Harbaugh embraced the history and meaning of Baltimore at Pittsburgh. “To me, if you love football, there is no greater place to be,” he said. “Playing there, in that great stadium, against that great organization, those games have always been great games. We’ve always felt like it’s a rivalry. We’ll continue to consider it to be a great rivalry. We’re excited to go play it – we always are. We respect them, and we love playing against them. I suspect they feel the same way.”
Running back Ray Rice, now headed to Pittsburgh for the seventh time time in five years after experiencing the 2008 and 2010 seasons end at Heinz Field, loved the stakes every time the team boarded a plane for a quick flight to the Steel City. “It’s old-fashioned, old-school, hard-hitting, and physical,” Rice said. “We don’t like them, but at the same time, we’ve got a lot of respect for them. It’s always one of those things where each team knows just how much is on the line.”
“Some say the rivalry with the Steelers is filled with hate. I don’t call it that. I call it respect. We respect each other. It may look vicious at times, but both teams play the same way. We impose our wills on each other by the way we play. It’s as physical as can be, but there is real respect among the players.”
This would be the first of two meetings in three weeks between the teams with the Ravens headed to Washington to play the Redskins before seeing the Steelers in Baltimore on December 4th. The Steelers had won four in a row coming into this game at Heinz Field and Roethlisberger had recuperated from other injuries, so the Ravens were mildly skeptical all week, believing he might find some way to get on the field on Sunday night because of the importance of the game.
But on game night, the Steelers came out for pre-game warm ups in hideous throwback uniforms from 1934 without their leader Big Ben. These duds looked more like leftover costumes from the old Saturday Night Live skit with John Belushi and The Killer Beers. It was a ridiculous look that, amazingly, still sold plenty of NFL licensed jerseys to fans in Pittsburgh. These hideous sweaters with thick gold and black horizontal stripes almost took the edge off the Steelers mystique. They looked more like a punch line than a football team. They looked more like escaped prison inmates in a Three Stooges skit than a team capable of beating the 7-2 Ravens.
There would be no Ray Lewis chasing Ben Roethlisberger on the field this night as No. 52 stood on the sideline in support of his teammates. Big Ben’s right arm was in a sling.
On this night it would be Byron Leftwich, a quarterback whom Ozzie Newsome coveted in the 2003 draft that instead netted Kyle Boller, who was in his second tour of duty in Pittsburgh and now on his fourth NFL team, starting in lieu of the two-time Super Bowl champ Roethlisberger and backed up by 15-year NFL veteran Charlie Batch.
The Ravens managed just one touchdown in Pittsburgh on this nationally televised Sunday Night Football game – a punt return where Jacoby Jones once again simply glided through holes and missed tackles, flying 63 yards into the end zone, reprising his “Choppa City Juke” dance from Week 2, this time on the other side of Pennsylvania. It didn’t take Jones long to understand the Ravens-Steelers rivalry on the way into the stadium before the game. “Beer cans hitting bus, middle fingers, everything,” he said. “You’d have thought we were murderers or something.”
The only other touchdown of the night came when formerly flat-footed Byron Leftwich ran away from Terrell Suggs and the Ravens secondary that missed him badly taking poor angles while missing multiple tackles, allowing a relatively immobile quarterback to scramble 31 yards into the end zone for the Steelers longest run of the night. Leftwich, who earlier in the week had joked with the Pittsburgh media about how he wasn’t a threat to run, appeared to tweak something on the right side of his torso on the run and subsequent flop into the end zone. He was hampered all evening by the injury, but took every snap for the Steelers.
Somehow, the Ravens managed to win 13-10 in Pittsburgh behind a punt return and a pair of field goals from Tucker, who continued to make big kicks, showing a flare for calm and cool. He loved the stage, and his teammates liked that he wasn’t just a kicker. He was a football player. He was showing that he was trustworthy in every situation, and the bigger the occasion and the grander the stage, he was going to come through. He was the difference in this three-point win in Pittsburgh. The Ravens suddenly had a two-game advantage in the AFC North.
On the way off the field, Ray Rice was captured running into the locker room with a Terrible Towel on his head. Some Ravens fans wondered what he was doing with it. Some Steelers fans thought he was being disrespectful. Turns out, it was neither.
“Actually, I asked a [Pittsburgh] fan to trade,” Rice said with his trademark big smile. “I’ve been trading jerseys with guys on the other teams at the end of games. A fan traded me my gloves for his towel. So I didn’t do anything wrong. I actually walked out with it, and I think I’m going to save it in and put it in my basement to cherish the rivalry. Where I’m at in my career, you cherish these rivalries and the moments. I apologize for those who saw it with disrespect. I thought it was a cool gesture with a fan there. Obviously getting out with a victory was the important thing.”
