Kovacevic: How to win on busted brilliance

SAN DIEGO -- Truth be told, the play didn't work.

Certainly not as it had been drawn up.

"I went out, got to the line, looked at how they were, and it was just like practice," Le'Veon Bell was telling me after the Steelers' 24-20 upending of the Chargers in the final second Monday night at Qualcomm Stadium. "So I thought, good, I know how it's going to go."

The kid shook his head.

"But man, they really played it well."

San Diego's defense, he meant.

Stop for a moment and look at that photograph up there. If pictures tell 1,000 words, then 999 from this one would suggest anything but success. The ball was at the 1, only five seconds remained, and Bell, taking the snap from the wildcat, moved to his left only to find the Chargers making ominous penetration. You see Roosevelt Nix dutifully burying the blitzing corner Jason Verrett, but no fewer than three linebackers -- Manti Te'o, Denzel Perryman and Donald Butler -- almost instantly are in position to shut it all down.

And yet, somehow, this was the finish:





'I DON'T OVER-COACH L-BELL'

The above was Mike Tomlin's response when asked how Bell pulled off this play, and he added, "The qualities that make him what he is are unique. They're not coached things."

This couldn't be more accurate. Bell has done wondrous things in the running and passing games from the moment the Steelers found him in the second round of the NFL Draft two years ago. And all indications are that he's only finding his way past the first gear.

But to fully process why this play was called in the way it was called, it's necessary -- and painfully so -- to rewind to Tomlin's mind-numbing decisions in the loss to the Ravens, particularly those in which on two fourth-and-shorts in overtime, he opted to not have the league's best running back touch the ball. He was ripped for that far and wide, including right here, and he undoubtedly was ripping himself, as well.

So here were the Steelers, needing a field goal to tie, holding one timeout and risking it all -- including the tie if the play went awry badly enough that the timeout couldn't be called -- because Tomlin wasn't about to make the same mistake a third time.

Let's not kid anyone, either. That's precisely why it happened.

Just listen to the coach's explanation when asked if he had enough time to call a timeout if the play wouldn't have resulted in a touchdown: "I'm going to have to call timeout. I feel that way. I'm hoping that I do. We have to run the football. We have Le'Veon Bell. We have the opportunity to win the game, we're on the road and in a hostile environment ... we have to play to win and we did."

Say what?

Just about all that makes sense out of all that were the fourth and fifth sentences, the ones about having to run the football and having Bell.

Michael Vick would have been an unmitigated disaster but for two late splash plays, Antonio Brown had only three catches and ... and never mind, because they had Bell.

Tomlin was asked if it was an easier call because his offense had found some rhythm.

"We're just trying to win," he came back. "We're trying to win the game. I'm not going to over-analyze the call. I'll leave that to you guys."

OK, someone else asked, but what about having just five seconds.

"We're just trying to score and win."

So, after Heath Miller caught a 15-yard Vick pass to the 1, San Diego called a timeout, with coach Mike McCoy hoping to keep his team from being caught off-guard. Meaning from the actual play, not the player.

"He's a great player," McCoy said of Bell in that specific situation. "We knew what we were dealing with against a player like that."

But that didn't stop Todd Haley from calling the play the Steelers had been practicing all week and Tomlin approving that call, apparently without any discussion.

"No," Tomlin said when that came up. "We were going to run the football."

The key participant was equally aware.

"We knew coming into the week if it ever came down to a play where we have to have it, we were going to that wildcat play. When it actually came, it was the last play ... and I just knew we were going for it."

'OK, IT'S ON ME NOW'

The Steelers hit the huddle with their standard goal-line package except, of course, for not having a quarterback. Though Tomlin praised Vick afterward, it couldn't have been more clear that neither he nor Haley trust him at the level of even a subpar NFL backup. There was no way they'd put this game in his hands. And since, once again, everyone knew what was coming, the charade of actually having a quarterback was dispensed, too.

Not that Vick had any problem with it.

"It thought it was an excellent play call," he said, "and I knew it was going to get in."

McCoy went with extra beef, dispatching six linebackers, three to either side of the football, aware not only that Bell would do the running but also that the Steelers couldn't afford to go too far to either edge for fear of running out the clock.

I asked Bell what he saw from his singular view in the shotgun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJDFLBvH70Y

Did you catch that one remark?

"OK, it's on me now."

The ball was snapped cleanly from Cody Wallace, and Bell immediately embarked to his left. No real deception there, either, as that was the side the fullback Nix had taken. Nix, as mentioned, easily nullified his corner.

Heath Miller went kamikaze into Te'o, then plopped on top of him for good measure.

David DeCastro, the right guard quietly having a wonderful season, would take on the best supporting actor role, tasked to use his athleticism and come all the way across to pull against one of those extra linebackers. And he did exactly that, plowing into Perryman.

But that's where it got hairy.

Because he was moving laterally, DeCastro couldn't get the forward thrust he needed on Perryman. And Bell, pretty much following DeCastro at that point, pinballed backward.

"There was kind of a pause there," DeCastro said, and that wasn't welcome.

Worse, Butler, a six-year vet among the San Diego linebackers, had somehow sneaked through all this down low. And he grabbed Bell's upper legs.

"Guy got me good, too," Bell said. "He made a great play."

Not nearly as great as what followed. Because Bell, defying at least a few chapters of any physics textbook, thrust his torso forward, kept the ball aloft with both hands and broke the plane of the end zone before Butler's grip on his legs could come into play.

Behold two more photographs that complete the sequence of the picture at the top ...