Over the years, I’ve attended at least ten Steelers home games. None looked or felt like last night’s 35-25 loss to the Packers.
Last night’s game looked and felt like a neutral-site game, with a large throng of Packers fans who were loud enough to force the Steelers to resort at times to a silent count.
Somewhere, Myron Cope was surely shouting, “Double yoi!”
It was one of the biggest Steelers regular-season home games, in years. Aaron Rodgers, in only his third home game as the team’s starting quarterback. Facing his long-time Packers team for the first time. And Packers fans overran the stadium in Pittsburgh.
Here’s how bad it was. When we ventured outside the venue to tape the Football Night in America podcast, the roars from inside made it impossible to tell whether the Steelers had experienced a good play, or whether the Packers had.
It had never been that way. Not in any of the times I’d been to Acrisure Stadium or Heinz Field or Three Rivers Stadium.
During a regular-season Vikings-Steelers game in 1989, when I foolishly showed up in full Minnesota regalia, I heard about it the entire game. Even though the Steelers had entered the game with an 0-2 record. Even though they’d suffered an embarrassing 51-0 blowout loss at home to the Browns to start the season. Even though they had lost badly to the Bengals in Cincinnati the next Sunday, 41-10.
In came the Vikings, who had realistic Super Bowl aspirations, and the home crowd was as loud, raucous, and zealous as it had been during the ‘70s. At one point, I wished I could dig a hole from my seat in the front row behind the Vikings’ bench and tunnel to the banks of the Monongahela River.
Six years later, at the 1995 AFC Championship, a 37-yard pass from quarterback Neil O’Donnell to receiver Ernie Mills at the two-minute warning set the Steelers up for the go-ahead touchdown. The entire stadium was shaking, to the point where I pondered the possibility that the upper deck would collapse onto the lower deck.
Every time I’d been to a Steelers game, the fans had been a factor. At times, they were a force. Last night, they were forced into submission.
Maybe it’s because Steelers fans don’t respond as well in prime-time games. Maybe too many of them decided to sell their tickets to Packers fans who were desperate to witness the first, and likely only, Green Bay game against Rodgers.
Maybe Pittsburgh sports fans generally have been driven to complacency by decades of the local baseball team struggling and to satisfaction by the three Stanley Cups the local hockey team has won since the Steelers last secured a Lombardi Trophy.
Maybe the Pittsburgh uniforms — the ugliest any NFL franchise has ever worn for a game — took some of the steam out of the home crowd.
Regardless, it was the first time I’d ever attended a Pittsburgh home game during which it felt like Steelers fans didn’t show up.
They have six days to recapture their edge. On Sunday, the 7-1 Colts return to town. With perhaps the best team they’ve had since Peyton Manning wore a horseshoe on his helmet. And with the Steelers, who have fallen from 4-1 to 4-3, firmly on the ropes.
I wish I could go to the game. To see how it looks. To see how it feels. To see whether Steelers fans can indeed recapture the magic that helped fuel six Super Bowl championships.
On Sunday night, that magic was gone. So far gone that I’m not sure what it will take to bring it back.
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