JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- "I don't know what option I am on that. But it's way down the list."
It's fifth, actually.
I checked with several of the participants, and Ben Roethlisberger running with the football was No. 5 on that list and, amusingly enough, the play as it's scripted only affords four options.
And yet, there bolted the 36-year-old franchise linchpin in the broad daylight of this sunny Sunday afternoon at TIAA Bank Stadium, tucking that ball and trucking through a middle linebacker in a mano-y-mano matchup that no one on the Steelers' side could have coveted ... but one they'll now celebrate all the more after his touchdown with five ticks left brought a beyond-thrilling 20-16 triumph over the Jaguars:
"I'll never forget it," Maurkice Pouncey told me.
"A great moment," Anthony Chickillo essentially echoed. "Just a great moment for us as a team."
"I've been here three years," Javon Hargrave would add, "and I've never experienced anything like that."
Not many of these guys had, not at any level of the sport much less the NFL. Most remarkably, Ben himself might not have.
Nor did he necessarily hope to, at least not like this.
The Steelers took the ball back at their 32 with 1:42 on the clock, a 16-13 deficit and an offense that to that stage had ranged somewhere between "horrible" and "terrible," to borrow from Ben's own terminology. But a beautifully executed 35-yard pass-and-catch to JuJu Smith-Schuster -- he'd been smartly shifted to the outside in the second half by Randy Fichtner to "get away from the traffic," Ben would explain -- and he overpowered A.J. Bouye to turn his back shoulder back in time.
"It's a great catch," Ben would say. "JuJu won the game."
Except that was still to come.
Ben then threw what should have been the winning touchdown to James Conner from 27 yards out, only Conner made his second critical drop of the quarter, and the offense had to regroup. Which it did with a 25-yard strike to Antonio Brown down to the 2.
Ben then threw what should have been the winning touchdown to Ryan Switzer, only to see the Jaguars' D.J. Hayden intercept it in the end zone, only to see a flag fly for a blatant facemask penalty because Hayden corralled Switzer from behind.
After Conner's mishap, which undoubtedly had the whole of the Nation gulping en masse, the quarterback approached his running back to offer a word of encouragement. After the Hayden pick and penalty, he calmly strode to the sideline during the officials' conference -- "I was sure that'd get overturned," he'd say -- to discuss the next play with Fichtner and Mike Tomlin.
"Complete control," was how Vance McDonald remembered those huddles down the stretch. "He's just out there taking charge."
Hayden was called for defensive holding on the next play, too, which didn't matter much except that the ball was bumped up another yard and, more important by far, seven more seconds were burned. Only eight remained.
Oh, and AB was losing it on the Jaguars' Barry Church, as our Matt Sunday captured from field level:
For all the fuss over the Steelers and distractions, that's a bona fide distraction. But Ben nullified that, too, jumping into the middle and shouting at AB to shut up, basically. Which he did.
And so, they lined up.
The No. 1 option, as best I could discern from discussing this with players, was the run. Meaning a simple handoff to Conner. But Ben read the defense before getting behind center, and that was an instant no with the Jaguars stacking eight in the box:
The No. 2 option, though in chronology only because it's the most likely result from a yard out, is McDonald. And the sequence, if it had been pulled off, would have looked plenty familiar to fans, as it's become a common shovel pass route near the goal line, one aimed at penetrating the middle:
Watch how McDonald broke back off the line instantly and, for a split-second, glanced back at Ben. That's the giveaway.
Equally glaring, though, was that the middle of the line was way too crowded. Alejandro Villanueva, David DeCastro and Pouncey each sealed up his one-on-one assignment, all shoving to the left, but Jacksonville's right defensive end, Yannick Ngakoue, smartly sniffed that out and cut off McDonald. If he hadn't, McDonald ho-hums into the end zone between DeCastro and right tackle Matt Feiler.
"Ben went with what was there," McDonald explained.
The No. 3 option is to find a wide receiver. Three are used on the play, but only two are available since Smith-Schuster is deployed as a blocker. (And a decoy, since he's played the role of McDonald on this at times.) James Washington is to come across from the left side on a slant, and AB, way to the right, is there for a fade. Ben did semi-pump toward Washington, but both were covered.
And yeah, if you're getting the feeling ...
"It almost looked like they knew what was coming," Ben would acknowledge, and that's plausible. Again, this is a formation the Steelers have been putting on film since the preseason.
The No. 4 option is to flick to Conner in the flat. But linebacker Telvin Smith's got that one scoped:
From there, it boils down to Ben vs. Myles Jack, all 244 fire-breathing pounds of him.
Mind you, it shouldn't have. Because just as the Jaguars had everything covered that the Steelers were trying, so, too, did the Steelers have the reverse edge once Ben committed to run. But Feiler, who'd been so steady in Marcus Gilbert's absence until having a rough showing here, completely whiffed on Jack, barely grazing him with the right elbow:
When Ben commits, his front foot is on the 5-yard line, and Jack's is on the goal line. Everything about this should favor the professional open-field tackler -- that's the lifeblood of the middle linebacker since the dawn of football -- over the aging, not-nearly-as-mobile-as-he-once-was quarterback. But Ben makes a sharp cut to his left that briefly throws off Jack's footing and then, because this effort really needed a bonus challenge, bangs his helmet off Feiler's tree-trunk arm ...
... before desperation leads to the winning lunge.
"That last play, I’ve got to make a better play, that’s on me," Jack said. “They just ran the shovel pass, and I’ve got to take a better angle on Big Ben to make that play. I’ve got to make that play.”
Credit Feiler, by the way, with that nimble matador move -- complete with big-man leap -- to make sure Roethlisberger could reach.
"I gave Anchor a hard time because he hit me pretty hard trying to jump over me at the end,” Ben recalled with a laugh, referencing Feiler's nickname.
Turning serious, he said of his options, "They took away the other ones, and it's one of those things where it's just ... competitiveness. It seems like the end zone is right there. You know you have a timeout, so that obviously helps. You know you can take a gamble. And then when you see it, you just try to stretch it out."
This, of course, was where Xs and Os gave way to heart and soul.
Because it most certainly didn't escape Ben's notice that Smith was one of the many Jaguars silenced on the play. Figuratively and literally.
See, it was Smith, that linebacker who ended up being blocked by Conner, who followed Ben off the field after his second interception of the first half, raised two fingers his way and gave him an earful:
"They have a linebacker, No. 50 -- we'll just use numbers, we won't have to say names -- who wanted to let me know every time I threw an interception," Ben said. "He found me and told me how many interceptions I threw. It was a little motivation to come back and win the game."
Smith was hardly alone. Ramsey, as the whole football world heard, called him 'just decent' in an offseason magazine interview.
"They like to talk. Before the game. During the game," Ben would continue. "But I'm carrying the game ball home."
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers at Jaguars, Jacksonville, Fla., Nov. 18, 2018 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS