Stephon Tuitt was having a gut feeling about Sunday.
Not a good one, either.
"I think my stomach hurts," the big man was telling me Wednesday after the Steelers' practice at the Rooney Sports Complex. He was still rubbing his hands from the 24-degree temps outside, but he also jabbed at the top of his tummy as he spoke from his locker stool. "Right here. It's like ... all tight, all knotted up. I'm not sure what it is."
Playoffs?
"Yeah, playoffs, I think," he came back with a broad smile. "But that's good, right?"
It's actually the best, as I've been told countless times over the years.
"You know, I just want Sunday to get here," he continued. "I don't want to wait anymore. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to live it out in my head. I just want Sunday."
You'd better believe that's good. It's more than good. It's a must.
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"I feel good about that," Tomlin would speak afterward with stark candor on that subject. "That's one of the reasons why we took the approach we took this week. We’ve been without Le’Veon Bell the last two years of the playoffs. We went to Denver last year without Antonio Brown. We’ve been to Super Bowls and so forth without Maurkice Pouncey. Good to have them."
Hardly surprising, but all of them see it the same way.
This was Ben on Wednesday: "This game is about when you can get hot, and it’s important to play your best football late in the season when it matters the most. Obviously, staying healthy is such a key component of that. We’ve had so many injuries in years past. It’s hard to play your best football when you’ve got guys down. So to go into the postseason as healthy as I can remember, me feeling that way and the guys around me, I think that’s very important and huge for us."
Bell could hardly contain himself: "I know how hyped up I'm going to be. I think I deserve this. This is going to be my first playoff game in my fourth year in the league. I'm obviously going to be excited, anxious, pumped up ... and I need to keep my energy up, have my teammates feed off my energy, and let them know how important this game is to me. It means a lot to those guys, the fans, Steelers Nation, but I know how important this game is for me. I obviously want to go out there and show some people what I can do."
AB won't speak with reporters until Friday, but this was his thought after the Cleveland game: "I think we’ve never had a healthy team all together in the postseason. To have that opportunity now, I believe it’s something we're excited about."
I'll repeat: That's it. That's really it.
There remains a lot of fuss over the Steelers having won only one playoff game the past five years, and even that having been gifted to them by Burfict and fellow idiot Pacman Jones. Some of that's fair. There's been too much talent at hand in that half-decade to achieve so little. But it's equally fair to prioritize that the peak talent, these big three, will be assembled for the first time.
The issue now, as AB rightly stressed without anyone else bringing it up, is that they can't just play together. They've got to rise together.
"We have to find a way to win now," he said. "The playoffs, it’s one game. One game. That’s how you have to prepare and look at it."
There's no reason all three shouldn't shine against the Dolphins, who ranked 29th in total defense and, with temps expected to plunge into the teens, will have to expose that 30th-ranked rush defense far too often. I'm expecting Bell to run wild, provided DeCastro and Pouncey team up well on Ndamukong Suh, and I'm expecting AB to do likewise, given that Miami's ace corner, Byron Maxwell, didn't practice Wednesday and is sure to be severely limited Sunday if he plays at all.
Ben?
Eh, we'll see. I'm as much of an admirer of his body of work as anyone, to the point of all but shrugging off his bizarre home/road splits this season as coincidence. Same goes for his last showing against these Dolphins, in which he was hurt but also threw two picks and totaled 189 yards.
But now's the time to elevate. And there's plenty of room to elevate. Ben's thrown for 300 yards only four times all season. Three of those came in the first five games, and there have been none in his six games since the last one, the mid-November loss to the Cowboys. In those six games, he's totaled nine touchdowns against six interceptions.
The Steelers won all of those, which has spared him some heat. But no amount of asterisks will spare that level of play should it continue through this weekend. AB's been at close to his best, and his outrageous goal-line stretch against the Ravens got his team this far. Bell's been beyond belief, looking like nothing less than the NFL's very best player. But the same can't be said for Ben in the season's second half, and that's got to change.
Put all three together, turn the crank and watch them go. Because if they do, let the record show that the last time all three were really, really firing on all cylinders was ... back in Week 4 against the Chiefs.
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The Steelers won't enter these playoffs at 100 percent, either. Not even when it comes to their best, and that's worth a reminder: Heyward has been the premier performer on the other side of the ball for a while now, and he's "pretty much just in the way now," as he was joking Wednesday.
Oh, he helps his fellow defensive linemen, from Tuitt on down. And he's "so, so proud" of how younger players such as Javon Hargrave, Dan McCullers, Ricardo Mathews and L.T. Walton have fared in his absence.
But it's not the same.
"It can't be," he was telling me from his corner of the room as he looked out. "I'm happy for all our guys. I'm happy for our team going into the playoffs healthy for the first time since ... man, I don't even know. That's great. That's what you want to see."
He laughed a little.
"Besides, that's OK. When I come back next year, I can be part of back-to-backs. I'm all right with that."
Scenes from Thursday's playoff practice. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS
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