Lesson from how the Steelers lost Super Bowl XXX: When you have good wide receivers, use them
Posted: 2012
The Steelers showed up for Super Bowl XXX at Sun Devil Stadium a little tense.
They were double-digit underdogs to the swaggering Dallas Cowboys, who boasted many remnants of the 1992 squad that may have been the greatest in NFL history, and this time around had Deion Sanders.
What Dallas didn't have was a wide receiving corps that — in terms of depth — could match the Steelers, who boasted Yancey Thigpen, Ernie Mills (the most underrated receiver you never hear about), Andre Hastings (see previous) and Kordell Stewart. (Charles Johnson, a mediocre pro, was the 5th member until injuries ended his season; Corey Holliday, who might not've been a legitimate NFL player, was adequate as a 5th option.)
Sadly, Bill Cowher and Ron Erhardt decided against exploiting this tremendous advantage against a suspect Dallas secondary. Neil O'Donnell took most of the snaps under center, and an astonishing 31 rushing plays occurred, although a couple were drawn up as passes.
Unfortunately the Steelers' honchos proved in the last game of the regular season at Green Bay that they didn't trust their own success. The Packers, with league MVP Brett Favre, needed that game to secure a home playoff game the following week. The Steelers had faint hopes of securing AFC home field advantage that were dashed in the first quarter when the Chiefs dominated Seattle. So, they were playing for nothing vs. a team playing for something significant.
Despite this lack of incentive against what might've been the league's 2nd-best team, on the road, and twice trailing by 11 — a deficit usually insurmountable even in the Steel Curtain era — the Steelers, in spite of themselves, essentially ended up winning the game, if you don't count Yancey Thigpen's end zone drop with 16 seconds left. Fred McAfee, a special teams captain pressed into starting tailback duty because of decisions to sit Erric Pegram, Bam Morris and John L. Williams, was given a jaw-dropping 17 carries. When the 4-receiver sets were used from the shotgun, Green Bay's traditional linebacker/nickel/dime packages could not cover them all, particularly in hurry-up mode.
Dallas could do little better in the Super Bowl. They had Deion Sanders, but the other cornerback was Larry Brown, who covered no one all day yet somehow exited with the MVP. Darren Woodson was an elite safety but more a hitter than a coverage man. A startling amount of tackles were made by Scott Case, Dallas' 12th-year nickel/dime back. Their linebacking corps was pedestrian.
What's more, the field gods handed the Steelers a tremendous gift — the turf was horrible, negating almost any outside running, seriously reducing Emmitt Smith's repertoire. Passing would set up nearly all of the scores.
So isn't it troubling, then, that Dallas opened it up in the air and somehow, with only one usable wide receiver, managed to get Michael Irvin on single coverage constantly while building a 13-0 lead … while the Steelers opened the game with 2 handoffs.
Many will say Neil O'Donnell just wasn't good enough to win. Entirely true. O'Donnell was almost the worst kind of NFL quarterback because it was never clear if he was really a starter or backup. After 1992, the Steelers decided he was a starter and matched the offer Tampa Bay made, spurning a chance from 93-95 to try another course in the draft or free agency, where Jeff Hostetler among others became available. He was injured virtually every season and could not throw a pass deeper than 20 yards.
Off-target the entire Super Bowl, O'Donnell rarely hit receivers in stride. His odds would've improved greatly had the Steelers junked the "throwaway plays" (as Paul Maguire accurately called them), specifically the 2nd and 10 handoff. The 1995 Steelers were very good in one category — scoring in the last 2 minutes of halves. They did this even at the end of a putrid first half in the Super Bowl.
The record shows that with 4 or 5 wideouts, from the shotgun, in a hurry-up situation, O'Donnell was at his best. Defenses simply couldn't cover this many elite receivers. He was relegated to throwing mostly on obvious passing situations and almost always on short, mechanical, underneath routes (the Steelers' longest play was a 19-yard completion to Andre Hastings). Presumably, had he been launching from the beginning of the game, he would've found a groove much earlier, maybe a big play or 2, and not delivered the yip-fest of the second half.
"Throw to score; run to win," was Erhardt's motto upon arriving in Pittsburgh in 1992, a catastrophic view of football that rightly led to his replacement by Chan Gailey, who had installed the 5-receiver set in the 1995 season. You win by scoring, and you win by doing something that works. As Paul Maguire repeatedly complained, the 4- and 5-wideout sets are what worked.
No one can watch this game and not be crushed for Bill Cowher. He coached the hell out of this game. His players were tense but not scared. He rallied the defense. It was his game plan that bombed, and yes there is a difference between game plan and coaching. He never should've put a running back on this field the whole 60 minutes.
The Dallas Cowboys, whose pro football eminence was fading fast, approached this game similarly to the 1979 Steelers of Super Bowl XIV but with even more disdain. They had no interest in a 60-minute slugfest. They clearly wanted to make a few plays, enjoy an early blowout, and go home. From about midway through the 2nd quarter, Dallas mailed it in. If only the game hadn't been hand-delivered to them, from a couple bad passes and a heap of bad strategy.