ShareThisFor the time being, this is Larry Fitzgerald's Super Bowl.
The superb Arizona Cardinals receiver will beat you or he won't.
It's pretty much up to him, with all possible respect to the relevant forces the Steelers will deploy to alter his intentions.
Fitzgerald's blinding skills and sunny disposition are dominating the ramp-up. Journalists the world over have learned in three days in Tampa that all you need to do to locate him is walk into the nearest news conference and find the largest knot of boom mikes and cameras and notepads.
"I want to be a dominant player in this game," he said. "But as I watch myself on tape, there's just such a lot to improve."
It doesn't seem to matter much to him that he is perhaps the most dominant player in the game right now, because his bedrock humility not only precludes such an acknowledgment, but it's what made him such an iconic figure at the University of Pittsburgh, where he scored 34 touchdowns in just 26 games.
At Pitt, Larry Fitz was celebrated as much for his comportment as for his athleticism. Commentators, curmudgeons and columnists alike rhapsodized about his old-school on-field demeanor, his overt sportsmanship, his delightful habit of handing the football to the nearest official when he scored rather than instigate a Broadway musical.
Five years later, that's all gone.
This is the NFL baby, and now even Larry Fitz runs around like Ray Lewis, screaming and taunting and occasionally pointing, if rarely at himself.
"People ask me about that," he said. "I think I've just been overtaken with jubilation a couple of times. I think it's just been the magnitude of the games. Hopefully, I'll be able to regain my composure for the Super Bowl."
Cardinals fans, and there are dozens of them, wouldn't want Fitzgerald to alter a single particle of his existence for Super Bowl XLIII. Whatever is fueling him can't be fooled with. Maybe you've noticed what has been going on.
In this postseason, No. 11 in red has turned himself into Jerry Rice, only better.
In the NFC title game against Philadelphia, a team that had beaten the Cardinals by four touchdowns at the end of November, Fitzgerald made nine catches for 152 yards and three touchdowns, one of them on a tailored-for-him flea-flicker called "Philly Special."
Is there a Pittsburgh Special in the works in Tampa? If coach Ken Whisenhunt says there isn't, he's sitting on a crock at the bay.
In three playoff games, Fitzgerald has 23 catches for 419 yards and five touchdowns, 10 more yards than Rice ever accumulated in any of his glorious postseasons, and the Super Bowl hasn't even been played yet.
"I'm just a firm believer in what you did last week doesn't matter," said No. 11. "You keep studying. I'm going to have to play my best game of the year to help this team win. So you keep paying attention to the little things all week. Getting the right depth. Cutting on the right foot. Not giving defensive backs any hints. Don't look back on the curl routes. If there's a route that's supposed to be 12 yards and you turn it into 11, then a defensive lineman is going to get his hand on that pass maybe because you came out of your break too fast.
"I mean, if you're not trying to be the best, I don't understand what your motivation is in this game."
The best way to find out if you're the best is to better the best, which is only what he'll be trying to do Sunday against the top defense in the NFL, the one that brought the Steelers to their seventh Super Bowl.
"They're just so fast," Fitzgerald said with a slow shake of the head. "Just so physical and so well-coached. You rarely see them out of position. When it's third-and-5 and you throw a ball into the flat to a back and he's one-on-one where a linebacker has to make the tackle, he makes the tackle."
Unless perhaps it's Larry Fitz who takes that ball in the flat. Maybe he breaks it. Spins away. Extends the football over the goal line, spins away again, and scores anyway. Something like that worked against the Eagles.
Then he'll get up and nobody will have to guess who scored that Cardinals touchdown. Fitzgerald will let 'em know. He's demonstrative now. It's the big time.
"I can't put into words," he said almost sheepishly, "the feeling you have when you've scored a touchdown in the championship game. It's overwhelming."
Now the Steelers need to ensure he has no further indescribable feelings.
(Contact Gene Collier at gcollier@post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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