With game on line, Cowher lays egg
PITTSBURGH – Steelers coach Bill Cowher comes off as Mr. Macho, a guy who would do anything to help his team win a game, a coach who knows the rules, knows the game, knows the players and … well, you get the picture. If you look up the word “arrogance” in the dictionary, it probably has a little picture of him right next to that word.
Well, my image of Cowher changed forever as Sunday afternoon fell into Sunday night. It seems Mr. Macho took a couple of timeouts home with him after letting 40 seconds tick away at the end of a 34-34 tie with the Atlanta Falcons.
His reasoning?
“I thought about it, but I didn’t want them to think about going for it,” Cowher said.
This, don’t forget, comes from a guy who always wants to dictate to an opponent. He always wants the upper hand. He wants to make the decisions, set the strategy and, one of his favorites, set the tempo.
Yet, with a key game on the line, Cowher left it up to Atlanta coach Dan Reeves.
The Falcons faced a fourth-and-3 from the Steelers’ 37-yard line and ran the clock from 46 seconds down to eight before calling timeout. Stop the clock with, say 35 seconds remaining and what are the Falcons going to do?
They are on the road and have battled back from a 17-point deficit against a team many expected to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl. If they were going to attempt to get a first down, they would have stopped the clock themselves.
But still, even if they would have thought about going for a first down, it was a decision they would have had to have made all by themselves.
Cowher made the wrong call – the wimpy call – and maybe in the next day or two, he’ll come to realize it. It’s one thing to choke under pressure, which he did. It’s quite another to try to hide your choke behind some lame excuse.
And that wasn’t Cowher’s only misspeak on this day. He said he didn’t think his offense got too conservative in the fourth quarter when Atlanta was scoring 17 unanswered points to earn this tie.
He didn’t think handing the ball to Amos Zereoue eight times in the fourth quarter out of 14 plays was conservative, not even when his quarterback was throwing for 473 yards and his best two receivers teamed for 392 receiving yards. And, yes, four of those passes came after Atlanta had already tied the score, so the ratio is even more lopsided prior to Atlanta’s last touchdown.
Cowher was the only person in a room full of NFL players who said there is a place in the league for ties.
“Yes,” he said. “If you were out there on the field today, those guys played their hearts out. Both teams. I don’t know how much they had left in them.”
Well, maybe Cowher should have asked them. Because all the ones I asked said they’d rather still be out there playing, even risking a loss, instead of standing by their lockers talking about a tie.
Somehow, Cowher went from being a player’s coach to being a wimp. He doesn’t wear it well, either. Let’s hope he realizes it soon. The season is at stake.
Sports editor Mike Ciarochi may be reached at mciarochi@heraldstandard.com