Arrington, Hightower, Steve Breaston and Jerheme Urban, put the Cardinals at the Steelers 1, where Warner let Fitzgerald beat Ike Taylor on a jump ball for a 1-yard touchdown: 20-14.
After forcing a three-and-out the Cardinals drove 49 yards before stalling at the 36, but Ben Graham’s punt was downed at the 1. Steelers running back Willie Parker’s Herculean effort to escape the end zone on second down prevented a safety, but a holding penalty on the next play got the Cardinals their two points and the ball — and, with about three minutes to play, a chance at the win, something that hadn’t seemed possible a few minutes before.
Fitzgerald’s 64-yard touchdown put the Cardinals on top for the first time. He’d lined up wide right, with Boldin in the slot. Pittsburgh’s brilliant safety Troy Polamalu bit on Boldin’s move to the outside, leaving no help over the top when Fitzgerald slanted in and collected Warner’s pass in stride. He went in untouched.
A Cardinals defense that had stepped up heroically in the postseason, turning the Cardinals into an extraordinary team, needed one, maybe two stops in the last two and a half minutes to give the Cardinals their first NFL title since 1947, when the league and the game itself were barely recognizable compared to today.
Roethlisberger and Holmes, the game’s MVP, would have none of it. The Steelers became the first team to win six Super Bowls, which is five more than the Cardinals have played in.
It might be 60 years again before the Cardinals make it back. But not if the last month’s any indication. One thing about them: They do come back.
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. You can e-mail him at king at salon dot com. Facebook / Twitter / Tumblr More King Kaufman.
Can Tebow find salvation?
Updated: After losing his job in Denver, evangelicals' favorite jock faces an uncertain future in New York.
Tim Tebow (Credit: Reuters/Rick WIlking) [UPDATED BELOW]
You don’t need to be an evangelical Christian to care about the future of Tim Tebow. I’m a lapsed atheist myself. But with the resurrection of quarterback Peyton Manning in Denver, I wonder most about the future of the spiritual scrambler, who led the Broncos to the playoffs last year.
The Broncos signing Manning to replace Tebow is a no-brainer. He may be diminished by age and injury, but he is also the best quarterback of our time, not because he is a brilliant coach’s puppet (Tom Brady) or an on-field, off-field brute (Ben Roethlisberger) but by virtue of a fierce work ethic and a concentrated intelligence that is contagious and inspirational. Whatever is left at age 35 of him will make the Broncos better.
Continue Reading CloseRobert Lipsyte is a former New York Times sports columnist. His new memoir, "An Accidental Sportswriter," has just been published. More Robert Lipsyte.
The Super Bowl is not a job creator
Despite what civic boosters say, hosting the big game provides few long-term benefits
(Credit: AP/Michael Conroy) Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League, argued on “60 Minutes” last Sunday that the NFL is one professional organization designed to appeal to the economic interests of the little guy: Its revenue-sharing model, he said, gives a fighting chance to squads from Green Bay and Buffalo as well as to those from large media markets like New York, Los Angeles and Boston.
On the eve of the Super Bowl, Goodell was touting the familiar idea that the sport’s biggest game is a boon to economic development. But with the cost of a ticket now averaging $3,982 and 30-second television spots selling for $3.5 million, the Super Bowl can appear to be more an occasion for ostentatious excess than an engine of development.
Continue Reading CloseAlexander Heffner is a freelance journalist whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe. More Alexander Heffner.
Political lessons from this year’s Super Bowl
From jobs to health care, football's big game illustrates the factors that will dominate the 2012 election
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (Credit: AP Photo/Elise Amendola) Most Americans won’t need a justification to watch Sunday’s game, but if you’re a Salon reader you might think, even in passing, that celebrating the holiest day of violence, consumerism and class warfare on your couch is a betrayal of your values or a waste of your time. You might even imagine that it would be better to take a hike, read a book or meditate.
Not this Sunday, buster. It’s an election season. You need to watch this game to fully understand how jobs, religion, leadership and healthcare dominate every American contest.
Continue Reading CloseRobert Lipsyte is a former New York Times sports columnist. His new memoir, "An Accidental Sportswriter," has just been published. More Robert Lipsyte.
Enjoy the game? For the true fan, it’s all about agony
The New York Giants are in the Super Bowl. But for one obsessive, the question is what time to take the Ativan
Ohio State football fans (Credit: AP) “The truth is,” Nick Hornby wrote in “Fever Pitch,” his book about his obsession with Arsenal and British football, “for alarmingly large chunks of an average day, I am a moron.”
That’s a wonderful sentence by one of my favorite writers, but if Hornby is only a moron for only large chunks of the average day, he is doing a lot better than I am. I can honestly report that for the last few months I have been an absolute idiot for all but very small portions of the day.
Continue Reading CloseTed Heller's latest novel, "Pocket Kings," will be published in March. He is also the author of the novels "Slab Rat" and "Funnymen." More Ted Heller.
Small blunders kill Super Bowl dreams
For fans of the 49ers and Ravens, the road to the big game is paved with pain
Kyle Williams loses it Just when it looked like the NFC and AFC championship games were going to last until the Super Bowl, two fatal blunders brought them to an abrupt close. The stunning conclusions to two of the most tense, evenly matched conference championship games in recent memory were a painful reminder that although football is a team game, one miscue by a single player can wipe out thousands of hours of collective blood, sweat and tears.
It will be a sad and lonely night for Baltimore Ravens’ kicker Billy Cundiff, whose shanked chip-shot 32-yarder gave the AFC championship to the New England Patriots. Kickers must have strong mental constitutions: in a sport where bonds between teammates are cemented in blood and pain, they are not always regarded as full-fledged comrades to begin with, and so when they screw up, it’s even harder for them to deal with. The mantra “short memory,” which defensive backs are constantly shouting at each other, applies in spades to kickers. Cundiff could use a tall glass of Milk of Amnesia.
Continue Reading CloseGary Kamiya is a Salon contributing writer. More Gary Kamiya.
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