Afc Central

Last season coach Chuck Noll of the PITTSBURGH STEELERS squeezed all the mileage he could out of a team that looked as if it would run out of gas long before the playoffs. Instead, the Steelers made it to the AFC Championship—with 15 rookies on the roster—and they had the Dolphins worried for a while, until the roof fell in right before halftime. The Steelers were tough and nasty. They were the only club to defeat the 49ers, they roughed up John Elway in the playoffs and they beat the Raiders on the coast to qualify for postseason action.

For the second year in a row Noll watched his pride and joy, the offensive line, crumble with injuries. Rejects from other teams started for him. Pete Rostosky, a free-agent former defensive lineman, became the starting left tackle down the stretch. Indeed, the offensive line was a strange-looking unit. In an era of 6'6" and 6'7" monsters, Noll's group averaged 6'1½", but it kept that good trap-block attack going and pounded people, and center Mike Webster held everything together.

Oh, the Steelers did things in strange ways last year, all right. In an era of outstanding tight ends—Ozzie Newsome, Kellen Winslow, Todd Christensen, who has caught 172 passes in his last two seasons—the Steelers' tight ends have become invisible. Collectively, they caught 11 passes last year. There were nine games in which they caught none. Quarterback Mark Malone was bailed out when 33-year-old John Stallworth came up with the most amazing season of his 11-year career, an 80-catch year, and when rookie Louis Lipps became a Pro Bowler and an efficient deep threat.

Two years ago Malone was backup to a backup, Cliff Stoudt. Last year he started off second-string to a Miami reject, David Woodley. He was the second-lowest-ranked quarterback of the 10 playoff starters, and his passes didn't always go where he aimed them, but the Steelers seemed to respond to him.

It was a team without a great runner or defensive lineman, with a secondary that could be burned badly and a linebacking corps that lost its great All-Pro, Jack Lambert. But defense was the heart of the Steelers. The outside linebackers, Mike Merriweather and Bryan Hinkle, formed the best twosome since the Jack Ham-Andy Russell days. Robin Cole switched to the inside and came into his own, making the Pro Bowl. The defense was quick, unpredictable and opportunistic. It scored six touchdowns and kept the Steelers competitive all year. That should be the story of the 1985 Steelers.

One of the most remarkable statistics of Noll's career is that in the 1972-79 era, from Pittsburgh's first playoff appearances and through the four Super Bowls, the Steelers' record against teams with less than .500 records was 50-1. Last year four of their seven regular-season losses were to teams with losing records. Call it the downside of emotion.

This was the way Sam Wyche began his NFL coaching career last year: It was late in the fourth quarter of the opening game. The CINCINNATI BENGALS were trailing the Broncos by three but were driving. Then Charley Alexander fumbled deep in Bronco territory, his first fumble in a six-year career—581 straight carries without a bobble. Earlier, Jim Breech had missed a field goal from the four-yard line—his first miss after 14 straight from 25 yards or less. The next week the Bengals had a chance to beat Kansas City in the fourth quarter. A fumble was loose in the Chiefs' end zone and three Bengals had a shot at it, but the ball rolled out of bounds. The Bengals still had a chance to win with a minute left, but tight end M.L. Harris caught a pass on the Chiefs' 29 and fumbled. Next week they were beating the Jets 16-13 in the third quarter. The Jets proceeded to turn four Bengal turnovers into scores. The result—a 43-23 New York blowout.

And so it went—all the way to 1-6, when the season turned around and the Bengals closed with a rush. Their 8-8 record could have gotten them into the playoffs if the Steelers had dropped their finale to the Raiders. Sorry, no miracles. Instead, the Bengals were left with puzzles. The quarterback situation was a revolving door. Ken Anderson and Turk Schonert were decked so many times that their fight for the position would have been stopped if there were a mandatory three-knockdown rule. Boomer Esiason was a hero one week and a raw rookie the next. Against the Saints in the next-to-last game, he went 1 for 6, and Anderson came in and won it.

So how do you figure it? Anderson is 36 but it's still his job to lose. He had a higher ranking than either Boomer or Turk. If I were Wyche, though, I wouldn't start him against Pittsburgh. The Steelers knocked Anderson out of their last four contests.

For a while it looked as if the Bengals' deep receiving threat, Cris Collinsworth, was going to the USFL, but his deal with the Tampa Bay Bandits fizzled and back home he came. (It's the boomerang theory—eventually everything returns. Back from the Jacksonville Bulls came linebacker Tom Dinkel, who defected two years ago, with defensive end Ross Browner of the Houston Gamblers and tight end Dan Ross of the Portland Breakers expected to follow, dragging along some USFL mileage on their legs.)