Belichick's Greatest Hits, No. 11: The 2004 AFC Championship Game at Pittsburgh

Boston Globe. Getty Images.

As promised, from here on in it's Postseason Belichick and only Postseason Belichick. Who is the best Belichick of them all.

For a minute I'd considered the OG of Dynasty AFC championship games, the one at Pittsburgh in 2001 as 10-point underdogs and shocked the world with two special teams touchdowns and Drew Bledsoe coming off the bench for an injured Tom Brady to hit David Patten in the back of the end zone for another. But instead, I'm going to go with this sequel, which came out three years later. Because it surpassed the original in that Aliens vs. Alien sort of way. 

I actually wrote about this one back in September. Thanks to it coming up on Ben Roethlisberger's podcast, when he and Jerome Bettis agreed that the Patriots cheated because they were stealing signs. 

Let's save you the trouble of watching these two try to revise history by just posting what I wrote four months ago:

And here's the "cheating" issue, as Bettis explains it. The Steelers decided to go for it on 4th down. The signal on the sidelines was a coach rubbing his hands together, back and forth, which meant running a Counter. Upon seeing this, the Patriots called a timeout. And what struck Bettis as odd is that the one player they brought to the sidelines with was nose tackle Ted Washington. Who, at the snap, "loops into the hole" and blows up the run. 

Bettis can only be talking about the play he ran on 4th & 1 from the New England 39 with 7:07 to play in the 1st. It shows up on this clip that the NFL's Imperial Video Stormtroopers will no doubt remove even though it's 20 years old. But if not, it comes at the 0:38 mark:

Eight defenders crowd the line. Mount Washington may or may not have done some looping. Though that would've been extremely difficult, even for him. Because, and I cannot emphasize this enough, WAS NOT ON THE 2004 PATRIOTS.

But Bettis ran into a wall of bodies, Roosevelt Colvin knocked the ball loose, and Mike Vrabel fell on it. One play later, the rout was on:

With that out of the way, back to the game and Belichick's 11th finest hour.

This game was played with the dramatic subplot of everyone knowing that both of his coordinators, Romeo Crennel and Charlie Weis, were taking head coaching jobs at Cleveland and Notre Dame, respectively. So every game could be the triumvirate's last one together.  

Unlike three AFCCGs earlier, the Patriots weren't sneaking up on anyone. They went into Pittsburgh giving the Steelers 3 points. Even though the defending champions went 14-2, they were traveling for the title game thanks to the home team going 15-1. And since he took over the QB1 job in Week 3, 22 year old Offensive Rookie of the Year Roethlisberger had a career 14-0 record as a starter. 

And while Bettis was nearing the end of his career, he still had 250 carries that season. And would've cracked 1,000 yards if he hadn't missed a game. The Steelers also had Hines Ward at the peak of his career, having completed his fourth straight 1,000 yard season. Complemented by Plaxico Burress and Antwan Randle El. 

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Add to them your typical Dick Lebeau defense, that surrendered the fewest points in the league, and Pittsburgh was positively loaded. 

Unfortunately for them, so was New England. With or without Belichick (and probably Ernie Adams) being able to crack that Engima code of that ultra-secret hand-rubbing gesture. 

Crennel's defense reduced the freakishly powerful Roethlisberger to ashes. On the day, he completed just 14 passes (on 24 attempts), while completing three passes to Patriots defenders, including an 87-yard Pick-6 by Rodney Harrison. It was a 24-3 game by the time Pittsburgh got into the end zone. And the Patriots answered right back with a Corey Dillon 25-yard TD run made it 31-10. That one run accounted for 1/3 of Dillon's total yards on the day, as the Steelers' front-7 kept him bottled up all day. So Weis countered with Jet sweeps by Deion Branch and outside tosses to Kevin Faulk. Branch had a rushing TD and another on a reception. And the game was a laugher despite Tom Brady only going 14-for-21 through the air. 

Just total domination. Belichick coached laps around Bill Cowher in all three phases to win a Lamar Hunt Trophy that's probably propping open a door at One Patriots Place right now. In the end, it was a 41-27 blowout. And as the cliche goes, the game wasn't that close, as Roethlisberger added a garbage time touchdown pass as the Patriots were just trying to drain the clock and get ready for the Super Bowl against Philadelphia. 

Which may or may not make this list before it's done. It's just that there are so many great Belichick postseason moments to choose from, and so few blogs to fit them in.