When it appeared the Baltimore Ravens would take the lead and maybe end the Cincinnati Bengals’ goal of getting back to the Super Bowl, what happened on a wild sequence at the goal line Sunday night looked very familiar to those who remember what occurred 17 years ago to the day in another AFC playoff game.
“Crazy,” said former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
“I was like ... whoa,” said Hall of Fame running back Jerome Bettis.
With the score tied at 17 early in the fourth quarter, Ravens quarterback Tyler Huntley had the ball punched out by Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson when he tried to jump over the goal line on a third-down play from the 1. Defensive end Sam Hubbard caught the fumble out of the air and ran 98 yards for a touchdown to give the Bengals the winning score in their 24-17 victory.
The play conjured memories for just about every former Steelers player and fan who remembers Jerome Bettis’ fumble at the goal line in Indianapolis that nearly prevented the Steelers from going on to win their fifth Super Bowl title in the 2005 season.
That play occurred with 1:20 remaining after outside linebacker Joey Porter sacked Peyton Manning at the 2-yard line on fourth down. Bettis was hit by linebacker Gary Brackett and the fumble was picked up by cornerback Nick Harper, who was running untouched the other way.
One difference.
“Ben made the tackle,” said former Colts coach Tony Dungy.
Curiously, Dungy was at the Bengals game in Cincinnati as a studio analyst for NBC’s “Football Night in America,” but said he never thought of the similarity to what happened in the RCA Dome on Jan. 15, 2006, until it was mentioned to him Monday morning.
“I’ve tried to block that play out of my memory bank,” Dungy said, laughing.
Probably for good reason.
The 21-18 loss to the Steelers was devastating to a Colts team that was considered the best of the Peyton Manning era. “Our best team by far,” Dungy said. Former Colts general manager Bill Polian would call the defeat “tougher than the Super Bowl loss to the Saints (in 2009).”
Dungy, though, still recalled the circumstances of the play that nearly derailed the Steelers from their Super Bowl run. And how close the Colts came to winning.
“We got stopped on fourth down and I told Gary Brackett the only chance we have is to knock the ball loose,” Dungy said on the phone. “Jerome’s not a fumbler so you really don’t think that’s going to happen. When it was on the ground and Nick picked it up, I thought we were going to win.”
But, unlike what happened In Cincinnati, Harper was tripped up by Roethlisberger when he inexplicably cut toward the middle of the field instead of heading toward the sideline, as Dungy said Colts players were always instructed to do.
“I didn’t think of me because they didn’t catch (Hubbard),” said Bettis, who missed the play live because he was on a plane headed to Miami. “If someone would’ve caught him, that would be different. The tight end (Mark Andrews) tried to get him. I got lucky because Ben made the play of his life to catch him.”
The tackle proved to be the game-saver when Mike Vanderjagt, the most accurate kicker in NFL history who had missed just one kick in the RCA Dome all season, badly shanked a 46-yard field goal with 17 seconds remaining that would have forced overtime.
“It’s funny, earlier in the day someone mentioned to me that it was 17 years to the day that that happened,” said Roethlisberger, who was out to dinner in Scottsdale, Ariz., and watching the Bengals game on his phone when the fumble occurred. “I didn’t think anything of it, and then you see that happen.”
Former Steelers coach Bill Cowher has listed Roethlisberger’s tackle as the greatest play of the quarterback’s 18-year career. And he was reminded of that watching what happened to the Ravens.
“Thank God we had Ben behind him, thank God he wasn’t doing the quarterback sneak,” Cowher said. “He had so many great throws, but that was the one play in that whole run we had that was the defining moment.”
Gerry Dulac: gdulac@post-gazette.com and Twitter @gerrydulac.
First Published: January 16, 2023, 6:25 p.m.