Hobbled Steelers turn to Essex, others against Jags

The Steelers' Trai Essex was inactive for all but four games this season. John Pyle/Icon SMI

In the spring of 2001, Trai Jamar Essex was a senior at Harding High in Fort Wayne, Ind. He had already signed a letter of intent to play football at Northwestern, where he would start one year at tight end and three at left tackle. But in the spring of his senior year in high school, Essex was still, in his words, "a basketball player who played football,'' and it's worth noting that Harding won the Class 2A Indiana state basketball championship that season.

There is no way to overstate the importance of this achievement in an Indiana athlete's life. If you feel you need an explanation, just go rent Hoosiers, and then come back to read the rest of this column. It's not going anywhere.

Essex was a rookie on the Steelers' Super Bowl championship team two years ago (he was inactive throughout the playoffs and in the Big Game, as well), but purses his lips indecisively when selecting his career athletic highlight. "I guess it's the Super Bowl,'' says Essex. "But that state championship was pretty big, too.''

As he makes this comparison, he is sitting on a stool at his dressing cubicle in Pittsburgh's training facility, two days before the Steelers play the Jacksonville Jaguars in the first round of the NFL Playoffs at Heinz Field. Outside the temperature is in the teens, with a biting wind, creating a wind chill that is only slightly more unpleasant than it was in Jacksonville on Wednesday. No lie.

Weather, of course, is the least of Essex's worries. After spending most of the season as the team's No. 3 left tackle, he will start on Saturday night against Jacksonville, charged with protecting Ben Roethlisberger's valuable blind side in an elimination game at home. Nothing like a little pressure.

Essex's situation is emblematic of the Steelers' diminished condition heading into the playoffs. Willie Parker, who rushed for 1,316 yards, went out with a broken leg in Week 15 and stud defensive end Aaron Smith had gone down two weeks before that. When it was suggested to veteran left guard Alan Faneca that it's nice to have all parts in working order at the start of the playoffs, Faneca smiled and said, "We've got a few parts lost here.''

The Steelers' running game is primarily in the hands of Najeh Davenport, a gamer, but a straight-line basher who can't hit home runs like Parker did (few can). And the defense is playing for the second time in a month against a team that trampled it for 224 yards on the ground.

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