Steelers Now
The primetime stage-setting for matchups between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens in the late 2000s and early 2010s always seemed to fire up the masses. Take for example a Week 13 Sunday Night Football game in 2010.
With AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” in the background, Al Michaels painted the picture at the outset of the NBC broadcast.
“Pittsburgh and Baltimore, two cities separated by about a five-hour drive,” Michaels said. “Two great defenses. Since 2000, one and two in fewest points allowed. Twenty-two Pro Bowlers will be on the field in tonight’s game, including three Defensive Players of the Year — (Ed) Reed and (Ray) Lewis, and (James) Harrison on the Pittsburgh side.
“And Ben Roethlisberger is 6-2 when he starts against Baltimore. The Ravens are 5-0 in games that Ben has not started in his seven-year career.”
Both teams were 8-3 entering the tilt at M&T Bank Stadium. Roethlisberger had a sprained foot and left with a busted nose, too. The Steelers escaped with a 13-10 win and sole possession of the AFC North lead, one of Pittsburgh’s 21 regular-season wins against the hated Ravens during Mike Tomlin’s time in charge. He’d faced Harbaugh 36 such times.
“Blood and glory. Steelers and Ravens,” the Associated Press wrote afterward. “The words just seem to go together.”
Harbaugh, now in charge of the New York Giants, won’t soon forget the buzz around those contests. Him and Tomlin split four playoff clashes.
“The big picture things, I think about the Steelers games over the years, and Mike (Tomlin) and all those guys — Ben and Le’Veon (Bell) and (Cam) Heyward and (Troy) Polamalu and our guys and the feeling,” Harbaugh said Monday on “The Dominique Foxworth Show.” “I think Maya Angelou said, ‘You won’t remember what somebody said or what they did so much as you remember the way they made you feel.’ And I remember the way those games made me feel. Same with the New England rivalry.
“I’m still mad about three or four of those games. I guess I remember that more than the specific games.”
One that surely still stings is the last meeting between Harbaugh and Tomlin, which the latter’s team won after Tyler Loop curved a field goal wide at the final gun, giving the Steelers an AFC North crown and a ticket to the postseason. The play, as Steelers Now put it afterward, should be remembered as “The Catholic Crosswind.”
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now: Steelers Rivalry Sticks with Ex-Ravens HC John Harbaugh
