Broncos, Steelers Work on Rivalry

For teams with rich playoff histories, the Denver Broncos and Pittsburgh Steelers surprisingly have little history together.

The Broncos have played in five AFC championship games and the Steelers in nine, but they’ve never played each other with a Super Bowl berth on the line.

It goes even deeper. The AFC championship game Sunday at Three Rivers Stadium will be only the second playoff game between the Broncos (14-4) and Steelers (12-5) since 1984.

Somehow, the team that won four Super Bowls during the 1970s and the team that became synonymous with near-misses during the 1980s have kept missing each other in the playoffs.

“It’s odd,” said Pittsburgh nose tackle Joel Steed, a Denver native who knows a lot of AFC championship history from following the Broncos. “As the years change and different teams come up and down, I guess it’s the natural process of how it goes.”

That’s the biggest reason these two prominent AFC teams don’t have much of a rivalry -- not yet, anyway.

“There’s not a whole lot of history between us, but I’ll tell you what, that regular-season game really set this one up,” Pittsburgh linebacker Levon Kirkland said.

He was talking about Denver’s only visit to Three Rivers Stadium this decade, a 35-24 Steelers victory Dec. 7 that helped decide home-field advantage for the playoffs.

Given the stakes, it became one of their more emotional games all season. There was trash-talking and finger-pointing, a pumped up crowd and wild second half.

In short, it was a good starting point for an overdue rivalry.

“There’s a lot of talk, a lot of buzz going on this week because of what happened in the regular-season game,” Kirkland said. “That’s all fine and good. It’s exciting. I hope everybody’s enjoying it.”

“There’s been a couple of sparks flying,” Steed said. “It only adds to a rivalry.”

Much happened during that first game.

Broncos lineman Alfred Williams took umbrage at the way Pittsburgh coach Bill Cowher ran onto the field to congratulate his offense after it converted a fourth down late in the game. Afterwards, the Steelers were miffed at the way the Broncos blamed themselves for the loss instead of giving Pittsburgh more credit.

The indignation provides a backdrop to the rematch. Several photocopied pages of quotes are tacked up on the Steelers’ dressing room bulletin board, along with a picture of a Denver company making Super Bowl shirts.

“It works to help players understand the significance of what’s going on and how little people believe you can get the job done,” Steelers running back Jerome Bettis said. “When they have T-shirts that they’ve already made, things like that, that’s a blatant lack of respect.

“You see that type of thing and you just catalog it in the back of your head and say, ‘OK, we’ll see if you guys get a chance to wear those shirts or if you’ll have to burn ‘em.’ ”

While the Steelers did a slow burn, the Broncos went out of their way to be politically correct this time.

“Whatever they need for motivation,” Denver tight end Shannon Sharpe said, shrugging off Pittsburgh’s complaints. “We have to give those guys credit: They beat us for whatever the reasons. We lost the game, we accept that, we’ve moved on.”

Not entirely. The Broncos remember how they dropped several passes and blew a two-touchdown lead in their worst defensive performance of the season.

“They just beat us,” running back Terrell Davis said. “They put a whipping on us pretty bad. They had momentum going and they just never stopped.”

As they left the field that day, players from both teams sensed it was the start of something that might carry over into the playoffs -- just like a rivalry should.

“You had a feeling it was going to happen,” Kirkland said. “This doesn’t surprise me.”