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Inside the NFL
Posted: Wednesday December 01, 1999 12:39 PM
Pittsburgh has backed itself into a corner with Kordell Stewart By Peter King
For the second time in 15 days, the Steelers lost at home on Sunday to a pathetic rival. On the heels of a last-second defeat by the expansion Browns, a team Pittsburgh had beaten 43-0 in September, came one that might have stung even more, a 27-20 loss to the 1-10 Bengals. So the crowd in the north end zone at Three Rivers Stadium tore into the man they held responsible. "Kordell, you suck!" one fan yelled. "You piece of s---!!" screamed another. And those were a couple of the nicer comments directed at Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart as he ran off the field and into the tunnel. Following him soon after was Pittsburgh offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride, and one sentence he uttered after observing the scene spoke volumes about the wretched state of Stewart's game and his inability to demonstrate that he has the qualities essential to a pro quarterback. "Kordell," Gilbride said moments after leaving the field, "is letting this crowd destroy him." So much so that after the game, coach Bill Cowher -- who wasn't exactly having a good week himself, what with rumors flying that he would quit at season's end -- decided it was time for a change. Cowher announced that 37-year-old Mike Tomczak would start this Thursday at Jacksonville and suggested that he'd return Stewart to the rushing/receiving/quarterbacking role that earned him the nickname Slash, a role in which he was such an electric performer in his first two years in the league, 1995 and '96. Stewart took the demotion well, maybe too well. He tried to be cool. He even denied that he was being demoted, though when you're replaced by a player like Tomczak, a 15-year veteran who has thrown only 81 touchdown passes during his career (and 100 interceptions), it's hard to call it anything else. Away from the horde of reporters and cameras, however, Stewart admitted that the fans may be affecting him. "Obviously you hear the crowd," he said, getting more worked up with each sentence. "You can't not hear the crowd. I just want to shut 'em up. I just want to shut 'em up so bad, you have no idea." The Steelers, 5-6 after losing three straight and in danger of missing the playoffs for the second consecutive season, have one heck of a dilemma: Their quarterback stinks, but they're contractually wedded to him. The players and coaches have little choice but to publicly support him, even though they have to be thinking that he's the second coming of Bubby Brister -- if only he were that good. In his 57 starts with Pittsburgh, Brister had a quarterback rating that is 3.1 points higher than the one Stewart has put up in his 47 starts. Also, since the start of the '98 season, Stewart is the 28th-rated quarterback in the league. Asked after Sunday's game if he still thought Stewart could be a good NFL quarterback, Cowher simply replied, "Yeah." If that's ever to happen, Stewart has a lot of work to do. He presses. He doesn't let his game flow the way he did when he was one of the league's most exciting players. He throws poorly on the run. On the first series against the Bengals he darted out of the pocket to his right and threw across his body in the direction of wideout Will Blackwell. But the ball was three strides behind Blackwell and went right into the arms of Bengals cornerback Rodney Heath. On the Steelers' fourth series Stewart locked on to Cincinnati's pass rush and tried to float a throw to god knows who. No Pittsburgh player was within eight yards of the pass. Heath plucked the ball out of the air and returned it 58 yards for a touchdown. That put the Bengals up 21-3 and sent Stewart to the bench. "What he has to learn," says Steelers president Dan Rooney, "is that he can't look at the rush. We're trying to teach him that." Stewart thinks he works hard at his job, but he doesn't work nearly hard enough. Tomczak gets to weekday morning film sessions by 7:15 or 7:30. Stewart regularly arrives after 8. Who's the starter here? The Steelers have to hope that the Stewart who produced 32 touchdowns in 1997 (21 passing, 11 rushing) reemerges; he has generated but 21 scores in the 27 games since. "Name me one quarterback who hasn't gone through this," he says. "There are none. There's no doubt in my mind, from the depths of my heart, that I will succeed." Pittsburgh must have been equally confident during the off-season. Since the advent of unfettered free agency in 1993, the club has been notorious for letting its marquee free agents sign elsewhere, claiming it couldn't match the signing bonuses that other teams offered. Yet even after a '98 season in which Stewart ranked 26th in the league in quarterback rating, the Steelers signed him to a five-year, $27 million extension, which included an $8.1 million signing bonus. Now if Pittsburgh wants to cut the cord with Stewart after this season, it will have to carry $6.48 million of that bonus against its 2000 salary cap. Whether Cowher is around to help make that decision remains to be seen. Last Saturday the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette greeted readers with a front-page, above-the-fold headline that read COWHER QUITTING? Citing two Internet reports and another from a radio station, the story said Cowher would leave at the end of the season for a TV job or another coaching position. A coaching friend of Cowher's told SI last week that Cowher, who guided the Steelers to the playoffs in each of his first six seasons before slipping to 7-9 last year, has complained to him about the team's repeated failure to sign its own free agents and the resulting inability to keep a strong team intact. Cowher would be attractive to either the networks or a rebuilding owner, but after this season he'll still have three years left on a contract that pays him about $2 million per. Also, if Rooney agreed to let Cowher coach elsewhere, the owner would demand stiff compensation. Cowher called reports of his departure "ludicrous." While Rooney said he was sure Cowher would continue as coach, he did make a rare negative comment about one of his employees. Alluding to a Dr Pepper commercial in which Cowher plays a coach who rants and raves, Rooney said, "I'm not wild about it. Bill should have turned it down or asked that it be rewritten." Nevertheless, Rooney added, "If you ask our fans about Cowher, the vast majority of them would want him to stay." Too bad they don't feel the same way about Stewart. Issue date: December 6, 1999
For more Inside the NFL, see this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, on newsstands Wednesday, December 1. Click here to subscribe to SI.
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