INDIANAPOLIS -- "Man," Lawrence Timmons was telling me, "you're funny."
This was five days ago in Cleveland. And he didn't mean funny like a clown. He meant funny like a fool.
He was right, too. In trying to ask if he were performing with more of an edge, I instead observed that he "looked almost ticked off out there."
Which was, of course, silly.
"I don't need to be ticked off to play like that," he'd later clarify. "That's my job. I hear that out there all the time even from other players, after I hit somebody, it's like, 'Man, who are you mad at?' And I say to 'em that I'm not mad at anybody. I'm doing my job."
____________________
____________________
Timmons and Mitchell haven't always been at their best. Just before Cleveland and this game, they struggled as much as anyone in that crushing loss to the Cowboys.
But both are punishing, physical performers as part of their job descriptions.
And in that specific context, I dare say, they were alone among these Steelers.
Because unless I missed something in covering this team through the mostly flat-line first nine games, that four-game losing streak, those lifeless, passive, walk-all-over-us losses to lousy teams on the road ... there was no one other than those two consistently sticking it -- not just wrapping and tackling and shoving ... I mean really sticking it -- to their opponents.
Until now. Until, of all unfortunate events, Cam Heyward was lost.
"Yeah. Ha! I have kind of noticed that," the big man observed from his stall after this one. "There's no question everyone really picked it up in Cleveland, knocking bodies around, really getting after it. And now we just kept it going. And we've got to keep it going after this, too. It can't stop."
There was no magic moment here. No speech. No specific admonition from Mike Tomlin or the coaches to start getting nastier. If there was, not a player would concede that to me, and I really don't think there was.
Rather, by all accounts, they watched Timmons and Mitchell do their jobs, as well as James Harrison in his limited snaps, and decided that's how they'd do their jobs.
"When you see that out there, and you're a rookie like me ... man, we talk about the standard around here ... that's the standard," Sean Davis was saying. "If those guys are putting their bodies on the line, if they're doing everything they can to make a play, who am I to do anything less?"
Reminder: That's a rookie talking.
And that was a rookie who did, indeed, put his body on the line to stuff Tolzien on third-and-goal on the first of the two stands:
Watch that play again. Let it run.
Never mind that the infinitely more mobile Luck scores on that sequence in his sleep. That's immaterial here. Because this is the play, this is the moment, and -- I can tell you from watching this in the press box perch just above this end zone -- the only way Davis gets to Tolzien quickly enough to completely stunt him is to do what he did.
"I believe that," Davis replied to hearing that. "There was a lot of room for him there. I've got to get to him as fast and as hard as I can."
Even if it meant leading in a way that, as is easy to see above, put his head and neck in jeopardy.
"Gotta make the play. That's football. That's the standard."
It's been that way on both sides of the ball, actually, in both of these games.
"You look at those guys over there," Timmons said, nodding across the room toward the offensive line guys. "They're doing the same thing right now. They're not finessing anyone, you know?"
No, they aren't. That, too, began against the Browns. Tomlin, Todd Haley, Ben Roethlisberger and all concerned were of a single mind Sunday that the offense had to reestablish the running game. And that meant, as it always does, getting their blockers to start rolling downhill.
That happened in a big way, with Le'Veon Bell breaking loose for 146 yards, and the momentum bought another 120 against the Colts.
A healthy, if obvious, chunk of credit goes to Bell. In addition to his fulfilling Tomlin's plea to hit holes harder, even while not affecting his effective hesitations to find them, he's also run a lot harder. He was lowering his helmet and/or his shoulder and plowing through people, punishing them. Some of it was kind of cringeworthy, to be candid, in that Bell isn't exactly a Bus out there.
I asked if he'd ever run a more physical game in the NFL.
"I don't think so, and that's fun," he replied. "But all credit to my O-line. They're the ones really driving people back right now. I can see it every play."
I've seen it even on the pass-block, maybe as a carryover.
Marcus Gilbert had nearly lost his block at right tackle in the seconds before Roethlisberger hooked up with Antonio Brown for a third touchdown. But Gilbert took an additional step to his right, swatted at the head of the Colts' Erik Walden and lunged violently backward to swing him off the path:
You wouldn't have seen this on TV but, as soon as the ball found AB's hands, Gilbert dropped to one knee and emphatically pumped his right fist. As if he were the one who'd brought down the backbreaking score.
Which maybe he was.
"Ha! I honestly don't know what I did after that," Gilbert would say. "I was so excited I think I blacked out."
But of the line's approach overall, he was clear as could be: "We're getting back to basics. That's what we needed. It's who we are. We wanted to go out there in Cleveland and now here with the mentality that we're going to knock people around."
"Oh, write it down," Foster echoed from the next stall. "We're getting a big push. We're knocking people backward. We're busting heads, breaking teeth."
The film studies will support this, just as the quarterback did when I asked:
____________________
MORE STEELERS
Kaboly: Steelers back on top
Dopirak: Defense strong on goal line
Morning Java: Back to business as usual
DK Sports Radio: Tim, Dustin talk W