Kovacevic: Cam ensures it's never Curtains

With all due respect, it's a darned good thing Chidi Iwouma didn't wear a uniform number in the nineties.

Because when the Steelers' Super Bowl XL champs were celebrated in a Heinz Field end zone at halftime of Sunday's game against the Browns, a boisterous celebration between the group that bused football glory back to Pittsburgh a decade ago, the most stirring of the alumni introductions came as the numbers climbed higher and higher.

"Number 91!" the PA bellowed. "Aaron Smith!"

Huge roar. Only Jerome Bettis had heard one louder to that point.

"No. 98! Casey Hampton!"

Big Snack got an even bigger roar.

"And No. 99 ... Brett Keisel!"

Sonic. Boom.

"So nice," Cam Heyward was saying once the home team's standard shishkabob-ing of the Browns was complete by a 30-9 count. "You look at what those guys meant to this team, to the city ... it's great to see the D-line appreciated. It was so Pittsburgh, huh?"

Yep. That's where we live. That's who we are.



Sure, Ben Roethlisberger can shrug off a bum foot and come "out of the bullpen" -- his own description -- to throw for 379 yards and three touchdowns. Antonio Brown can pile up 10 more catches for two TDs and a signature flip over the goal line. Martavis Bryant can sprint half the field in a blink and need only six touches for 178 yards. And it's all a blast.

But the foundation of this franchise, the underpinning, the soul, is the same today as the day Chuck Noll found Mean Joe Greene with the fourth overall pick in the 1969 NFL Draft.

It's Heyward flattening poor Cameron Erving on this second-quarter sequence ...



... and it's Heyward flicking away poor Isaiah Crowell -- with one tree-trunk arm, no less -- as if he were an upside-down fly:



Tons of sports terminology gets overused, and labeling someone a 'beast' or describing his modus operandi as 'beast mode' ranks painfully high on that list.

But it can't be stated strongly enough with No. 97.

'WHAT DID I DO? WHAT DID I DO?'

The above quote, if sprinkled with added exclamatory effect, came from Heyward in the moment after his monstrous double-whammy, Vince Williams was telling me. Williams was the linebacker charging after Crowell from the other side, only to arrive with no meat left on the Dawg bone.

"I get there and Cam's wondering what he did, but he's screaming it out," Williams recalled with a laugh. "So I told him, 'Man, what you did was ..."

Uh, I'll leave the rest of that out, this being a family enterprise and all. Suffice it say Williams reminded Heyward that he has quite the aptitude for football.

I had a five-second Vine of the play on my iPhone and shared it with a few others who hadn't been able to appreciate it as much as Williams at the time.

"Whoa!" Arthur Moats shouted after a glance. "I mean WHOA!"

He summoned over fellow linebackers Bud Dupree and Terence Garvin. They were even more vocal.

"One man! One hand!" Garvin concocted immediately.

Even Heyward came off as a bit stunned when I showed him.

"I got both those guys?" he said. "Hm."

He grinned a bit. That's as far as he'd go. He finally found out what he did.

Oh, he hardly got cocky about it. He's not that guy at all. When he isn't demolishing backfields, he's kind to acquaintances and strangers alike, he's beyond generous with charitable endeavors, and he's ... well, he is the guy who chased down Art Rooney II after this game to thank him for a family gift the chairman sent for the Heywards' newborn child.

"Thank you, Mr. Rooney," he said. "We'll always treasure this."

And in focusing solely on football, this exemplary young man never seems satisfied, not with the Steelers as a whole, not with his own work. He's always pushing for more.

The latter might have been best evident after the previous three weeks, each of which saw the defense bend far too badly in the fourth quarter. Happened in Kansas City, then at home against the Bengals and Raiders. And after the latter, even though it was a victory, Cam brought out the blunt shovel: "We played like crap on defense."

Yeah, they really did. Especially against the run, which is why that was the coaching staff's emphasis all week in preparing for Cleveland. Not so much because the Browns have the next Jim Brown in the backfield -- they don't -- but because run defense has been a founding principle in these parts, again, going back to Noll and Greene. John Mitchell, in his 22nd season as defensive line coach, was relentless on the subject. So was Heyward, according to what a couple of his teammates shared.

The result for the Browns: 15 yards on 14 carries.

Oh, and six sacks of Johnny Manziel, nine other tackles for losses, six quarterback hits, an interception, three passes defensed, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery.

"They made some plays," Manziel said.

To his credit, so did he, completing 33 of 45 for 372 yards, much of that with classic Johnny Football flair in bolting from the pocket. And to their discredit, the Steelers' coverage has graded out better than it will after this.

But again, the Steelers got what they most wanted from this defensively.

"We just needed to stop the run," Heyward said. "We're not going to go anywhere if we don't do that, and we weren't anywhere near good enough before this. We needed everyone focused on that, and that's what we got."

From everyone.

"I thought we did well together as a unit," Lawrence Timmons said after his 10 tackles included a sack and two others for a loss. "The defensive line won the line of scrimmage and stopped the run. And our second and third levels of defense, we just rolled off them. The defensive line did a good job, and we just ran through and made plays."

This is where it boomerangs back to Heyward. Because it really does all start with him, as most everyone in the locker room will attest.

I asked Williams to put it in layman's terms: "OK, see, we're not a defense that's going to shoot the gaps."

Dude ... layman's.

"Right. Sorry. We're not looking to have our line get through holes or work around anyone. You'll see that sometimes, but not a lot. What you'll get from our guys is bull-rush. We'll go straight at you. And that's what Cam does for us. Not just on that one play. He gets a push all the time. He disrupts. He's chaos."

Ha! Much better!

So that, of course, explains why Heyward will rarely post eye-popping numbers, including his modest three tackles on this day.

"That's it," Williams said. "He's going straight ahead. But when he goes straight ahead, you've got to put two guys on him, or he's going to break your quarterback in half."

Seeking an offensive perspective, I turned to cerebral guard David DeCastro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY28KpeeUX8

My own layman's term for that vivid description: Beast.

'WE BELIEVE IN OURSELVES'

The Steelers beat the Browns, which is never a big deal.

The Steelers are 6-4, which is only a big deal in the context that they've dealt with four quarterbacks going down, three kickers going down, two suspensions to star players and one franchise running back finished before the halfway point.

The Steelers are in solid position for an AFC Wild Card spot, which shouldn't be a big deal in a weak conference but kind of is a big deal in light of the above.

The one, true big deal for this team is that 2015 already marks the season in which the defense, so sorry and so sloppy for the better part of a half-decade, rediscovered its roots and clung tightly to them even as mayhem swirled all around.

And those roots, now as then, were planted on the front row.

Heyward and I were done with our talk, and I thanked the man for his time. But he summoned me back before I could take a second step.

"See these guys right here?" he said, motioning to the stalls to his left housing Stephon Tuitt and Steve McLendon, each having blossomed in his own way. "I'd like to think that years from now, we could all be part of something like what those Super Bowl guys out there got to enjoy. Imagine how cool that would be."

McLendon, overhearing this, smiled like a little kid.

Another ship lifted by the big tide.