It was late at night – actually, early the next morning – after the Browns lost 29-9 to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Jan. 7, 1995 at Three Rivers Stadium in the 1994 AFC divisional playoffs.
That marked the third time that Pittsburgh, coached by former Cleveland linebacker/special teamer and ex-assistant coach Bill Cowher, had beaten the Browns that year. The Steelers had won 17-10 at Cleveland and 17-7 at Pittsburgh to earn the AFC Central with a 12-4 record, a game ahead of the 11-5 wild-card Browns.
How significant was that?
As the game was winding down, Bill Hillgrove, a native Pittsburgher and the Steelers’ now-longtime radio play-by-play announcer, was heard to say on his broadcast, “I can remember riding over to Cleveland and sitting in the bleachers at Cleveland Stadium when the Steelers and Browns used to play there on Saturday nights. The Browns would almost always win. So the Steelers beating the Browns three times in the same season is something I thought I’d never see.”
But for Browns head coach Bill Belichick, there was a different emotion. The Browns finished 6-10 in his first year in Cleveland in 1991, then went 7-9 in 1992 and ’93, both of which were seasons that the Steelers, beginning the Cowher era, went to the playoffs. All that caused fans in Cleveland to openly wonder, as they put it then, if the Browns had hired the wrong “Bill.”
The Browns had, in fact, interviewed Cowher, who departed the club following the 1988 season to follow head coach Marty Schottenheimer to Kansas City, for their head-coaching opening and liked him, but owner Art Modell felt that Cowher, who was just 32, was just too young for the job and went ahead and hired a veteran coach with Pittsburgh connections in Bud Carson. Carson lasted only 1½ seasons before getting fired, and when the Browns went looking for a coach once again, they zeroed in on Belichick, then the New York Giants defensive coordinator, almost from the start. They never seriously considered Cowher.
So, then, when Belichick got back to Browns Headquarters following losing the one-season trifecta to the other Bill and the Steelers 22 years ago, he was understandably fuming. Those three defeats fueled the fans’ opinions, and in fact seemed to substantiate them.
Belichick became even more upset when he got to his car in the parking lot in Berea and found that it was caked with rock-hard snow after a snowstorm followed by the arrival of a polar front while the team was away.
Apparently, Belichick did not have a scraper in his car, or didn’t want to waste time getting it, so he began trying to break up the ice by angrily pounding it with his fists as he cursed profusely. A security officer saw what was going on, got a scraper and offered it to the coach, who used it instead of his hands. He pounded so hard that he broke the scraper at the same time that he had finally removed enough ice to see to drive to his home in Brecksville.
Belichick just threw the scraper at the officer, hopped into his car and sped away.
That was a long time ago, but Belichick has a tremendous memory. He never forgets anything. And he is very proud.
Cowher is long gone from coaching, but Belichick’s path has crossed that of the Steelers many times since he arrived in New England as head coach in 2001. He would never admit it publicly, but deep down inside in a place of his gut that he may share with only a few people, if that, he wants to beat the Steelers more than he wants to take his next breath so he can continue to validate that the Browns really did hire the right Bill way back when.
Understanding all that, then, do you think that Belichick will use the Antonio Brown video incident, complete with Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin’s characterization of the Patriots as the a-word, as an incentive for Sunday’s AFC Championship Game between the two teams? Yes, I do, too. Absolutely. Without question.
Some of the pundits this week have been saying – emphatically so – that the Brown incident will not have any effect on the game. They are correct.
But it will definitely have an effect on the game preparation of the Patriots, all of whom, from top to bottom, are just as proud as their coach. And that’s just as important.
The Steelers poked the bear, and the bear doesn’t like to be poked.
Let’s watch and see what happens. It should be interesting.
