ShareThisSome caution has been exercised this week in avoidance of the B word, at least until tackle Max Starks responded to a question with a blitz of blurted B's -- three times in two minutes, unofficially -- just before Wednesday's spirited Pittsburgh Steelers practice.
"We're not going out looking for bounties," said the man charged with protecting QB Ben Roethlisberger's blind side Sunday in Baltimore. "If they have to talk about bounties to gain some incentive to play, that says a lot about them. At this stage, when you're a professional athlete, you play to win and that's it. If you have to bring bounties into it, then you really have to go back and look at yourself."
As a quick review, Baltimore linebacker Terrell Suggs boasted to a radio station in the days after the Ravens dropped an overtime decision in Pittsburgh Sept. 29 that bounties were out on Steelers receiver Hines Ward and running back Rashard Mendenhall, and that it was common for Baltimore defenders to offer cash incentives for plays that eliminate opponents from the game. The Ward price was presumably left on the table that night, but Mendenhall had his shoulder snapped in two. Kendall Simmons got a ruptured Achilles tendon, but there was no evidence anyone cashed in on that.
Steelers coach Mike Tomlin wouldn't bite on the topic this week, and Ravens coach John Harbaugh said that he has talked with Suggs on this matter, but that no bounties existed.
"That's ridiculous," Harbaugh said.
Funny, Baltimore blogger Brian Billick, whose credentials extend to having been the Ravens head coach in the nine years that preceded this, Harbaugh's rookie campaign, wrote later in the month that bounties were a common motivator in NFL locker rooms, even if talking about them is, in a word, stupid.
Like it or not for the Steelers then, this weekend represents "The Trip To Bountiful," although it's likely to be significantly more violent than the 1985 film of the same name for which Geraldine Page picked off the Oscar for best actress. Still, there's a parallel, as life inalterably imitates art. Or is it the other way?
Page played Carrie Watts, a genteel old woman whose last tangible yearning was to return to the tiny Texas town of Bountiful, where she was born and grew up. But she's trapped in a 1940s Houston hothouse with her shiftless son and conniving daughter-in-law, neither of whom will spring for a bus ticket.
Bountiful proves a very hard place to get to along a metaphorical road littered with angst and frustration, much as the end zone has become to this Steelers offense, which is where the parallel ends because Geraldine Page probably had a better running game.
"That's part of football," explained right guard Darnell Stapleton. "It's very frustrating at times when you're not being effective, but you just gotta stay focused and know that eventually something good is going to happen."
This was the exact mind-set at work in the fourth quarter Sunday against Dallas, when the something good that would eventually happen was named Nate Washington. Other than Washington pulling in three passes for 41 yards on a tying touchdown drive in the final minutes, the Steelers' "attack" had consisted of two field goals, two fumbles, a failed fourth-down conversion, one missed field goal, and six Mitch Berger punts.
The offense thus limps into the season's final three weeks under the statistical burden that only six teams in the league are less productive than the Steelers, and few places offer a more ghastly opportunity for continuing failure than Baltimore.
"I don't think you can ever give up in that situation; you can never go out there thinking you're not going to be able to make a play," said Washington, whose 16.3 yards per catch is the best such figure amid a receiving corps that is otherwise underperforming. "You want to be the guy who makes it. You want to be the guy who is getting interviewed in the locker room the next week.
"I want to be accountable to these guys. I know I've said that in the past and I haven't always done it, but I've worked hard and I think it's starting to pay off."
The accounting elsewhere in the Steelers' passing game -- the running game having removed itself to the point of irrelevance -- isn't terribly encouraging. Roethlisberger is the league's 23rd ranked passer. Ward is coming off his least productive day as a pro (one catch for two yards). Santonio Holmes will start Sunday knowing he has exactly as many touchdowns this year as Baltimore safety Ed Reed (three).
They'll try quickening their pulse Sunday against a team that has allowed only one touchdown in the past three games.
"It'll be hard-fought," Roethlisberger promised. "There'll be a lot of guys limping out of there on both sides."
Sounds like a bountiful event.
(Contact Gene Collier at gcollier@post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
