Baltimore Ravens-Pittsburgh Steelers Post-Game Thoughts: AFC Championship, part I

So this is how it ends. My own view seems to be shared by the majority in Ravensland: This was an amazing season, one nobody saw coming, and a loss in the AFC Championship game, while disappointing, represents---to echo Coach Harbaugh---a beginning rather than an end. For really, that's the key---that next season, and the season after, and many seasons to come, finds us right back in the playoffs. Because once you're inside, it's anyone's guess who survives the free-for-all and winds up in the Super Bowl. So much of what makes football these days simultaneously fascinating and maddening is the continual rising and falling of contenders. The Ravens have been no exception---in the playoffs one year, out the next ... it's a perpetual seesaw for all but those few teams that can rightly count themselves among the league's elite, with the Patriots and Colts at the top, and the Eagles, Steelers, Chargers, and Seahawks forming a slightly lesser tier.

If there's a common denominator to these teams, its consistency at QB and at head coach. For most of the past decade, the Ravens had one but not the other, until the lack of the former at last necessitated a change in the latter. Now we have a young head coach and an even younger QB, and unless the past 5 months have been a colossal (and cruel) tease, the pieces are in place to lift us into the promised land of Perennial Super Bowl contender. Just get to the playoffs each year, and if you're hot, and just a bit lucky, the pieces can fall into place for the 6th seed as easily as for the 1st.

Before I get to breaking down last night's game (and eventually, the season itself), I'd like to make a few quick points. Again the general mood in Baltimore seems to be disappointment tempered by gratitude and optimism for the future. We lost to a better team, yes, but at the beginning of the season who would have been so crazy as to claim the Steelers weren't the better team? And by a whole lot more than the 16 total points that proved to be the difference in 3 extraordinarily hard-fought games. They have a Super Bowl-winning QB throwing to a stable of talented receivers (even without Hines Ward) and a rising star at tight end. We have a rookie QB throwing to two tough but undersized possession receivers and a veteran tight end with way too many miles on his body ... when he isn't forced to stay in and block, that is. Come next January, if Joe Flacco isn't making the very throws he kept missing yesterday (God willing, to a legitimate gamebreaker of a wide-out), I don't think I'll be the only one in Baltimore who's shocked.

A few more points:

* If last night was the final appearance of Willis McGahee in a Ravens uniform, he acquitted himself more than well---without a doubt, he was the best offensive player in purple, and it goes beyond the hard-earned 60 yards on 20 carries or the 2 TDs. Remember the missed blitz pick-up against Pittsburgh in Week 15, the one that made him Public Enemy No. 1 in Baltimore? Well, last night he picked up blitz after blitz after blitz, throwing his body at those ferocious linebackers, it seemed, on every other down. For his efforts, he got a very scary concussion, but if there's any justice, he earned far more from Ravens fans in terms of respect. He certainly earned mine.

* Darren Stone is most likely going to go down in Ravens' lore as one of the precious few goats of 2008 for his inexcusably boneheaded late hit that negated Jim Leonhard's final punt return and moved the ball from the 39 to the 14. Down 2 points with 6:50 to go, such a loss of field position (against the number 1 defense in the league) can hardly be dismissed. But keep in mind, those who feel tempted to argue that Stone's penalty cost us our best shot at stealing a win---two plays later Flacco hit Heap for 20 yards to put us on the 32 yard line with 6:18 remaining. Three plays later, Flacco was picked off by Troy Polamalu to all but end the game. In essence, then, Stone cost us 7 yards and 32 seconds. Given the offensive output to that point, and the fact that---according to numerous Steelers---Flacco was staring down his receivers all night, it's hard for me to see how a game-winning drive would have been much more likely had Stone pulled up.

* The roughing the kicker penalty on Edgar Jones near the end of the first half was about as ridiculous a call as I've seen. Did the ref think Jones willed Berger to fall on him? But that one call is hardly evidence that the refs were biased in Pittsburgh's favor. Steeler fans have legitimate gripes of their own with a few calls, starting with the one that ended the first half with Pittsburgh's field goal unit still on the sideline. (It certainly looked to me, upon further review, that Roethlisberger got that spike off with 1 second to go---in any event, the refs wouldn't have been out of line to give him the benefit of the doubt.) That pass interference that set up our first TD was a bit ticky-tack. Otherwise, the refs correctly ruled on two challenges, once in favor of each team.