Shot of reality

No coaches were present in the eighth-floor hallway that night as the players did some heavy-duty coalescing. "We talked about guys who used to play for us," Ward says. "We talked about what it was like when our [practice] facility was at Three Rivers -- how much nicer we have it now. The rookies got a chance to ask us a whole lot of questions about life in the NFL. We found out about one another -- what we're like as people, away from football."

Most poignantly of all, the Steelers finally got to hear an account of the incident about which many of them had been wondering for more than a year: the shooting spree outside a Denver sports bar that killed one man and left Porter with a bullet lodged in his right thigh on Aug. 31, 2003. As Porter, a player Cowher describes as "without a doubt the emotional leader of this team," gave a blow-by-blow account, he squinted through the dimly lit hallway into 52 pairs of wide-open eyes.

"It was closing time," he told them, "and the bar let out. But the owner told me, 'If you and the guys want to stay longer, you can hang out.' I went out to the parking lot to gather everyone up, and all of a sudden I heard shots. A crowd of people started running every which way, and I took off for the door of the bar. I felt like somebody kicked me in the backside, but I just kept running faster. I looked over to the side of me and saw two people down, and one of them had two red spots on his shirt. That turned out to be the guy who died.

"I got inside the bar, and the shots kept coming, so I kept going until I got into the kitchen. I was hiding behind these refrigerators, and then someone yelled, 'They're coming in here!' I was trying to hide in the very back of the kitchen, and there were still shots going off, and I was scared as hell. I had come with 10 people, and I didn't know if any of them were down or what. Finally, the shots died down, and I came out and everybody was crying and going crazy. It wasn't until then that I wondered why I still felt sore. This lady checked me and said, 'Yeah, you got blood coming out of your leg.' And at that point I just went limp."

So, too, did the jaws of Porter's teammates as he paused for dramatic effect. What he told them next made many of these tough, chiseled men squeal in horror: The bullet had gone through Porter's left buttock and landed in his right thigh, a physical improbability straight out of JFK conspiracy theorist Jim Garrison's handbook. "Basically, because I was running, I was in the 'sprinter's stance' at the exact moment I got shot," Porter said. "And thank God, because if I had been in any other position -- or if it had been another inch lower -- well, let's just say my manhood would have been gone."

At the time, Porter's wife, Christy, was six months pregnant with the couple's fourth child. When he returned to the field after missing only the first two games of 2003, he viewed his return as a symbolic shedding of that haunting memory.

"I remember riding in a van to the hospital thinking, 'How is this gonna change my life? Will I ever play football again?'" Porter told his rapt teammates that night in Fort Lauderdale. "I was in a state of disbelief; I was so mad I couldn't even cry. The doctor made me stay up all night, because he had to check to make sure no arteries had been hit. When he told me I was going to be OK, I passed out almost immediately. But the way I look at it now is, no matter what happens out there on the football field, nothing can ever really bother me again."

The following night the Steelers defeated the Dolphins, 13-3, despite a Roethlisberger interception on his first pass of the game. Though the opening kickoff had been delayed seven-and-a-half hours, the action took place amid a driving rainstorm in a stadium that was more than half-empty. Yet Pittsburgh's players have fond memories of that night's work, for it marked the start of a 15-game winning streak that endured until they became yet another victim of Bill Belichick's inexorable postseason savagery.

That frozen January night at Heinz Field was a massive bummer for my buddy Vic and for the good people of Pittsburgh, few of whom stuck around to see the Pats, for the second time in four seasons, receive their conference-championship trophy on the Steelers' turf. But I hope that the players who remain on Pittsburgh's roster in '05 remember all the great things they accomplished before that game and are able to retain the strands of togetherness they began developing in that hotel hallway last September.

Or let's put it in terms the Steelers surely can appreciate: Rather than start this season standing still, they should assume the sprinter's stance and hit the ground running.